Posted on Nov 12, 2013
West Point graduates and Senior NCOs - where is the balance of respect?
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NCOs
Advice
Officers
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Responses: 25
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Ridiculous question. There's no such thing as a moment when you don't listen to your senior NCOs. Not only that, but it is VERY few and far between, the moments when you don't take their recommendation verbatim and put that out as the official plan.
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SGT Ben Keen
Well said sir. I think we can all agree that the difference between a great officer and a really bad officer is the time the great ones take to learn from the NCOs within their units. And I've never seen a great officer throw his/her degree around. Regardless if they are part of the Grey Line, from the SMA or a college, great officers come in willing and ready to learn from the NCOs and it those Officers you see climb the ranks and earn the Soldiers' respect the fastest.
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This isn't a loaded question at all... The NCO's job is to advise but the responsibility for the decision ultimately rests on that LT's shoulders. When I was an NCO, I was told my job is to make my LT look good, no matter how hard that is. Now as a LT, one of my jobs is to not make my NCO fail at making me look good.
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CPT (Join to see)
He told me a few days ago, "Sir, I thought you being a prior enlisted NCO type of LT, it was going to make my job easier. I was wrong." The butter bar does something to you. Or maybe it was singing the OCS Alma Mater so many times...
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SGT (Join to see)
As an NCO your job is to train and lead not to make the LT look good because some time we have to train the LTs too and I know from experience cause I was train LTs even when I was an SPC cause school can't teach you combat only experience can cause on my second deployment we had to teach a few LTs what to do...
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CMC Robert Young
A newly minted Ensign (O1) with five years enlisted experience told me that his capacity to make common sense decisions had been surgically removed while attending OCS. I appreciated the heads up. It made my job easier!
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SPC Elijah J. Henry, MBA
CMC Robert Young - it happens to Enlisted in Basic, too. By the time you graduate your IQ has been reduced to the capacity to say, "Roger, Sergeant!" and "Negative, Sergeant!" It takes a while to grow back.
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A good leader should always consider the advice of trusted NCOs. I'm not sure where the specific "West Point" reference is coming from, though I'm guessing it's from some negative personal experience you had with an officer who commissioned from there. Not all officers are good, regardless of their commissioning source. Not every officer who was prior-enlisted is good. Not all NCOs are good. Not all junior enlisted are good. It's up to you to determine as a leader who is reliable and deserving of your respect, faith, and confidence. And that's best done through experiences alongside them in training and down range.
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