lessonslearned Learn to Teach I

When a wet-behind-the-ears captain receives a new mission and promptly drops the ball, his commander’s response teaches him as much about leadership as it does about his performance.

In the early 1970s, I was in Ger- many. I had just fi nished commanding a rifl e company, and now I was the new S-3 operations offi cer for our battalion. Although I was a young captain, still wet behind the ears, I was working overtime to learn the new job. The battalion was in the fi eld operat- ing as part of a blue force in a combined forces exercise. We had been in static defensive positions for most of the day. As the evening wore on, the battalion commander, a lieutenant colonel, left the tactical operations center (TOC) to get some much-needed rest. I stayed to monitor our operations. At about 1 a.m., we received orders for a change in mission; we were to road march at 0600 from our current positions to an area some 50 kilome- ters away and conduct a relief in place. I im- mediately put the staff to work planning our routes, identifying choke points, and drafting a tentative plan for the relief. We worked for hours. At about 0400 hours, the lieuten- ant colonel returned to the TOC, and I briefed him on the battalion’s new mis- sion and the actions we had taken thus far. He asked two questions: Why had I not awakened him when we got the new mission, and what was the warning order I had issued to the battalion’s compa- nies? I fumbled to answer either ques-

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tion and was forced to admit I had not issued the warning order yet. I quite simply had forgotten the sec-

ond step in the Army’s troop-leading procedures! I’ll not forget the look on his face. Obviously disappointed, he took a deep breath and then asked me to draft the WARNO immediately. Mo- ments later, we issued the warning order, and soon thereafter we issued the operations order. Some time later, the lieutenant colo- nel sat me down and reviewed all that had gone on. Rather than rip into me for the errors I had made, he covered the good of the exercise, as well as my goofs. Throughout our discussion, he focused on my learning.

leadership I continued to learn from him

throughout the rest of my assignment; perhaps the biggest lesson learned was good leaders focus on their junior lead- ers, and one of the key facets of leader- ship is teaching those you lead. I drew on that lesson many times during my military career.

MO

— Jack Strange is a retired Army colonel who lives in Basehor, Kan. For submission informa- tion, see page 6.

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