Posted on Mar 16, 2014
Can a 1SG set a standard for all counselings to follow? verbatim? just curious, unless a memo or something is posted or put out?
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counseling's.
Posted 11 y ago
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I have seen NCOs who advanced in rank because previous raters were too lazy to write counseling statements for poor performance. This resulted in them getting successes on the NCOER because there wasn't any documentation to back up needing improvement.
While deployed to Iraq, I had a SFC who was incompetent as heck. He never completed a task by the suspense date. His rater, was a Captain and Senior Rater the Task Force Commander. I was serving as the Task Force Sergeant Major and personally wrote several counseling statements on this guy. His rater did as well. When it came time to do his NCOER, I told the his rater came and sought my advice. He and the Commander agreed to let me write it. This NCO was so incompetent, when we were extended to stay in Iraq another 90 days, we told Brigade we did not want his orders extended. He was receiving a Change of Rater NCOER.
I completed using the NCOER while referring to the stack of counseling statements. Once completed, I went over it with his rater and senior rater. He received "Needs Improvement" in each category. We sent him home and the first thing he did was take his NCOER to the Brigade CSM, who then shot me an email asking me to send him all the documentation to support this NCOER. I anticipated that and had them already scanned to pdf. I sent it off to the CSM, who then sent me an email congratulating me on all the counseling and having all the documentation. Because the SFC's SR rater was the Brigade commander, the NCOER was not yet complete. In his email, the CSM suggested some harsher bullets.
in this position and while serving as a 1SG, I made it mandatory that all quarterly counseling documentation was to be included with an NCOER. I regularly went around and asked to see quarterly counseling statements to ensure the were being completed. The last thing I wanted to see was to see a poor NCO get a successful NCOER when s/she was incompetent and be eligible for promotion. The counseling is part of the checks and balances to ensure we have strong and competent leaders in the NCO Corps. It's the strong and competent leaders in the NCO Corps who make it strong.
If you are an NCO who is not conducting quarterly counseling on those you rate and not documenting corrective counseling, then you are shirking your responsibilities. You should also be documenting counseling on those who exceed standards. All this helps you develop good soldiers and help weed out the bad ones.
Any 1SG who is setting standards for counseling is doing their job.
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They absolutely can if there are certain events in which the Commander or 1SG wishes a Soldier to be counseled a certain way (initial integration counselings, ABCP, failed APFT, recommendation for NJP, etc). Of course this doesn't make much sense for isolated event such as those for specific bad behavior, and they should not take the place of monthly developmental counselings, which should be tailored to the individual Soldier.
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MSG Bobby Ewing
SFC Watkins sums it up well in her response. 1SGs can put out standard counselings that will be followed verbatim, but that does not develop our Soldiers to become leaders and our Jr Leaders to become better Senior leaders if they are all receiving the same counselings.
I'm currently a Detachment Sergeant and I have verbatim counselings in place, ONLY for the examples SFC Watkins listed. The only one that is not verbatim is my reception/integration counseling. I have put out guidance as to what will be covered in the counseling, but I leave it to my PSGs, Section Leaders, and Team Leaders as to how they want to tailor it for their specific platoon, section, or team.
I have also given templates and examples of previous counselings: negative, positive, monthly, etc for all my NCOs to use as guidelines. Just as SFC Watkins stated, monthly counselings should be tailored to the individual Soldier, just as other counselings should be. For example, not all FTRs are the same, so you may have the discussion section the same, but the plan of action might be different based on all data collected. So, yes a 1SG could give that guidance, but I'm strongly against it for ALL counselings.
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Absolutely! Provided that the standard does not contradict published regulations. An example of this is the NCOER - back in 2002, I had a 1SG who set a standard he called "No Blank Checks" meaning that every box on the rating portion of an NCOER would have bullet comments supporting the rating regardless of what that rating is. This standard was adopted by the BDE CSM and continues to this day. At that time, the regulation only required supporting bullet comments for a "needs improvement" or "excellence" - success ratings were not required until the 1SG made it so.
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SFC (Join to see)
That is what the policy has been everywhere I have been stationed. I'm glad that you have to write down something for success blocks. A strong success block is better than a weak excellence block anyways. And it prevents a leader from being lazy and giving five blank success blocks when they realize an NCOER is overdue.
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SSG Jason Deters
Clearly you understand "Commander's Intent" on this..... well "Top's Intent" in this case. There had been a pattern of neglect in the rating process for several years where developmental counselings had been pencil whipped at or near the time when the NCOER was due. Because of this, there were no specific examples to include in the comments boxes so leaders would mark success for both effective and ineffective NCOs. They could accomplish an entire platoon of NCOER's in an afternoon. Soldiers were going to the board who probably shouldn't have, and others were not promoted as rapidly as they should have. At the very least, their packet was thin and unsubstantial. How do you send a high speed NCO to the board and NOT show anything as to WHY they are there? What about the ate up NCO's who are there simply because the right boxes were checked?
I'm not ashamed to admit that I was the product of this leadership failure - I was promoted too soon. Looking back and conducting an honest self-evaluation, I was not ready when I was promoted to E6 - barely a year after becoming an NCO. I should have had better development and a little more time in grade.
There is no excuse for just "checking the block" and Top knew all too well. SGT's time was being used for movie time or trips to the PX, rather than accomplishing those pesky admin functions or other important tasks.
I'm not ashamed to admit that I was the product of this leadership failure - I was promoted too soon. Looking back and conducting an honest self-evaluation, I was not ready when I was promoted to E6 - barely a year after becoming an NCO. I should have had better development and a little more time in grade.
There is no excuse for just "checking the block" and Top knew all too well. SGT's time was being used for movie time or trips to the PX, rather than accomplishing those pesky admin functions or other important tasks.
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