Quote Originally Posted by Schmedlap View Post
We talk a good game about delegating responsibility, decentralizing decision-making, empowering small unit leaders, and so on. We codify it in our doctrine and claim to practice it. Do we? Are are we still keeping our small unit leaders on a tight leash because we fear casualties and we fear that one or two rogues will do something rash and create a PR disaster?
Agreed. What I liked seeing while deployed was that Commanders, in many cases, had no choice but to empower junior leaders; primarily because of troop-to-task requirements, high optempo and unit strength. Additionally, a unit's "studs" tend to emerge on deployment and are inherently given more responsibility. For example, we had the QRF PL go down with an injury and then quickly realized the PSG wasn't up to the task of leading the QRF. In the end, the squad leaders rotated duty as QRF PL, which had it's benefits and downfalls, but overall was a great experience for them. Most importantly, it proved they were totally capable and assured our leadership to empower them with more responsibility, which they did.