To senior leadership, what kind of impact has the expansion of the internet had on your junior leadership's ability to mentor?

2018-04-30T21:50:02-04:00

With more and more military training going onto the internet, I suspect that rising leaders actually remember less and less due to the mentality that anything can be "googled" when it becomes important enough to know. From experience, more than one leader would answer my questions with, "I don't know. You can google it." My opinion is that leaders cheat themselves and their subordinates when they pass the buck to the world wide web. The result is leaders who have less patience with direct mentoring, and they pick their favorites who are easy to groom. As well, subordinates develop shorter attention spans with F2F instruction when they know that they can dump the information and look it up later.

Please, share your thoughts on how to counter this trend. One of my commands had a regularly scheduled NCO development program that spelled out the mysteries of common procedures, like how to break down an ERB and write up a Bar to Reenlistment. The SFCs were the primary instructors, and we were assigned homework. Non-attendance was punishable.

Response by CPT Griff Tatum made Apr 30 at 2018 9:59 PM

2018-04-30T21:59:20-04:00

I wouldn’t consider myself senior leadership, or definitely knowing a ton of information. But coming up through enlisted ranks, having been mentored by some fantastic NCOs “before” google was the answer, I can say that you just have to separate the good from the bad. Meaning, if you’re just a NCO or an officer that uses google as a tool, well you’re only half right. The good NCOs I had were definitely knowledgeable to me at the time and I would take their advice any day. The ones who didn’t know answers or didn’t have a good knowledge base simply utilized their time messing around with things that will go unsaid. You just have to crest good intuition about who you seek advice from and I will always stand by the saying “you become your friends.” I think that especially rings true in the Military. As far as being an officer and the short two years I’ve had the honor of being a PL, there’s one thing I don’t do: spread bad information or tell my guys I know something that I don’t. Google wasn’t and isn’t a tool at JRTC and I fear the man or woman who thinks they can internet thier way out of knowledge. “Compass and protractor” will never fail. I don’t know if this helped out the question, but bottom line up front is I sure wouldn’t support someone who relies on a computer over someone who has either put hands on the subject or knows exactly what they are talking about. That being said, I think the internet is an outstanding tool both a blessing and a curse, but if I’m telling my soldiers, members of my team, to google an answer instead of walking them through it myself or pointing them in the direction of someone who knows or can show, then I’m doing them and the Military a disservice.

Response by MAJ Ken Landgren made Apr 30 at 2018 11:05 PM

2018-04-30T23:05:19-04:00

I think this ties in to the fact that teens and young adults often spend 9 hours a day on social media. They experience and learn from the social media and limit what they learn in the real world.

Response by Kenneth Tran made May 1 at 2018 9:02 PM

2018-05-01T21:02:30-04:00

Not everything can be Googled! ;)