Experience vs Work Ethic: Which one is more important in an E-4 and below?

I've been to plenty of promotion ceremonies and almost always included in the citation is that the promotion is based (at least in part) to "demonstrated leadership potential". With that in mind I'd give it to the PFC without a second thought.

Both play a very important roll for the lower enlisted. The better your work ethics the more experience you will gather and move up the chain faster. Back in my day the Army looked for "floaters" and phased them out of the military. It was not wise to stay at any given rank for too long, peers looked at that and made command decisions about ones future.

For me, work ethic. Experience is important in certain fields, but in my field of Logistics, it was work ethics for junior enlisted.

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Personally, I will take an E-1 with no experience but a strong work ethic over anyone with experience and no work ethic any day. That E-1 may take a little more time a patience to teach him things, however I enjoy teaching/training people who are willing to learn. That E-4 with no work ethic, no matter how much experience he has, is useless to me.

In your case, I would take the PFC for the position, though would sit the SPC down before hand and explain to him why he isn't the one getting the team leader. If you were to pick the SPC, you can almost guarantee that those he is leading will follow his lead and become as useless as he which will be detrimental to your work force.

Experience can be gained over time, but strength of character is very hard to build and therefore more valuable in my eyes. I'll always take the work ethic over experience. The experience is no good if the person has no motivation to put it to use. Now, there's some things that have to be considered, like if the person needs any specific training or qualifications to fill the role (you don't send a 3-level mechanic who doesn't have the proper certs to go spin up an aircraft), but after ensuring they have said necessary prerequisites to do the job safely/legally, they're cleared hot in my book!

Work ethic, you are still learning your job imo and possibly don't have all the experience, and you never will have all the experience anyway, you will all ways be learning no matter what rank you are. If you have a good work ethic you will always be learning, and then can teach and lead others the experience you have. You need a god work ethic and the willing to Lear to get the experience. As soon as you think you know it all you are going to fail.

You have to let the senior man lead. Give him what he needs to succeed and get the job done. If he can't handle the responsibilities, you fire him and get someone else to do the job that is more capable. Be patient, the cream eventually floats to the top.

IMO I prefer a strong work ethic, because as an NCO I can teach the soldier experience and it will be gained the more work they accomplish.

Strong workers are great...but experience is always more valuable. Within a platoon, there will always be enough Specialists to cover down on junior leadership positions, especially in most combat arms units. The issue you bring up is a problem faced mostly by support units where "leadership" is often confused with "management". If a PFC is better than a Specialist, then it is a failure on the leadership of that unit. Due to the small size of many support units when compared to comparable combat arms units I can see this as being a challenge. Still, that can be overcome with proper leadership and mentoring.