General James Mattis USMC once said, “The most important six inches on the battlefield is between your ears.” If you have people under your charge, then you are duty-bound to think—to make well-considered decisions based on a studied knowledge base. Military leadership is unique because ill-considered decisions send soldiers to their deaths. Leaders cannot blindly follow instructions or even orders.
How do small unit leaders get their subordinates to own their problems?
Inculcating ownership into your leaders can determine success or failure, smooth execution or frustration, system success or failure, and high or low performance.
There’s not enough time in a day to solve all the problems or challenges that a unit might face. Therefore, it’s vital that leaders understand how to ensure subordinate leaders take ownership of problems at their level and uphold their share of the task when solving both simple and complex problems.
Below are 5 tips to get your subordinate leaders to own their problem and think like problem solvers instead of problem passers.
Late September, 1944—Nijmegen
Medical personnel shuffled litters in and out. Outside the doors, the courtyard teemed with humanity. Clusters of aid-men loitered in anticipation of the jeeps, which were operated by their casualty collecting detachments. Like foraging ants they traversed the division area, to and from the regimental aid stations, and they would return direct to the imposing walls of the seminary. The seminary looked like an institution of classical learning, if nothing else for the blanket of vines which clung in patches to the dull brick construction. It was the most suitable location they could find for a division hospital. Mostly because of its size.
Had one of the early developers of the American airborne been able to peer into the future and see this sight, it would have surpassed all comprehension. The scale, the efficiency were beyond anything they envisioned, which wasn’t much. If casualty care in Nijmegen could be considered near seamless, it was not a product of the vision of early airborne developers in the US Army.
It was a gradual acceleration to the display of efficiency on the grounds of the Nijmegen seminary. But the only question that mattered is did it work?
Life as a staff lieutenant has many demands. As the battle captain, you will be responsible for managing all of the information coming in and out of the Main Command Post (MCP) and control all current operations. Your command team, staffs, and company leadership will lean on you heavily for an updated status of the operation. You will have minimal guidance and instruction yet will be expected to perform at the level of a career course-qualified Captain. Too easy, right?
Have you ever been disappointed with the performance of a new team or new leader? Perhaps your expectations were too high or something else went wrong. How do we close this gap between expectations and the desired end-state? Maintaining performance through transition requires the commander to over communicate the vision and guide their people through the discomfort zone. The best commanders will also listen to feedback in stride to best direct resources towards changing priorities or emerging risk.
An assignment to US Army Cadet Command (USACC) as an Assistant Professor of Military Science (APMS) is personally and professionally rewarding. There are few assignments for officers where our primary role is leader development. In most assignments, we attend the occasional OPD/LPD and conduct counseling as directed by regulations. Serving in a role dedicated to developing ROTC cadets into junior officers provides the opportunity to impact the future of our organization, exercise mission command, and refine our leadership skills.
I echo the voices of many of my fellow officers when I say that I want to place training before administrative tasks. Yet, many of us get beaten by the bureaucratic mess that is “Big Army.” Try as we might, we can’t quite get a good battle rhythm that frees up enough time for our soldiers to work on their craft. They are constantly tasked out for details from Battalion, Brigade, and Division. Luckily, there is a way to guard time for soldiers to train and fulfill taskings from higher echelons. It is difficult, and requires communication and support from your Battalion, but ultimately it can work.
Leaders are readers. But why read if you cannot recall 90% of what you read by next week? A good leader is carved from the challenges, trials, hardships, and enlightenment that are provided through experience. This is a variable that leaders cannot control, right? Sort of. The method for filling gaps in your knowledge base and level of experience can expanded via reading. Books, articles, or white papers provide leaders insight into the experience of others. Literature, in all forms, can help sand the edges of our experiences, give them more clarity and perspective, and allow us to incorporate those lessons into our own lives. As the retired General Mattis said, “If you haven’t read hundreds of books, you are functionally illiterate.”
What makes urban operations so challenging is in the name: urban. The physical terrain itself has been built and altered, whether coincidentally or intentionally, to create an extremely challenging environment with its own unique challenges for defenders and attackers. When most think of urban warfare at the tactical level, Battle Drill 6 comes to mind. A team of soldiers moving from room-to-room, violently clearing each in a savage contest of wills with an enemy only inches away in the cramped, dark confines of desolate buildings. In this mental scenario, solid planning takes a backseat while violence of action carries the day. This is not reflective of the reality of urban combat operations.
Since the release of the hit miniseries Band of Brothers and Hollywood-classic Saving Private Ryan, the story of American paratroopers in the Second World War has become cauterized in the minds of history connoisseurs and students. The story has all the elements of a homeric epic: young, fit men strapping on a parachute and leaping from planes to land amongst the enemy. They were a live military experiment in an entirely new form of warfare. The two Hollywood productions were followed by almost two decades of literature from historians and popular authors alike analyzing and dissecting the fire and brimstone shooting matches fought by these men. But little analytics have been devoted to the factors that made these battles possible.
