Army Takes On Its Own Toxic Leaders

The bigger an organization gets the less it becomes about the People and the more it becomes about the "Machine" the system, the Bureaucracy. The more institutional pushback that occurs and the more people within supervisorial roles become managers and the less they become leaders (as we define it).

The military is a hugely regimented machine. Individually we care about each other. Organizationally we will abuse the hell out of ourselves. The farther down the echelons we get the harder it is to remember that we are actually People, not numbers. It creates systemic pressures.

The political leadership of this country is becoming more and more separated from real values. A zero defects culture of avoiding speaking truth to power has emerged. Competition for promotions leads to weaker individuals selling out and not protecting/defending their troops as resources become more constrained and mission requirements expand. Am I wrong?

Great read, but it doesn't address the stress that sequestration has on everyone. It shouldn't be a factor, but when your tasked with chopping out 40k Soldiers in one year, it leads to stress in the command team and it just trickles down to the lowest level. Now you'll have those arrogant "look at me" types in any MOS and they need to be reigned in before they get to award and tab happy. In having a toxic leader, do these Soldiers see if their leaders are also ridden? Some company commanders have awesome poker faces. You'd never know there is a problem and 1SG is just as smooth. Other times, you see the twist in the face, the snarls, or hear the language, and you know something is wrong, but cannot do anything about it. I've seen 1SG's that were freakin AWESOME loose diamonds while in the Stan because they would stand up for their joes, and risk it all. No one is perfect 100% of the time, but the Army needs to be able to flex enough to give leaders a berth to vent, and not be taken to task and relieved, and give Soldiers more than the BS sensing sessions that really lead to nothing happening. You know it's bad when a retired MSG is leading the sensing session and no one but him is talking for the first 30 minutes and the session is only 45 minutes long.

It would really be nice if there was a way for Soldiers of any rank to vent frustrations constructively and believe that their concerns would be acted on in an objective manner. Yes I know about the "open door" policy, and no it is NOT foolproof. Go in there and someone thinks you're whining? Guess who wasn't heard? Are you known as a whiner? Well guess who wasn't heard even though they might have a solid point that needs action. Toxic is a slippery slope, and what I might think it is, to another is effective leadership, or "old Army" vs. "New Army". Problem is almost all of the "old Army" SM's are gone, and all that is left is "New Army".