Posted on Dec 24, 2013
MSG Martinis Butler
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The NCOER is the NCO's report card, that could make you or break you. Do you think it's fair for you to do your best and recieve anything other than a 1/1from your rater while other subpar NCO's consistently write their own 1/1 NCOER's? Does this frustrate you?
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CSM Infantry Senior Sergeant
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Respectfully it's not my place to worry about what my peers reports cards are saying and although it can be frustrating to see someone whose a sub-par performer still get a 1/1 in time it will catch up to them. This year alone I have seen over 200 NCOERs, many of which I kicked back for not meeting quantifiable standards in the block they're marking excellence in. It's the reviewer and 1SG/CSM's responsibility to ensure integrity remains paramount! 
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LTC David Haines
LTC David Haines
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I have to agree with the 1SG, SFC Martinis.  The supervisors of the NCO's writing their own 1/1 NCOERS are failing in their duties.  It is wrong, but there is nothing you can do about it but ensure you are doing your best and you are ensuring the integrity of the system for your Soldiers.  Inflating ratings as an answer will only make matters worse across the NCO Corps.  While not always, these NCO's are found out over time
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CW2 Humint Technician
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I agree with 1SG. Too many NCOs are concerned about what other NCOs get. The report cards are subjective. Meaning your opinion on someone's performance is not relevant to the rater's opinion. And the rater, even if the NCO wrote the report, still has to sign the report and by signing agrees with what the NCO wrote. 

Usually people say "I don't see how this person was promoted or not promoted" but you don't know their entire career or what was on their reports. 

If they have sub par performance but still get a 1/1, chances are they will not have legit bullets to support the 1/1. 

I have never sat on a board, but I know from past board AARs that they focus more on the bullets than the rating itself.
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CPT Aaron Kletzing
CPT Aaron Kletzing
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I really liked 1SG Rink's response.  That's exactly what I would hope.  Thank you for being the type of leader you are, 1SG.
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SSG General Services Technician And State Vehicle Inspector
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I have to agree with SFC Butler's comment. There are too many NCOs getting promoted who have written their own NCOERs and heavily fluffed them up while others who DO their job don't get selected. The toxic leadership is going up while the great or good leaders are being pushed out. I've seen personnel get relieved and STILL make the list. Unfortunately, there are many decent ones who don't care about that and are more concerned about themselves, which results in more toxic leadership. To rephrase what SFC Gates stated above, does the NCO truly care about the unit and the Soldiers, whether subordinate to them or not?
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CSM Colin Patterson
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Edited >1 y ago
NCOER's should not be written by the NCO. However at times NCO's have to take their careers in their own hands and write their NCOER"s because either their leaders are lazy or do not know how to write an NCOER. The NCOER is an integral component of the promotion process. Which is the reason NCO's do everything within their power to ensure they get a great NCOER. The NCOER will remain a controversial topic because it is the clearest snapshot of a soldier's performance to members of a promotion board and soldiers who want to get promoted will do whatever they have to do to level the playing field of inflated NCOER's. Because some soldiers do receive inflated evaluations because of cronyism.
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CSM Colin Patterson
CSM Colin Patterson
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I see we have officers chiming in on this conversation on NCOER's which is very good because officers are the biggest offenders when it comes to late NCOER's or poorly written NCOER's. So I appreciate the input the officers are giving. However, until the Army Incorporate NCOER writing into Junior Officer training there will always be issues with NCOER's written by junior officer's. As a 1SG I always had to battle with my Platoon leaders and Company Cdr's over poorly written NCOER's and at time wished the ARMY would let the 1SG write the evaluations for his platoon sergeants. Because in reality I was doing those evaluations based on the number of corrections I had to make. I always believe an NCO should document everything they do during a rating period. Because we all know that the initial counseling and quarterly counseling are not being done like they are supposed to be done. I believe if you document everything you did there should be no controversy when it is time for your NCOER to be written and no one can accuse you of receiving an inflated NCOER.
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SSG General Services Technician And State Vehicle Inspector
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CSM, my question is what do we do about the inflated NCOERs? The inflated NCOERs are creating toxic leaders while preventing the truly deserving from promotion.
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MAJ Senior Signal Oc
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CSM,

Fully agree. When I was a new LT and younger CPT I would work with the NCO on their NCOER being I didn't have too much experience at that time with writing them. I figured that a NCO with 15 years in would know the process and what needed to be written better than a young CPT with four.

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CSM Colin Patterson
CSM Colin Patterson
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Toxic leaders are writing inflated NCOER's that create more Toxic Leaders. Until we get rid of nepotism, cronyism and the good old boy system. We will always have Toxic Leaders. As a leader you must ensure you do what is in your scope to ensure that people that you have influence over do not write inflated NCOER's. These changes come about in incremental steps there are no wholesale changes. Therefore if we as leaders do it in within our circle and we can get everyone within our circle to buy in, we will be able to bring about change. However, we live in a smoke and mirrors environment where people think leadership is about badges and tabs. A few current and former Service Members disparaged my comments a few days ago when I said that having a Beret or Bunch of tabs do not make you a leader. Some of them displayed their juvenile behavior by calling me Leg and PX Soldier. Because I stated that a successful career is judged by the rank you attained and the positive contributions that you have made to the entire force not based on whether you earned a Ranger Tab or Airborne wings. The majority of people on the thread disagreed they stated that Soldiers with Berets and Tabs are the best leaders regardless of what rank they attain. With this kind of thinking very prevalent in Army the good old boy system will continue to flourish and we will continue to produce a myriad of Toxic leaders. In the end my retort was I don't have any tabs or badges but I have plenty of soldiers with badges and tabs who do work for me so tell me who is the better leader now. When we have leaders who are making biased statements saying Badges and Tabs are what makes you a leader, don't you think we will continue to have inflated NCOER's.

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CSM Mike Maynard
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The Senior NCO of the organization is responsible for ensuring fairness across the board. Now, I know that it's hard to ensure that there is equality across the force, but it is the Senior NCOs in the branch that should be mentoring the Bde/Bn CSMs to ensure we are all applying the same standards so that NCOERs can be objectively compared against each other.

Now, I do see a lot of NCOERs that the "ratings" are inflated, but when you read the bullets, the bullets aren't inflated. So, my job is to ensure that those two things match.

Now, as far as the board panel, it is very easy to tell who the 1/1s really are. Lot's of folks may be "rated" as a 1/1, but there bullets are far from it and it is very easy to tell who the true top performers are, regardless of the actual rating - it's all about the bullets.

And, it's not about the wordy, fluffy, long-word bullets - it is about communicating the impact in an efficient manner. Folks should spend more time learning how to write effectively.
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SSG Retired
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CSM I am having some serious difficulty finding out some information on NCOERs. I have been reading AR 623-3 and I also saw USAREC Pam 623-2. In the PAM 623-2 it give a break down for the senior rater blocks. If Among the best block it is either a 1 or 2 and what separates that is the first bullet a 1 gets promote now and a 2 get promote ahead of peers and a 3 gets promote with peer. But in the AR 623-3 I can not find anything that speaks about senior rater comment. My reason for asking last year I got a 2 1 fully capable and promote ahead of peers. This year I also got a 2 1 promote with peers. My question to you or any one else that can help is this. Where can I find what bullet should be placed with numerical value.
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CSM Mike Maynard
CSM Mike Maynard
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SSG (Join to see) - there is no "requirement" for a specific bullet to match a particular rating.

The bullets rather provide the nuances/gradiations of the numerical ratings. There are many folks who are 2/1s, and in order to differentiate/rank them, we read the bullets to determine who would be in the top 5th to bottom 5th of each rating.
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SSG Retired
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CSM so a 2 1 can be among the best promote ahead of peer cause that would separate me form other 2 1 correct
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CSM Mike Maynard
CSM Mike Maynard
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SSG (Join to see) - absolutely. mostly depends upon the "skill" of the senior rater in conveying where in the myriad of 2/1s you belong - very important distinction, as that crowd is very large and mostly indistinguishable except for the quality of the sr rater comments.
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