New Officers, Listen Up.

As a newly Commissioned Officer, or as a Cadet aspiring to become an Officer, you may be asking yourself many questions as you get closer to leading your first Platoon. How will I rise to the challenge? How should I “come in”? The first thing you need to adjust is your mindset. Unless you have prior enlisted experience, you have to adjust to the fact that you will not be leading peer Cadets. Cadets are great and wonderful people. They are motivated to be followers because turnabout is fair play. They understand generally what you are doing during your flash in the pan, under the microscope moment in a rotating leadership position and support so you in turn offer that support when they are in charge…unless they are a complete and utter blue falcon. Those will weed themselves out by self selection and general buggery. What I am talking about is leading troops. Some battle hardened. Some greener than you. Old. Young. Country. Urban. Men. Women. Black. White. Married. Single. Religious. Atheist. Etc. They will come in all shapes, sizes, personality types, experience level, emotional baggage, and fitness on the pillars of resilience. They have operated in hierarchical roles that aren’t very fluid. They have varied exposure to life outside the squad, platoon, company, and battalion. Leading them proficiently needs to be the focus of your first two years in the Army. Learn the equipment (an unfortunate ROTC weakness). Learn your craft. Learn your unit. Learn your Soldiers.

So what do you do first? What you need to develop is your BS meter. The vast majority of NCOs will give you tremendous (more) to passable (less) counsel. A very small minority will give you bad advice and talk a great game. They will falter on the follow through. I got some suspect advice now and again, but it was formed to avoid, rather than take on a challenge from a senior officer. Believe me, you'll hear it and go....dude that is suspect. Especially if it is to avoid, stall, or otherwise frustrate an official channel.

The really great NCOs will confer with you, help you break out the issue to the critical factors, mull the course of action, then stand back and let you issue the order. Many things do not require immediate response. The things that do will immediately present themselves. In such instances, use your best judgement and be decisive. You need to cultivate an environment where you are open to communication, you can hear the tough to hear, and receive bad news well. If you don’t, they’ll hide from you. Remember Saddam Hussein getting pulled out of a hole in Tikrit? Yeah he didn’t take bad news well, so no one told him tanks were in Baghdad, that’s how you end up in a hole looking like the Unabomber. Mission first, people always. It is a delicate balance. If it were easy, everyone would be a Lieutenant and they would call it bowling and have a league with cool shirts.

Be yourself, if you try and be something you are not, it will show. You can improve your “self” but it has to be your authentic self. Be humble. You are an apprentice officer. Your Company/Troop Commander, Warrants, NCOs, and Soldiers are going to make or break you. Listen, really listen. Learn something new every day. Tell a particular NCO you want to learn a certain thing. Let them teach you. If there is "suck to embrace" be present and participate fully. Look out for your people, tough love as well as praise. This presence is how your NCOs and Soldiers will get to know you and trust you.

Don't try and make up for every terrible officer they ever had. Also don't try and be super Platoon Leader either. Do YOUR best. Don't compare yourself to the ghosts of lieutenants past. Their memory is almost always better than the actual. Lead selflessly. If you do something to accomplish the mission, take care of soldiers, truly help a soldier, help your unit, fix a problem, make your people look good (higher or lower); then do it. If it purposely makes you look good at the direct expense of another, if you are hiding something, cooking the books, throwing staff or subordinates under the bus, or anything similar, you should not do it. Think in terms of coop-eting. How much can you cooperate to help those in your command and on your left and right. If you did something that worked, share it with your peers. Don't get into the trap of screwing your competition to look good. Senior Raters see right through it and don't appreciate it. There is not a yellow or green card at the end of 12-24hrs. This is for keeps. People’s lives are in your hands and it is your career to ruin (but don’t think about everything in terms of your career).

So how do you know when you have been accepted and integrated? My first sergeant yelled at me as a Company Commander in Iraq. We were establishing a CP in Iraq. I was helping setup to ensure we had a place to live. Our mission area was in a hardstand...waiting on signalers to establish comms. He grabbed me and said *knife hand* “Sir! Go do officer shit. I got this.” Which was code for go figure out what's going around us so that we can function. 1. He yelled at me because he cared about me. We had a developed relationship so I could tell it was not disrespect. 2. He knew I cared about him and the troops and knew that I wanted them taken care of. 3. He trusted me to figure out the bigger picture so we could succeed and stay safe.

Success with your NCOs isn't going to be these seminal "Remember the Titans" like moments. It will be little nuggets over time. It is how they will gauge you on your ability to operate on your own. They will start letting go of some things and invite you into other things as confidence builds. The problems they bring you will start to get harder with less clear cuts answers. They will eventually lean on your judgement.

Jason Mackay is a retired Lieutenant Colonel with 22 years on active duty as an Ordnance and Logistics Corps Officer. He has served at a wide variety of levels of command and staff. LTC Mackay’s career includes the command of a Headquarters and Headquarters Company in Korea, 95th Maintenance Company (TMDE), and the US Army Garrison at Picatinny Arsenal. His deployments include Iraq in 2003 and Afghanistan in 2008-9 and 2011. A special acknowledgement goes to 2LT (Join to see) for spurring the conversation that generated some of LTC Mackay’s observations.