As a troop commander, it was my responsibility to teach, coach, and mentor my platoon leaders. Through continual assessment of their capabilities, limitations, and in providing feedback, part of my job was to observe and guide marked improvement in their performance over time. It's okay for the lieutenant to make mistakes, so long as the same mistakes are not repeated every other day. Failure for the lieutenant to improve his/her performance meant, to me, one of two things:
1. I was not providing good enough feedback through direction, counselling, OPORDs, commander's intent, or end state.

or...

2. The kid was an idiot and just didn't get it.

In the context of possibility #1, I always would assume this first, in that I was not providing for that young lieutenants professional development. I'd talk to his PSG and my 1SG and look for alternative methods of development that I hadn't used yet. If this lack of professional growth continued to occur, I'd give solution #1 one more shot (unless a gross negligence or inability to lead was identified). Again, if this failed, then I'd resort to assumption #2, which meant he was going to go work on a staff and stay as far away from soldiers as possible.

This happened to me once as a commander, and when it was all said and done, after numerous attempts to right this kid's leadership ability he had to go. It didn't come as a surprise to him, as it was placed numerous times in writing that a failure to adapt would result in his continued employment elsewhere.

We don't counsel our soldiers enough anymore. Particularly on the officer side of the house, some feel there are better things to do than to conduct the once a month counselling session. A few rely too heavily on it. The point is to find that happy medium. A young officer who is eager to learn and do well will adapt well, unless he simply doesn't have any leadership potential. It's up to us as their rating officers and mentors to teach, coach and mentor them into becoming successful platoon leaders and, later, commanders.