Am I a bad NCO or just inexperienced?

We always told our newly minted NCO's that the first person that would screw them over was their friend. They would always deny it but within a matter of weeks they would come back and admit it happened. You should be seen as a hard ass not a bitch. Be consistent and fair, they may not like you but they will respect you.

No way! Stay the course. I mean without being there I cant say that your approach is always the best but... Think of it this way, without you enforcing those standards and providing the discipline that they are apparently craving from you maybe one of them gets into serious trouble. Someone else may take them to a real trial. You are just looking after their careers. Did the recruiter kidnap them from their houses in the middle of the night? They chose the job not the other way around... be a Soldier. As long as you stay away from condescending and have valid points hopefully you will learn from each other. Also hopefully that discipline translates when its time for them to perform triage downrange.

There is a time to be a bulldog. And there is a time to mentor. It's sometimes hard to know which is which. If you are a bulldog, then at the same time do something unexpected to build up your soldiers into what you want them to be. Something that always worked for me is to take a soldier who was underperforming and make them my shadow. Slowly put some responsibility in their hands and when they make a mistake, calmly but assertively use questioning to get them to be able to process through the decision making process and support their implementation. If their solution doesn't work, say ok that didn't work, what is your next course of action. As long as they don't break regulations or get someone hurt, let them make mistakes. If you start building up those with confidence problems, or those who need to better understand how the military does things, you won't come across as you say, a bitch. This is how we enforce standards. It isn't simply correcting the behavior but it is correcting the underlying decision making processes that lead to the need to correct behavior.

If they don’t enforce to standards why do they bitch about discipline? It’s their fault, leadership starts at the top, not at the halfway spot. Know your job and do it well, help people where you can, it’s not as simple a just giving orders, respect is earned not given. If your respected you’ll never have a problem.

Is this just Army issues? I never see this stuff raised as a Marine Corps issue, it’s not intended to be a dig, but some of the stuff I read here is just foreign to me. We followed orders, if there was a problem the Company Gunny interceded, actually it was very simple.

Negative! You are more of what the Military needs especially now where everyone's just getting so relaxed

There’s a job to do, and when it comes down to it the purpose of the military is to kill the other guy. That’s it, there’s no peace keeping, no diplomacy, not to be taken lightly, most likely the other side has no rules and gets to shoot first. Why does someone need to be coddled then asked to hump an 80 lb pack and weapon in Afghanistan? It’s pretty simple really, but in garrison I guess the reality is lost a bit.

You should not lose your cool and talk to them the way you want to be talked to and still be fair and firm and the respect will be there. Been there done that Hooah

SGT I think we need that bitch NCO . Much of the new soldiers are lazy . Even me I get frustrated with the lack of discipline. The only thing is to be a bitch with the right people . I used to have an NCO that was a bitch with all females and it used to bother me because I was always doing the right thing. I confronted her one day because I was tired of her . I explained to her that all soldiers are not the same , she has to look for the shaming ones. She stopped bothering me .

Something that worked well for me was this... When I got tied of yelling and screaming, I simply asked Joe what the standard was. In many cases, they knew. When they answer you correctly, tell them "Right on, follow the standard". If they were wrong or didn't know, I simply educated them.

Long gone are the days you could take your young privates to the wood line, or offer them some good old fashioned wall to wall counseling, so your best friend is the pen. So you grab a counseling statement and detail how Joe fell short of the standard. You get 2-3 of those & your next higher leader needs to know about it then. Maybe they need to stand before Top or the old man. Your PSG will be there to help you at that point.

Set a standard (that complies with service standard), meet the standard, and hold your juniors to the standard.