Enhancing NCO Development

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Non-Commissioned Officers are deficient in vital areas of leadership due to a lack of training. This leads to inexperienced Soldiers becoming inexperienced leaders. The NCO corps needs to develop and enforce comprehensive interactive training that will challenge the next generation to achieve a functional level of communication skills before advancing to leadership positions. This will generate leaders who can write effectively, speak meritoriously and teach adaptively while training others to do the same.
Growing up in the Army, the most aggravating experiences this author encountered involved Non-Commissioned Officers who were deficient in the skills of writing, teaching and orating. This led to unclear counseling statements, vague verbal instructions and poorly executed training. Everyday junior enlisted Soldiers loose imperative feedback and professional development from of this deficiency, creating a negative cyclic effect. This negative cycle is influencing our junior enlisted soldiers to place little to no emphasis on effective communication skills. As a result, newly promoted Non-Commissioned Officers do not have the tools to accomplish essential tasks such as recommending a well-deserving Soldier for the Army Commendation Medal or briefing a complicated subject with clarity. It is inarguable evident that Non-Commissioned Officers need place more emphasis on effective communication skills. In order to implement change, this author has constructed suggestions to integrate each communication skill into daily training.
Writing is an invaluable skill that every leader must be proficient in to thrive in the Army. During the Non-Commissioned Officer Development Program, the most common flaw this author has observed i...

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...regards to combat, maintenance, specific documents and corrective action, but lacks established guidance and material for writing, speaking and teaching. Every Non-Commissioned Officers must challenge themselves to take the time necessary to train their Soldiers in the basics of communication skills. It is not honorable to allow this trend to continue.
It is our responsibility to re-evaluate our training methods and content to improve the Army. Therefore, we owe it to the Corps and to our Soldiers to develop and train the skills of writing, speaking and teaching that are so desperately needed. Without this training, we will continue to be a Corps rampant with borderline illiterate NCO’s which send the wrong message to our junior enlisted. We must improve the Corps and ourselves so that we can achieve our principle duty as Non-Commissioned Officers, training.

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