Army Leader Development - 1 “What is War: An Exploration Of Art And Science”

all right okay so the topic of this OPD and before we kind of really jump into it I'll give you some context so I think the Army does a pretty poor job of educating its leaders in actual leadership okay and I've done this experiment with you guys before which is you still do the principal's war ya know right tuned for the loop right so the army doesn't teach us the principles of war very very well right at all and so what I want to do is we're leaders in the military the military fights Wars we should probably know the principles that govern warfare right so what we're gonna start with is we start with this principle so let me talk about offense and defense and we talk about mission command and we talked about how that plays in natural leadership and then we go into what is the Army's leadership doctrine right and how do we develop other leaders so that's kind of the the big campaign plan but today we're I want you to think think big okay think conceptually think philosophically that's kind of the some of the things that we're going to be discussing so put combined arms breech and link ups and how to plan for fires and all these technical things put those out of your mind and just I want you to think philosophically and generally about work okay so that's why I've titled this this class what is war right all right so when I say the word war like what comes to y'all's heads like what are some words when you think war like what is war what causes war what comes to your head when you think that word War battles history what else fighting weaponry a weapons uh what else so expand on these like what are you doing more kill that's right right it's it's you it's lethal I mean it's it's it's dangerous right you kill people all right what else Oh what causes war where some reasons we fight war religion a religion okay definitely any time in the history of war religion is definitely a reason what else government all right okay Society so like culture culture by cultures maybe economics right different economic systems economics your or you know if you're Frederick the Great you invade sigh Lygia to get iron ore right cuz you're trying to industrialize resources yeah that's another good one all right so if you look at ADP three - Oh paragraph eight there's a great definition of war right it says that war is chaotic right it's chaos it's lethal and it says that it is a fundamentally human endeavor right and it talks about how the whole purpose of war is to change behavior right you want one one group of people is trying to force another group of people to do something don't force their behavior to do it right in order to do that you have to have conflict you've armed conflict and because people live on the land live on land warfare especially with the with the military is primarily a delay domaine all right so when we actually look at doctrine what you guys came up with in that dot the other paragraphs it talks about culture and how you need to understand it and talks about economics and talks about government in the end the end the other paragraphs so believe it or not look what you guys just came up with is the army captures this immense doctrine about warfare about how it defines what warfare actually is did you guys ever seen that before no right okay so um we're gonna talk about okay so the other thing that talks about in a DP 3x show is you have to be able to outsmart your enemy you have to be able to ruthlessly take advantage of positions of relative advantage or ruthlessly exploitive advantage so once you get a relative advantage over your enemy you have to ruthlessly exploited right so if we just had leaderless armies where everyone was the same rank and was just sort of all go doing whatever they wanted to fight would that be an efficient way to fight no no right so we need to organize into groups to fight all right do you think that trying to think about how to to put this basically there are principles what are getting at is there are principles that govern warfare right and those are the ones that I've talked about before so we're going to talk about the principles of war and why they're important so the acronym that we use to remember this I'll write it this way I always I learned moss mouse okay that's how I was taught it and that's probably the easiest way to remember it there's like a Moses moose something like that there's there's like a couple different ways to remember it but we're gonna go over these and these are the principles that have governed warfare for ever right and successful militaries whether purposely or by accident capture these principles of war in their strategic and operational thinking okay all right so the first one that we're gonna talk about is maneuver loss cone right well we're going on - oeuvre so what do you think maneuver means just in general does it principle you gotta be able to move around on the battlefield right you got to be able to get from point A to point B and that's and that's pretty simple all right I mean you it's not if these aren't complicated concepts I promise these are all very very simple yes you have to be able to maneuver you if they able to get forces from one place to another and you need to efficiently which we'll talk about a little bit I guess is objective what do you think objective means like having a mission okay having a mission perfect a set goal you want to be very clear about what what are we trying to do what are we trying to accomplish you want to orient everybody in the same direction everyone needs to understand what are we trying to achieve what's the objective we're trying to achieve alright what what do you think one of these s is there's a there's 3 s's in there no but we're kind of get there one of them's the characteristics of the other is one of the characteristics of the audience okay surprise I'll go a surprise all right you're super predictable you think you're gonna be successful know when when give me an example of in luck history where you think that a general was able to surprise his enemy okay yeah George Washington Crossing the Delaware definitely surprise the enemy come on you got some kinda don't know my military history I think the last time I taught this class we talked about Stonewall Jackson Chancellorsville right so he moved his core division whatever he was in charge of and then just completely surprised the Union Army ended up in a place it was not expected so you can achieve surprise all right the next one is simplicity there's just saying that Patton had about a plan you guys remember what it was something about like understand or can't breathe him back he may have said something like that so basically he says I actually don't know if this code applies now that I think about it but a good plan now it's better than a perfect plan later right and so if you play when you're when you put yourself at a time constraint you have to come up with a simple plan an overly complex plan is just not going to work because it's hard to it's hard to coordinate it's hard to communicate it right you need a simple plan nothing nothing crazy nothing complicated just keep it simple all right the next one what do you think it is yeah I said that's exactly what it is yeah max what do you think when we talk about mass what do you think we're talking about whether it be the soldiers it's okay so you wanna you want a mass and these kind of will run together you want to mass on the objective you want to mass at the decisive point okay you want to find the enemy's weakest point you want to mass all your combat power right there right all right what's next pensive all right can we win wars being on the defense I mean maybe you can find some obscure time at some point in history where an enemy are you know I are the only one by being on the defense maybe it's happened okay and like I said these principles are not you don't have to have every single one of these to win if you have every single one of these you're much more likely to win right but you have to go on the offensive everything that you have to do has to be offensively minded you're moving towards that objective you're massing your troops at the decisive point at the umbilicus point to achieve that objective you're getting after the enemy by offensive all right this next one unity of command okay so this is some of this is going to be my opinion and not necessarily doctrine okay there is this idea going around in the army that I've heard floated that unity of effort is a substitute for unity of command and I think that that isn't correct I think that that is a vital flaw okay trying to when you don't have a unified command structure trying to get everyone unified in the same direction for the same effort without a actual command structure that supports that is very difficult if not impossible okay especially when you're dealing with we talked about war is a human endeavor right there are humans people have different personalities people have different incentives that people act in accordance with it's very hard to get people oriented oriented on the same objective that's why you have to organ you're structure in such a way that you can orient people in the right direction so you want to unify your command structure one of the things that I've heard recently and I like to say is you have to design structurally what you want to produce conceptually right so if you're if you want unity of effort you have to have a structure that supports that you have to have unity of command all right so so far we've got maneuver objective surprise simplicity mass offensive and unity of command what do we think is next suite all right what's next okay security you always have to secure your forces right supply lines for example if you don't secure your supply lines it's very hard to stay on the offensive right it's very hard to achieve that surprise so you got to secure yourself wherever you are you can always think security when the enemy attacks me am I ready to receive it all right you guys stay yeah you have to keep your forces secure all right what's the last one economy of force all right so cognitive force you can also say efficiency economy of forces you want to achieve your objectives with the minimum force necessary right so I was reading a great book called the psychology of military incompetence recently by a British psychologist that talked about how the history of the British Army was rife with officers who were afraid to use too much force they showed enormous restraint on the battlefield to their detriment right they didn't use enough force to complete their objective economy of force does not mean not overwhelming the enemy right I mean we we say on the offensive we want three two one we want to assure ourselves a victory do we need 12 to 1 probably don't need 12 the one that's probably too much right we're not leaving anything in reserve but we want that 3 to 1 but you still want to use the minimum force attacks necessary to accomplish your objective then then maybe plus 10% or something like that right so like this is again these aren't hard and fast this is a science right this is this is sort of art its art to this we're gonna talk about a little bit about the art and the science of warfare ok so a little cheat sheet here so these are the principles of war right here that we've laid it out and in a war you're usually attacking or you're defending right now we talk about this new generation of warfare and how its characterized by complexity I have some issues with personally because I think no matter where you look in history they thought they were living at the most complex time so at any point in history you could be like yes complexity characterizes what we do right especially if you look at like how the printing press changed the world like that made things enormous ly complex and it was the most complex that anyone had ever seen well we don't know what the world looks like in a hundred years but I'm gonna go ahead and go out on a limb and say it's probably more complex than what we're living in right now so I think talking about how the world is complex and complaining about that and trying to organize structures to the capture all this complexity is kind of a fool's errand right go with what you know stick to principles stick to fundamentals all right so we've talked about carries we talked about characteristics of ovens and events what are we talking about these are sort of like principles but they're not quite all right so uh offense to create acronyms remember is but yeah ah come on help me out here No okay scat that's how you remember that's how you remember the characteristics of the offense all right like I said this we talked about this before surprise yeah concentration it's kind of like mass concentrate your forces audacity and tempo all right well this is a whole other class so we won't really dig into each one of these but when you're on the offense its characterized by these things so if you think that you're on the offense and you're not surprising your enemy you're not concentrating your forces your plan is weak sauce and you have no tempo guess what you're not on the offense you're something else right don't call what you're doing offense so if you want to be on the offense you have to have these things is what characterizes the offense all right if you didn't know what these were and you were an aggressive leader who was pretty intelligent pretty smart you would just naturally have these things this is what characterizes the offense all right now we talk about defense the best way to remember defense is PS DMF what do you think PSD personal security detail you're defending the VIP PS DMF and then you can come up with your own MF so PS DMF is we went over this you're in this class preparation preparation there we go preparation security security disruption yep disruption Massif a gas affects flexibility and flexibility all right remembering that defense class when we talk about likes to build flexibility remember how we remember this demonstration that we did yes these directly counteract these right so if you're on the defense and you're not prepared and you don't have good security you're not gonna disrupt the enemy when he comes there you're not masking your effects at the point that you want to destroy him and your plan is inflexible guess what you're not on the defense you're on something else you're maybe you're just sitting there doing nothing but you're not on defense this is what characterizes defense all right so when we're talking about how did the characteristics of defense counteract the characteristics of offense what are the relationships that you see here so I feel like the matching effects and flexibility with probably encounter act surprised okay yeah absolutely so yeah sure why not once you say security and surprise flexibility flexibility okay flexibility yeah is if you're flexible you won't be surprised you've looked at all the options I would say if you're prepared you're probably not going to be surprised right if you have good security you're probably not gonna be surprised okay what else disruption could definitely just disrupt like their tempo absolutely you want to disrupt his tempo okay but that's disrupt disrupt she goes against audacity and I would say if you can disrupt his forces and break up his formation for some to change his formation then you can also disrupt this concentration right you can't concentrate all right what else we got those are pretty good yeah right but you see how these the characteristics of the defense directly counteract the characteristics of the offense right there they're diametrically opposed okay if you want a good defense you have to have these do you want a good offense you have to have these and that's why I said it's important to understand this is the art of warfare the science of warfare for defense would be what what doctrine would cover how to do a defense engagement area development probably right that would be like a science it's like do these steps right preparation doesn't say hey do these steps it just says look preparation is what characterizes defense it's a concept right so before you start under trying to get into the science of war you need to understand what are the principles and one of the characteristics behind what I'm doing you can write a perfectly good doctrinal border you can do great tlps but guess what if you're not achieving surprised you're not concentrating you don't have on you're not you don't have an audacious plan and you're not able to maintain tempo during execution I don't care how good you are at the science your plans gonna suck okay and good leaders come up with this naturally right these just these are rise out of what we when we look at successful warfare this is what comes out of that when we study it right okay so like I said let's let's get into that let's get into that art versus science debate a little bit not to be all right when we talk about art this is what we're really talking about is these types of things here all right when you think science what do you think of like what do you see art and science just not even in the context of warfare just in the context of whatever like what do you think of when you think art more creative okay creature yeah that's great creativity creativity it's unique yeah that's a great word you unique I can't spell i we think science is a more structured structure rethinking he said structure what else back driven back to driven I got facts well prude okay truancy proven and tested all right you don't want hard science what we got more for our creativity unique maybe like lack of boundaries okay that's not bad for now um and when you talk about war we tend to focus on the science right when you're talking about how to do a leader development program or if you'll want to talk about doing leader development er they're really talking about the design let's talk about how do we do a combined-arms breach right how do we do a passage of lines or a link-up how do we fill out a counseling statement right stuff like that we're very focused on the science of warfare all right what what too often gets lost is the arts because we don't write a lot of doctrine about it but the doctrine that we read is actually pretty dang good and you get this from studying like the trends of history right you may not get hard science out of it like look Napoleon did these things with his core like maybe we don't need to design in our course exactly the way that he did but what are the lessons that we can pull out of that what are the principles we can pull out of that and I would make an arm and said that's more art than his science okay and that's why it's important to I think start with the art and then move into science you start with the conceptual and you move detail and when you talk about operational design that's exactly what they're talking about right is move from the conceptual to the detail and that's what I would kind of say here actually we can talk about that too conceptual to detail ah and again this is this this art this is doctrine right this is some of this is my opinion okay so let's go back to kind of what I was talking a little bit about earlier if every single soldier understood this all of this stuff right could we just send all the soldiers out to like fight a war in Afghanistan leaderless Lee know why it would be it would be really chaotic right well you can't get away from the chaos where's always gonna be chaos but yes we wouldn't be able to concentrate do you think that we would even if everyone understood these principles in these characteristics do you think we'd be able to achieve them if everybody just did whatever they wanted no absolutely everyone would have to same concept but the details would be lost right so what do what do we put in place to implement these to make sure that we as a nation when we go to fight a war that we adhere to these principles and that when we go on offense or on defense that we're focused on these characteristic to make sure that we are doing the right thing doctrine regulations okay what else we design our that's why we have a hierarchical command structure hey this guy is in charge right we have different different levels of command to make sure that we're implementing these to put everyone in the right direction you can't achieve an objective unless everyone's oriented in the same way to have one guy that says this is the way that we're going right you can't mass at the decisive point at the enemy's weakest point without one guy identifying where that isn't saying we're all moving there okay so the little diagram that I'd come up with to help help visualize this is I think I talked to you a little bit about this yesterday but if we just put like a whole bunch of little dots down here these are all little jimmies all right humble soldiers okay so this is like the lowest level these are privates specialist probably talking about the squad squad level squad squad level leaders are all down here right these are the people who fight right there aren't those who fight these are the guys that are actually gonna be doing the fighting actually pulling the triggers actually putting bayonets and stomachs right or as sir major Troxel said actually hitting Isis in the face with their eTools right that's these guys all right all right then we have the next level right and we'll just put sort of some more dots in there these are the those who lead those who fight what do you think that is raise your hand yeah that Mensa platoon leaders probably come any company commanders as well alright so we'll just kind of divide these guys up and the platoons or into whatever structure you want to call it okay so we have those who lead those who fight and then we have those who lose but like maybe four dogs up here alright these guys these are this is the guys who plan in the resource okay so I would say that down here this is very science right let's arrange my weapon system right what's the Rick what's the rate of fire how often do I need to change the barrel how much suppression can I achieve in a certain amount of time this is very sciency right this is how do we actually physically win very science okay leave now we're starting to talk a little bit of art right because we have to plan in detail at our level so now we're looking a little bit of the art at the art of war alright I have to I'm tasked with doing a platoon attack okay I need to achieve surprise concentration audacity in tempo right our platoon defense I prepare secured disruption mass affects flexibility and I know the science behind this - I know I know how to do a doctrinal op order right and how to move guys from one place to another I know how to do he ain't dead right we do a pretty good job with that I was teaching the science of warfare to but you also need to keep these in mind ah so these are the guys who play the resource this is your battalion staff more or less or whatever staff whatever level of analysis you want to look at this is the staff okay and then you have the commander the commander is one guy all right conceptual bridge the gap between conceptual and detail they take his his concept of operation what they want what he wants to happen his intent right and he gives it to them and they understand his intent and they take that intent which is driven by this and they put out a detailed plan this is how we're gonna achieve it they give it to those who lead who then provide bottom-up feedback right bottom-up or top-down guidance bottom-up refinement right it's the top top-down guidance and the staff can sometimes tell the commander look sir what you're what you want to do is not gonna work we have to change it in this way there's constant feedback here alright between between these different levels of command alright and we're building to something here but you're gonna be like as soon as I show you right we've kind of talked about this a little so maybe that lightbulbs already gone off and then here as well okay there's this there's this I would say it's probably a little bit more top-down you don't get a lot of bottom up bottom of refinement here because it's kind of part of the bigger plan but there still needs to be bottom-up refinement because these guys go out to do reconnaissance based on that place that you wanted to defend from it sucks you can't see anything there's no fields of fire all right we need to change so this feedback process is extremely important and we're gonna talk about that another OPDs when we talk about actual leadership how to achieve this alright because I will tell you right now if all these arrows are pointing down you're gonna have a commander that that is not informed to make the right decisions because he's not getting any bottom-up refinement all right maybe he's just a genius and doesn't need to talk to anybody that's unlikely okay so you have to have that that feedback if you have an organization that's just constant the arrows are pointing up that commanders overwhelmed with information no one's filtering anything the staff is afraid to push back and provide guidance right and and the commander has too much information to make a decision so this needs to be delicately balanced okay top-down guidance bottom-up refinement what's important okay all right so the question is what are we really trying to do we talked about a commander who is thinking conceptually about what needs to happen and he can think in detail - I mean sub commanders a very detail-oriented it's not that he can't be detailed sometimes he sees the battlefield very extremely extremely well and can give a lot of detailed guidance to his stack it just depends this is just a framework that and this is someone in my opinion that I'm gonna bridge a gap here in a minute all right so the question is how does this guy this one guy right make all of these thousands of people down here all end up at the right place at the right time to surprise the enemy with a simple plan mass all at the same area with the minimum force required how does he how can you possibly do all of that how can this guy make these thousands of people all do that so maybe these thousands and people are going to this one objective another thousand people are going to another objective how does he how does he do that what's the tool that he can use by doctrine bingo mission command right mission come in all right that is how commanders get things done right now what is mission command you knew the answer but you can explain it think about it what's mission command just conceptually it's being able to try to think of how you said it's being able to delegate authority that achieve an objective within the commander's intent that's that's pretty good that's actually pretty close so I would say I think Army's definition is something close to the exercise of disciplined initiative within the commander's intent okay that is mission command mission command in the way they teach to the career course is mission command is the balance between the art of command and the science of control right is the balance between the art of command and the science of control it blends these two things together remember I said you have to bridge that gap to be as successful to be a successful organization to bridge that gap between art and science you have to move from the conceptual to the detail that is why we have mission command I will move into my opinion again I think the Army is maybe a little bit lost its lair has an explained mission command well mission command is not just the fifth paragraph of the operations order right like we think mission command we think mission command systems like alright mission command s six go read the mission command paragraph for the battalion order okay what radio systems are we using to talk right that's not mission command those are simply tools that enable mission command mission command is a philosophy ok mission command is not even I wouldn't even say that we should use mission commands to burp a you have mission command of this operation it's like well no you're just in charge of the operation mission command is a philosophy of how you blend the art of command with the science of control ah so there's six principles to mention command you know they are one is used mission orders okay yeah use mission orders so is this art or science these mission orders yeah okay to build cohesive teams through mutual trust alright let's just go through all build cohesive teams through mutual trust trust alright three separate risk except for risk or exercise discipline initiative never spells forever and this she had Tim all right five clear intent forgot provide clear they're done they say provide clear commander's intent I'm just gonna say provide clear intent I'll explain why in a minute providing clear incense all right now just do ten and six create shared understand forty-eight shared understanding all right so like I said this may be some understanding okay some some doctrine some captain Crowes opinion they say create shared understanding I don't think that you can do is without visualization period I think you have to have a visualization so I would say create shared understanding / visualization it's very hard something you can't do it in 10 it's really hard without a shared visualization everyone physically looking at the same thing and understanding and be able to explain it without that it's very hard to know that everyone has shared understanding you can create shared understanding without actual visualization but I like to put visualization on there alright so use monsieurs we've talked about that's the science of control right that's everyone when you talk about shared understanding use mission orders is actually a good a good example of that without actual visualization although everyone is physically looking at the same document right even though it's maybe distributed over BFT all right build cohesive teams through mutual trust that's super Sayan see it's our science to building a team no right there's no stairs that's art of command all the way right how do we build a cohesive team through mutual trust there's lots of different ways I know the army likes to use PT as a good as a big example Jax or going through some type of crucible in a sense - I know the cash Scouts they have their steroids you have to use that as like a team building it okay team building stuff like that we're gonna go a little bit more into that when we talk about leadership how to build a cohesive team like we just throw it up there as a principal and I don't think we do a good job of educating our young leaders into actually how to build a cohesive team and how to build mutual trust all right except fruit and risk so just accept is that there's a reason that the word prudent is there right when we're not just saying be reckless hey don't be afraid to accept risk okay accept prudent risk what does that mean you have some kind of understanding or reasons behind the risk that you're taking you're not taking it just to take risk like you there's a okay so I would say when you're talking about prudent risk is that the risk that you're taking is balanced with the expected benefit that's what I would define as prudent okay if you probably look at a dictionary definition and I'm sure there's there's great ways and great conversations to be had about what does accept prudent risk okay if you're talking about a huge risk for a huge reward the bigger the risk and the bigger the reward the further away you're getting from prudent right that doesn't mean you're not being prudent just means that you're on shaky ground okay so you if they know what risks you can take and what risk you can take and a lot of that is communication up and down right hey this is a risk I'm saying is it worth taking and and asking your ball think you can ask your boss say it's a risk board think so a prudent risk is a really good one but it's sitting down and actually going over and writing down look at what is the actual risk and then mitigating it right you don't just accept risk you wanna mitigate done this all right for exercise this one initiative is this for commanders or is this for smaller so important right so exercise discipline initiative you as a commander everyone has commander to maybe the president right everyone has to exercise discipline tisha t'v from the lowest private up to general Nicholson you have to have initiative right you cannot just do exactly what you're told you have to understand your commanders intent and then you take initiative inside of that what's the key word discipline initiative right not reckless initiative discipline initiative right and this is a we'll talk about that a minute about what this is overall I provide clear intent the reason I don't like to you commander's intent is because like I said we're gonna talk about this in a minute this is not just for commanders this is for everybody in the army provide clear intent this is what I want to do okay this is the overall picture of what I'm trying to accomplish does everyone understand that feedback right and talk about feedback here does everyone understand what my intent is you what is my intent explain me my intent that's not my intent this is my intent this is what I want to achieve I create shared understanding that's like a check on all this other stuff right look do you understand my intent do you understand what decisions you can make it when decisions you can't make do you understand what risk is what risks have you identified what risks can be taken right do we all understand that as an organization what's acceptable and what's not okay this is a vision mission command and the principles of mission command is an organizational vision this is what the army if every unit in the army had this and was able to achieve each and every one of these we would be perfect right there would be there would never be any problems an argument that I'm gonna make with mission command with the principles of mission command is that it is for everyone and doesn't stop at company commanders it doesn't stop the platoon leaders look at this and explain to me make an argument maybe you can make an argument why can't a fireteam leader not use the principles of mission coming a young F or who just you just got promoted to a fireteam leader can he use the principles of mission command yeah because he still has absolutely can he build a cohesive fireteam through mutual trust building that trust amongst his soldiers hell yeah can he accept fruit and risk sometimes he's gonna have to sometimes he may have to assume command of a squad and do stuff with the squad maybe the platoon leaders dead maybe he's got to make decisions he's gonna know what risks are acceptable in what aren't that's just a kind of fire team leader exercise discipline initiative absolutely he doesn't need to be told 100% all the time what to do you can see what needs to be done and actually go and do it all right he can take initiative and it's up to leaders all leaders at all levels to enable that did he provide a clear intent of what he wants to accomplish to his fire team yeah absolutely look it's something and a lot of times most the times it shit's gonna be nested with your squad leaders intent who's nested with his platoon leaders intent is nested with the company commander's intent so everyone's intent is nested right so yeah you can absolutely provide clear intent of what he wants to accomplish sometimes it's communicating sometimes it's just clearly communicating his commanders intent but he can take that intent and make it his own in fact that'd be great I'm a company commander and I would love every team leader took my intent made it their own right hey that's my intent right that's perfect now we have a team that's really gelling all right pretty sure an understanding and a fireteam leader do that yeah absolutely hey look man here's the map this is where we you know this is where we are this is where we need to go we're moving from here to here using that route right we all understand that's what's going on Snuffy if you get lost what's the azimuth from here to here right we're creating shared understanding it's no reason to fire team leader can't do that all right so we're gonna talk to talk to us a little bit more when we talk about leadership we've talked about the art of war and we're starting to getting a little bit in the science of war and how does the Army's command structure actually work and what's the ideal structure look like okay this looks pretty good right when you start looking at it this starts to break down a little bit alright and it takes good commander is good leaders to identify what those problems are and and make adjustments okay all right so this is we're moving into captain Crowes final opinion here which is based purely on my experience in the Army with the units that I've been in and a lot of the leaders that I've had luckily not the current leadership okay the current leadership is vastly different from what I've had but and you guys hopefully you think that you have good leadership here in this battalion and this company like you may not throughout the rest of the army so I'm gonna provide this to you in the context of this is what I want you to go and do when you as leaders now and as you continue as leaders in the future okay there is a proclivity especially amongst the officer corps but also in the instance EO Corps there is an effort to infantilize right to say you are a new lieutenant I must teach I must tell you everything exactly that you must do I can give you no responsibility and I can trust you with nothing and I have to do everything for you right and I'm not willing to accept any risk that if I give you something that you might fail I'm gonna treat you like a baby right is that drive with this no no not at all right you have to treat people like adults but guess what you have to force sometimes force your leaders to treat you like an adult okay so what I like to say is if you do not put words to actually use fight if you do not fight to be treated like an adult you will be treated like a child all right don't treat your soldiers like children treat them like adults they're grown men and women they can make mistakes you have to underwrite those mistakes as leaders have to accept risk okay this is going away I think more and more it's going away so there's a great there's a great brigade commander I had Carl Kaufmann who did some similar videos like this and talked about look you can't just take away somebody's responsibility when they mess up or when they show that they're not necessarily competent enough to do the job you can't just take it away and then keep it you take away that power that responsibility you retrain them you give them your expectations and then you give it back okay sometimes bosses don't do that so you have to show up and you have to be competent and you have to work and you have to say sir you can treat me like an adult right you can trust me with that I will deliver for you accept this accept the risk of giving me this huge thing and I'll deliver for you right and have to fight to be treated like an adult because when you fight to be treated like an adult now you're forcing your commander and your leader to you to adhere to these principles and you're making your organization better okay because if you're hearing these principles you can't treat your soldiers whether they're a private or whether they're a sergeant or lieutenant it doesn't matter if we want to succeed as an organization we have to hear these principles which means you cannot infantilizing officers cannot infantilize your NCOs or your soldiers that's always on there too okay and it's done to every level right there are there are toxic Colonels who invent lies their battalion commanders and fans lies their company commanders who invented air platoon leaders okay but guess what there are also team leaders who treat their soldiers like children who don't trust them who don't allow them to exercise discipline Nishant they don't allow them next ice fruit and rest all right so we have to fight this as an army we have to be adults I used to prove your competence every single day you come and work all right that's it that's a classical question suggest cotton

Channel: Austin Caroe

Views: 49,450

Keywords: Leadership, Army, Army Leadership, Mission Command, War, Leader Development, Leader Education

Id: z1OpseA17Es

Length: 45min 40sec (2740 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 10 2018