Posted on Jun 24, 2015
SSG Squad Leader
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Officers, and Noncommissioned Officers are both leaders, but what are their roles, and can these roles be shared?
Posted in these groups: Leadership abstract 007 LeadershipImages 20 NCOsOfficers logo Officers
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1SG Civil Affairs Specialist
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The age-old tug-of-war between officer and enlisted business.
My take:
NCOs enforce standards and discipline Soldiers for infractions; officers make decisions on setting policies and sign off on formal punitive action.
NCOs conduct training; officers set goals for training and make an assessment on how effective that training is at attaining their goals. Officers also prioritize allocation of resources to initiatives they feel most critical to attaining their core goals.
Officers plan and direct operations; NCOs execute and accomplish the mission.
Officers maintain a degree of seperation from the personnel in their command in order to make judgments on what is best for their unit; NCOs know their Soldiers and their needs, and serve as an advocate for what is best for the individual Soldier.

For me personnally, I have always felt my most important role was to continuously build my team. I do this through focused training, building esprit de corps, instilling a desire to attain excellence, and developing my junior leaders through active development plans and by example.

The Army is constantly in motion, even in garrison. There is no time to rest for a leader. The next mission can come at any time. You had best be prepared for it.
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1SG Military Police
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You're going to shorten the number of responses TOP...well said!
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CPO Engineering Geologist
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9 y
Great description of how it's done; no more needs to be said. This is exactly the way we try to do things in the Coast Guard. One thing to add...CPOs are also expected to mentor junior officers. This is a role taken very seriously in the Coast Guard and the Navy.
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CW4 Brigade Maintenance Technician
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In a nutshell, NCO's, Warrant Officers and O-Grade Officers are professionals and Leaders but when you break it down you can distinguished them by saying a NCO is a Trainer and a Leader, the Warrant Officer is a Techincal Expert and a Leader and the O-Grade Officer is a Manager/Planner and a Leader. More often than not, these roles can be intertwined and we as a Military can't be successful without all of the groups working together.
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COL Jon Thompson
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I deal with this all the time in explaining what becoming an Officer means through an ROTC program vs. enlisting. We need leaders at all levels. Ultimately, leadership is influencing others to accomplish an assigned task/mission. At the lowest level, it is the NCOs that make this happen in their frontline leadership roles directly over the junior enlisted. Officers make this happen at a higher level and are the ones responsible for planning and executing unit level operations/training. I haven't had the privilege to work with a lot of WOs but they are the technical experts in their field and provide that expertise to the unit. All three need to work together to make the Army work and I have had the privilege to work with some of the finest Americans in all three levels. I am excited to go back to my first unit reunion this summer because those Soldiers were the ones that set me up for a successful career.
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