Trouble with a junior enlisted soldier. Any advice?

Written counseling, mentor ship, always be the professional. worrying about texts is a fine line when it comes to leadership, what if the Soldier doesn't own or have access to a phone with text messaging? However remind the Soldier he is a Soldier 24/7 and his conduct needs to reflect and also make sure everything you do is considered a lawful order.

Seek to understand then be understood. Ask him the five "Ws", then come up with boundaries. You could even give him a taste of his own medicine to prove your point....if he comes in to ask you for a pass or something like that, pull out your phone and start texting people. Send him a text while he's talking to you, saying "how can we connect if we don't practice effective communication", then teach your Soldiers a class on effective communication.

First notify your chain of command on what the issue is and the actions you plan to take. Then have a one on one meeting with you and junior personnel. Sit down and talk your expectations, his expectations, the consequences if expectations are not met. Then, remember you must be firm at all angles. Sometimes people have a hard time distinguishing that fine line of friendship /work.

SGT(P) (Join to see)

Your question is a bit different, considering you are in the Guard, buy what daily duties are we talking about? The time he is at drill or on AD, he needs to be focused on his military duties but I am not sure how much feedback you need to be concerned with during the rest of the month?

In your initial counseling is where you let the soldier know about your expectations. After that initial then comes the monthly performance counseling a where you tell the soldier about his/her performance. If the soldier is not meeting the standards outlined in your initial counseling counsel the soldier. What I've learned in my experience is the punishment should make the soldier not want to do it again. I read some of the suggestions and they are good but but if you take their time they will learn real quick that you're not playing. Smoking is for a moment paper work cut and paste but time they can't fake that. Extra duty is supervised every day so what ever time the soldier wastes during the day let them make it up after work. Restrictions also help when trying to contact a soldier. Restrict the soldier to the footprint that way you know there are only a handful of places the soldier can be.

Have a face to face. I know I sound like a broken record, or a mocking bird. But, these NCOs are right. I have only had to counsel one soldier in my career. I started with a face to face, in the smoke pit, over a couple Marlboros. When the conduct was repeated, I did a formal counseling statement, wrote everything out and read it line-by-line, VERBATUM, had him sign it and kept it in my file cabinet. He went a year without any repeat violations. All of my notes and statements were shredded after that year.

Sometimes, it takes more than one attempt. Good luck.

I feel your pain with this issue. Unfortunately, everywhere you go, you will come across this issue at least once or twice. You have that junior enlisted Soldier that feels it is not his/her responsibility to carry their weight or remain accountable. As a leader, it is your responsibility to find the root cause of this behavior. Don't take this the wrong way, I'm not saying to hold the Soldier's hand and baby them, but you will have to invest that extra time and effort to accurately assess if the Soldier is essentially salvageable, or if it time to show them the door. This kind of behavior can be caused by many different environmental and social factors. Was the Soldier reliable at some point and suddenly went downhill or has the Soldier always been someone that cannot be counted on? Before deciding to show the Soldier the door, find out about their past and get to truly know the Soldier as an individual. Unfortunately, that one "problem child" will take at least 60-80% of your time. A Soldier who does not trust in you as a leader or feels that you do not genuinely care will not open up to you. That may not be the issue in your case, but it is still a factor to consider. How well do you truly know the Soldier to where they feel comfortable talking to you about their issues? If you have already vested this time to get to know the Soldier and shown genuine concern, they do not open up, at least you have done your job properly. Moving on, do you hold your Soldiers accountable for their actions? You mentioned this Soldier is constantly late. To a young Soldier, all that matters is their time and money. Since you cannot tale their money without non-judicial punishment, you can easily take their time. A 2-1 ratio will get the point across. Add up the time the Soldier is late/unaccounted for and have them stay behind and work twice that time after everyone else has been released. You could do it daily or weekly. It all depends on how long the absences are. Just remember to keep a paper trail. Along with that paper trail, if the Soldier shows improvement, male sure to document it so they don't feel you are only focusing on the negative they do. If all this still fails to help steer the Soldier in the right path, then perhaps the military is not for them and you should them steer them to the door.

I am not fully aware of the Army's formal counseling program; however, I've noticed a few SNCOs and officers refer to a counseling report. Have a face to face formal counseling session, Document and hold on to the official paperwork on your level for a reasonable amount of time and see if you notice a change. If you see the problem correct itself within a month or two, drop it without sending it up the chain. However, I'd it persists, 4 sheets is enough to send it up to the top. But give the benefit of the doubt and try to lead him by a scare tactic of the commands awareness of his inadequacy. Then, like I said, if the problem corrects itself, hold off on sending it to your higher up until you see the trend start again (which hopefully it doesn't)

SGT Daffron,

This thread contains the main points for you to be successful: communicate, counsel and engage your senior NCOs for guidance (they should be able to coach you through using the reference you were provided: ATP 6-22.1).
In addition, one thing that was never addressed is that fact that you are a Guardsman. One tool that is readily available to you, but rarely used is how you code your Soldier for pay. "U" is not just for AWOL, it means Unsatisfactory performance during a drill period. If you have communicated (two way) with your subordinate, laid out your expectations and are forced to enforce those standards through discipline, try this tool. They will have spent their weekend thinking they have gotten over on you and will not receive their pay. If they perform poorly for half a day then code them a "U" for one MUTA (drill period/half day), and a "P" for the other. Sometimes Soldiers understand consequences when it affects their wallet more than just a negative counseling. I was given this little used gem from a BN S-1 1SG.
p.s. - Don't forget to edit the (P) off of your rank.

Read a lot of advice on this subject and this is what I do. With the intinal counseling statement already given.
1. Talk with the soldier and see if there is an outside source causing the problem.

2. See who the soldier is hanging out with because this is usually the case as the soldier is hanging out with soldiers getting out or prior active getting into the unit thus give crappy advice to the young solder.

3. Counseling statements with a face to face to inform soldier what is now expected of him and consequence if he does not conform to standards.

9 times out of 10 this works but you will always get that one soldier that no matter how hard you try and care for will not conform and will go AWOL very rare but it does happen.

For us as ARNG number 2 is usually the case as we receive a lot of prior active just using the guard to kill there I.R.R time and they just hate the guard initially and Are not used to how the guard functions. All the Nco's
in my platoon get in on the problem and brainstorm the course of action as each problem soldier is different and as such the causes of the problem.