How often do you counsel your Soldiers? (Verbal or Written)

Quite often verbally. Written, I ensure that my Senior NCOs are doing so quarterly and I spot check them. Also ask them the question if they are being counseled by their Commanders.

Stress it quite a bit. Not only for development but for coverage. Need the documentation for the good, bad and ugly.

I do a written counseling once a quarter for my NCOs and expect them to counsel their Junior Enlisted once a month on performance at a minimum. I encourage additional counseling to be done as necessary especially the positive variety (which admittedly, I don't do well).

One thing that I have gotten better at is documenting verbal sessions after the fact.

I would do "On the spot counseling" all the time but I made it a practice from the time I became a Squad Leader to counsel my Soldiers monthly. It always amazed me when I sat down with my new Soldiers and did written monthly counseling they would say "I have never had this before" I would say 80% of all my written counselings were positive. Often we as leaders forget to write down the good stuff. When I rated NCO's it made it so easy, I would have the NCOER written by doing this counseling, their achievements, etc were all right there for me to copy and paste into the NCOER. Once I became a Company Commander I started only counseling my senior NCO's quarterly but then it was even more important to document everything so I could give them credit for what they had accomplished.

As a leader you need to ensure you are documenting the good things your Soldiers do.