How to lead a Digital LPD

Mike Denny

As an ARNG officer, I don’t get a chance to connect with my junior officers much in person. In order to hold effective leader development sessions, I learned that I have to engage outside of our 63 days together a year. For the past few months, I knew that I was not effectively developing a Simultaneous Membership Program (SMP) cadet drilling with my unit and my pre-BOLC LT from a junior military college, in addition to several staff Lieutenants relegated to assistant to the assistant duties. Luckily, some talented and more seasoned officers posted a series of articles that caught my attention. Military Leader posted a series of excellent LT Lessons (link) and lessons for the staff officers out there with the Iron Major’s Guide to survival. While sharing these articles over the previous two months with my officers, I gave the junior leaders a simple homework assignment: write a one page essay on their views on the articles. The products I received were of varying levels of ability. It may sound asinine to tell Army officers to write a simple report, but as much discussed on #cclkow and #milpme on Twitter, the ability to write coherently and simplistically is dying in the Army profession and for many seems undervalued in the days of PowerPoint decision making methodologies. Joe Byerly shared the Company Command Article on developing a team through a digital LPD and I took action following that article. The process broke down into three basic steps:

1. Find a Subject worth Discussing: I did not want to cover areas with my officers that are beat endlessly during mandated annual training. These kids won’t be motivated to discuss resiliency, SHARP, or EO unless it is brought in through a different context. I decided to focus on Lieutenant Lessons Series for the first articles that I shared. Very rarely do we have an opportunity to give some objective and candid feedback on our own experiences and these articles gave me an opportunity to self-reflect on my experiences to share with my subordinate officers.

2. Leverage Experts in your Network: Within our military units and experiences, we all have experts and more importantly a network we can utilize. I reached out to MAJ Drew Steadman from Military Leader with the idea initially and also reached out to John McRae (ARNG), Joe Byerly, and Nate Finney. In the end, we were able to connect my junior officers with two bloggers and experienced officers who could directly share their experiences. Over Army-Navy Saturday (all of us were non-West Pointers); we spent an hour on a low-tech conference call and started a new mission within my Company: to develop our leaders with maximum return on minimal time invested during a duty weekend. Forcing the junior officers out of their comfort zone to ask questions of MAJ McRae and Steadman some of those fielded included:

a. Can you tell me about a time you failed and how you came back?

b. What would you do differently if given the chance?

c. How can I best prepare prior to commissioning (from the cadet)?

Our discussion was focused, pertinent, and brief with an immediate and lasting effect on the officers in my company, who connected some of the articles they were passed with the writers and leaders within the community. As a leader, don’t forget the options that civilian leaders and academics can provide. Previously, while stationed at Fort Polk, I reached out to the School of Journalism at LSU to assist our Soldiers in developing their IO and Media Awareness skills. A productive day and shared knowledge in both directions occurred with both the Soldiers and the students of LSU. Reach out those experts in your units, network, and community who might take some time and provide a different look at a topic area of choice. Thankfully in this era, there are a multitude of excellent resources available from CTC AARs to CC/PL Digital LPD hip pocket guides. My personal favorite eye-opener is to show YouTube Videos from Soldier’s helmet cam and Jihad Videos from the Taliban Point of Views prior to a discussion about COP Defense or COIN tactics.

3. Follow Up with Counseling and develop your Next Topic: A brief discussion on counseling during the call focused my thoughts on how to counsel these leaders better and in the end simpler. The Army Developmental counseling form while well intentioned is overly structured for the interaction level that I seek to achieve with my subordinates. During the LPD, A story was shared about simplistic breakdown of a quarterly blank page counseling taking a piece of paper or white board and covering the rated individual’s Strengths, Weaknesses, and the joint Way Ahead. Additionally, From the Greenbook has an excellent article on Turning Counseling into a Conversation (https://fromthegreennotebook.wordpress.com/2014/11/25/turning-counseling-into-a-conversation/) as another technique. Briefly after the conference call, I counseled the two leaders I rate and formulated our development way ahead leveraging the LPD for expectations of performance.

4. Our Way Ahead: The following week, I emailed out a series of links, videos, and articles on the battles at the Ranch House, VPB Kahler, and COP Keating to prepare these officers for a class I would give the company on outpost defense followed by a brief terrain walk with leaders in the local training area. For the next generation of junior officers, not constantly deployed we have to share our recent lessons learned and package them in a manner that keeps the attention of our junior leaders who don’t remember vividly the combat examples that occurred of our friends or colleagues. Our next quarters focus is on executing mission command at the platoon level will feed off of the digital LPD products sent out prior to drill. The expectation for each junior leader is to lead a similar class or project with their subordinate teams taking an hour to teach, coach, and mentor their Soldiers in an area outside of their MOS expertise such as a battle or tactical vignette. I am hoping that in spite of our limited time together, that through leveraging the resources and thoughts of others that we can tackle one of our most neglected areas of leader development, our ability to think and reason in the absence of guidance.

I want to send a special note of thanks to the mil bloggers and scholars who influenced this program and the gentlemen who took time from a Saturday to develop some kids in the Army National Guard MAJ Drew Steadman @mil_leader , MAJ John McRae @jmcraeIII, MAJ Nate Finney @nkfinney, and MAJ Joe Byerly @jbyerly81 The growing crop of excellent mil bloggers and resources make it easier for the time constrained Company Commander to grow his or her team effectively.

Mike Denny is an ARNG aviation officer and headquarters company commander. Formally, he served as a Field Artillery officer on active duty with time at all of the Army garden spots ending at Fort Polk following his second Afghan tour. As a civilian he is an executive management professional and occasional contributing writer for Task and Purpose, The Bridge, and Red Team Journal.