129 S13 Ep 11 - Sergeant’s Time or Leader’s Time? Who Owns Training? w/JRTC Subject Matter Experts

This is The Crucible, the JRTC experience. Do you have something for my hip pocket? Do you have anything for my hip pocket? Do you have something for my hip pocket? Do you have something for my hip pocket? Hey, long-time listener, first-time caller. Love the show, but do you have something more focused for me? Yeah, do you have anything for my hip pocket? Yeah. We've got something for your hip pocket. You want something hip pocket-sized. This is Hip Pocket Training, a short-form series focused on the single-topic insights for the warfighter on the go. Quick, relevant, and ready when you are. Welcome back to another episode of the Hip Pocket Series. I'm Mark Howell, and joining me today as guest host is Mass Sergeant Cawthon. What are we talking about? Today we're going to be talking about a good topic with some NCOs, some Sorgers' time training versus Leaders' time training. Today, we're going to be accompanied by Mass Sergeant Moss, Sergeant Bruno, and First Sergeant Barley. Really some subject matter experts on this. And really getting to the bottom of, is it Sergeant's Time Training? Is it Leader's Time Training? Does it matter what we call it? Or does just the end state matter in this? Right. Okay. So to kind of, I guess, frame this out for the discussion today, this kind of came about because, you know, I've been in organizations where when I first came in the Army, it was sergeant's time training. And then suddenly it became leader's time training as we tried to get away from the officer versus NCO. It's all leader business, that sort of thing. And then I was in an organization where we fought back and said, no, it's sergeant's time training. We need to get the officers out of the training piece to the point where they were either forbidden from being down in the training audience, Or we scheduled like officer professional development seminars during those times. And then even, you know, a mixture leader professional development seminars so that we got all E7s and above and really pushed down to the junior levels. Which is why, you know, I thought that this is an important conversation to have is as we look at like the roles of the NCO versus the roles of the officer. How do leaders work together? but then also own their own their own lane. So just want to kind of open that up. Does, should it be SARS time training? Should it be leader time training? Does it matter? And if it doesn't matter, then what is really the point? And that it should, like, what should that stuff be? I can start it off. I think that it's important for the NCOs to do all of them SARS time training. I think what you get when you tend to blend it is that NCOs, say you get tasked with, you know, teaching a class, right? Well, first step for me is to understand what I'm teaching, make sure it's, you know, being taught the standard, right? So that experience alone is very important for the NCO to have. It'll develop him, and then it'll increase his confidence as a leader. So I think that's why it's important for it to stay starting time training. So we pin that training on the NCOs so that they're, we're developing NCOs to train. They're understanding their tasks and they're confident in what they're about to execute. So, yeah. Yeah. I think, I think when I started thinking about sergeant's time training versus leader's time training, uh, I think as long as we, we meet the end state of it. Right. And I know we're going to have some difference of opinion on, uh, this panel, which is obviously like an awesome thing, right? It's because we got some great leaders on here. But what I didn't know as a young sergeant, when I got tasked with these things was I didn't nest it within anything, right? I say, Hey, my three guys over here, they really need to work on camo or, you know, uh, being able to establish an OP or whatever, but that didn't fit into my company's like met as far as like what they needed to accomplish. Right. So I didn't understand the hire's intent with it. And I think that's probably why I kind of drifted over to leaders time training is because the younger guys just didn't get it or what it was really like the main purpose was supposed to be. I do think that it should be young NCOs running it, right? Because I'm not going to give an E5 the ability to run the Calpex lane, right? I'm going to be looking at those lieutenants and those captains and stuff. So I think there are certain times where we give NCOs those responsibilities and really that ownership. And I think giving them that ownership, like Massard Moss said, of like, hey, now you've got to really know that thing. You can't fake the funk whenever we get into it. but having the hires understanding of it needs to be nested within the overall companies like metal that they're trying to be. I love that. So I think I kind of have a different point of view when it comes to sergeant's time training. I believe sergeant's time training should be outside of your primary MOS because on a normal day to day, you're going to be doing things that your job requires, whether artillery in the motor pool, working on your howitzer, go out to the field, whatever the case may be. I think sergeant's time training, like you said, which is phenomenal, is getting those young NCOs engaged and understand how to teach a class, how to instruct their soldiers. So when they become like a staff sergeant higher, they're not uncomfortable in that situation. And then maybe like tailoring the classes to something like army programs on base, you know, where's the ACS building? What programs do they have? What do they offer? Right. Maybe you get a E6, a chief or whatever, teach an NCOER class, because we all know as a young E5, the first NCOER you did or young E6 lost in the sauce. Right. I would have loved to have had an NCOER class prior to actually having to write one. Um, so I, I really think that there's an opportunity there during that sergeant's time training, uh, to get after some things that aren't MOS related, but are going to benefit you and, and your subordinates, you know, from there on out. So I, I really liked that. Um, cause now we're seeing, seeing two things and I'd be remiss if I didn't mention, I've heard from, uh, from like our sergeant major that. all training is sergeant's time training and it's every day and that sort of thing so so now we're talking about a difference between uh focused training of our junior ncos is what it sounds like is it nested is it not so uh take this a step further one of the things as a so i was an hfc commander and i had to pull some of those sergeant's time training like for us it was it It was the same time every week. I got I got the morning to do whatever I needed to do. But often at the at the staff level, what that includes is we're doing commodity shop training. So everybody shut down the same time. You got folks going out into the field and then you got the commodity shops. And whether we're pulling up individuals from the company to the battalion or from the company to the battalion, the brigade in order to train them in those different processes. at some point I had to take time away and go, we need to focus on the specific task to enable us to, to tactically function in the field. Right. Because otherwise it's just all admin stuff. And what you talking about is similar to the commodity shop task but you know what if we always training and everything is fully nested with whatever we doing or with whatever the overall metal crosswalk is and it all nested well we need to find some time to do different things And I know I've seen programs in the past like Foundational Readiness Day turned into some of those, hey, we're going to talk about finance. We're going to talk about some of these other things to get everybody ready. So, interesting point. And what's everybody else's thoughts on that? Like, should it be a nested training day? Should it be a train something different? I think you should have a mixture of both, to be honest with you. We should be doing things like training NCOERs and those things that NCOs are going to have to do future, you know, future into their career and stuff like that, looking forward. But then we also have to make sure that we're training, you know, job specific things as well. And in that, we also need to make sure we're looking at our audience as well and what echelon is training those. Right. So, you know, primary trainer of our junior enlisted is a staff sergeant. Right. So what are we what are our staff sergeants training our junior enlisted on, whether it's job specific or not? How are we validating them on that? You know, what is our battalion sergeant major doing to train our platoon sergeants, pulling them on and doing sergeant's time at that level as well. So we're also mentoring our senior enlisted as well. Yeah. So you're getting at the concept of I train two levels down. Absolutely. I love that. Yeah. And I do like the idea of having a purpose. So like the company commander, the battery commander, there's a purpose behind the training. I think that's phenomenal. Whatever that training may be. And it changes all the time. Like if you're getting close to come to JRTC, 100%, you're probably going to utilize that time for mission tasks. If we're not in a training cycle and you have some time, you know, you could talk about these other things. Like it really just depends on the time and the situation. One of the things that comes to my mind as well is when I task these young NCOs with executing this training, there's a lot of like backside stuff that comes into it as far as like all right well to me everything's a competition everything's a healthy competition so if moss gets tasked with running a certain lane yeah i'm going to try to make mine better than his if i'm getting tasked with roughly the same thing not to make him look bad but to develop both of us right like because if we're constantly competing and we're constantly holding each other to a higher standard you're going to get a better product right so if he gets tasked in month one of sergeant's time training with for our mos you know fisters developing you know setting up an occupation post right so we're setting up ops and doing all that stuff and he just goes across the street and i say okay well i know i'm getting tasked three months later with doing that or whenever the time frame is but i'm actually going to get on rhythmus and i'm going to get us some land right so that we have an ability to maneuver and stuff like that now like i really think we're starting to develop to go to you know start bruno's point stuff like that now i'm starting to understand like systems and things all right so in the future if i need to train my guy like all right i understand i need to go to land and ammo i need to request this so far out right so now when i'm a staff sergeant i'm getting tasked with maybe a table six or whatever or maybe i'm a master gunner like i understand the process behind these things too and then really going through the full training model of like how to develop something not just in my right in the rain notebook right because we've all mentioned like how much i hate green notebooks yeah but like now i got this thing like laid out with the progression And I'm starting to understand it. So that first one I run or maybe it's Master Armals runs as a young EPUB. It's going to be like not as good of a product. Right. He's going to get home from his hire and all that stuff. But over the period of time, letting them continuously do it, understand the process is going to help develop them by the time they are sort of first classes. Master sergeants to really understand how to develop really good training with their commanders. I think that goes to sorry, you're good. The sergeant's time versus leader time. Right. I think sergeant's time specifically is incredibly important, but I think leader engagement is also important. So I like the platoon level, you know, your squad leader, team leader, they're doing classes. Well, your platoon sergeant, your PL, they could be a fly on the wall during this training. They don't say anything. They don't get involved in it. But when the training is complete, now you have the opportunity to give an AAR to the individual that was giving that class and maybe help benefit them in the future and to tell them what they need to get better at or what they did really, really well. So it's kind of a mixture of both. But it's so every echelon is getting some sort of training. No, yeah. And so I guess what I was what I was starting to think through is where does that break? Where is the break or where should the break be between leader involvement to to NCO involvement? And you might be talking echelon. So kind of the way I see a thought of an analogy, like you have a car, right? And so the way I see it is that the officer drives. He's taking us where the direction. That kind of car. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's driving. He's telling us where we need to go, right? And as NCOs, we're the engine. So we make it happen. We make the car run, right? And then we also have some situational awareness of ourselves, like, hey, these are our weaknesses. So this is what we should prioritize for training because this is where we're going to have to go execute. But also these are what we've seen we struggle with, right? So like our air pressure keeps going low. So we need to maybe replace a tire, right? So like some of those other things you can throw into the training that's outside of, you know, whatever next training objective you're trying to hit. And then on top of that, I think NCOs need to be creative with their training with limited resources. So just being able to think outside the box, how can I create a realistic training environment with maybe a limited time, money for land or ammo, whatever. Just being creative, thinking outside the box, trying to give the soldiers the most realistic training as possible with minimal resources. Also, not to put anybody on the spot, but the question I'm going to ask is like, when do we actually need resources? resources like how much training could we do because like to do imts that's the field behind the bit you don't have to schedule a field that's right outside your your headquarters i think i've got a great example for this for you sir um one of an organization that i worked in prior to coming here um we got very good at creating our own white space um you know so we didn't really have i mean we still did our sergeant's training time our leader's training time our lpd's things like that But we were able to create enough white space to where we allowed freedom maneuver for our E5s and our E6s to get out and train things that we thought were important that would make our junior enlisted a lot better service members in the future. And some of the things that we were looking at training in that white space was just simply shoot, move, communicate, airborne proficiency and medical proficiency. Right. And if we can hit at least three of those topics every week, you know, then we're we're bettering our population. And then we're also identifying those weak spots that when we do come back to our sergeant's time training or our leader's time training, we've identified where the holes are in our swing and we can really focus in on those things. And then going back to resourcing, I mean, you can resource something as simple as one of the squads or sections wants to give a finance class. And you reach out to the finance section and ask one of the finance folks to come over and give the class. It doesn't have to be extreme resourcing. You know, you don't have to go plan a range. But you know there are certain little once you get better at it certain things you can do that that plus up your training make it more effective that are pretty easy to resource You just got to think about it I think it what you in state like beg for your buck How much effort am I about to put into this versus what am I going to get out of it? And you as a leader and through the echelons going up, need to understand what that is. Maybe for one little thing that I'm doing, I'm teaching a finance class i probably don't need you know nine months to prepare with like trans and like i do it a jad into it or something like that you know there's like a lot less that goes into it however if i'm recognizing that like i'm tasking guys to do like a defensive lane for fire support or something like that i probably don't want to do that behind the building like right i probably want to like get a little bit more so i think it's like you know i hate met tc dependent on Yeah. Well, I guess I guess my point is, you know, we we sometimes worry, I think, too much about I need to request land in order to do stuff. But I would argue because I've done it during PT that you could probably do most individual, probably team up through squad collective training, you know, in the in the on the parade field or in the space like right outside your headquarters. You know, at some point when you want to validate it, but getting through the mechanics of it. I mean, you know, when I was a cadet, we did, you know, we practiced the battle drills on just an open field, like to get the mechanics out. What are the fundamentals that have to do, you know, go into executing this battle drill, react contact, things like that. You don't need a lot of space to do that. And then you got to build in your validation. And these are all low. I mean, you know, I think one of the best examples we got in a previous podcast was talking about how they leverage their weekly ruck march to test their digital fire systems. You know, and, you know, everybody's like, well, I don't have this. You pull a weapon out of the arms room. You got boots on your feet. You can go do whatever you need to do. You don't even need to burn gas half the time to do some of these dismount things. Now, armor formation is a little bit different, but, you know, what could you do in the motor pool to still run through crew drills and stuff like that? So I think to the resource point, too, like Sergeant Bruno was talking about, even at E5 understanding, okay, I need to go to this program in order to get this person. Now they've gone through the process to understand. So when they're a staff sergeant and they have that person with a finance issue, they've already done the thing. So they get it. So I think it's important to that degree in there. They can also then let other folks that need that same resource, now they know how to do it. So now you're creating those bridges that you're training your whole formation without even knowing it. Somebody else brings up finance. Hey, I got the guy. But 100% that I think you should be able to go out back and still be able to conduct the training. Okay. So I guess kind of to summarize it all together, the training needs to be nested in some way with the higher picture. So first thing we look at is maybe the metal crosswalk that's usually developed by the company commander saying, this is our big training event. I'll go backwards. This is our big training event at the end. Maybe it's a JRTC rotation. We're going to be expected to do these tasks. So we have to validate with these other events. There's a battalion FTX or something. And here's where we've got scheduled in ranges. But the other thing we have to do is provide white space and then push down. OK, I have now defined as the company commander what we need to do, what our training glide path is. Here are the big ticket items. Now I need the platoons. That's probably the platoon leader in conjunction with the platoon sergeant, figuring out what their training gates are and then pushing down even further. OK, we're going to hit these. So now I'm empowering the squad leaders. you need to figure out what you need to hit in order to, what you need to train on before you get to these platoon level activities and then so on and so forth down to the team level. But you've got to provide the white space too, because if you don't provide white space, then everything is just dictated by the company. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I like it. Yes, that's great. I think too is like the certifying the training, right? Yeah, we haven't even talked to 8-step training. Yeah. So where my mind goes is like, right, you have a clear direction now. The next step is like, okay, we've tasked Staff Sergeant so-and-so to conduct this training. As a platoon sergeant, we'll make sure that whatever he's about to train these soldiers on is being trained correctly into standards. So I think that's a big step that time runs into an issue. Like as a platoon sergeant, it's hard to find that time. But you got to make sure that you can allocate that time because you want the right training to be conducted at the right time. And then you can provide some good feedback because odds are you've done it before and you can make the class a little bit better than what it was intended for. So I think that's a really important step. I would say, you know, if we go back to the, you know, look for any opportunity to train all week long, even if you're doing that, you can still divvy out. you know like let's say your science time training is on a you know thursday right you can still divvy out you know hey e5 you know team leader you're responsible for the training on monday squad leader on tuesday whatever it is right you can still build that out does anybody here disagree that on you know whatever our science time training day is you still got to protect that day and maybe that's it sounded like everybody said that should be more focused on that junior level like if you're going to hyper focus on something like hey that's nothing else like if e6 e7 has to run training the rest of the week we're going to focus yeah i think it's got to be on like that company and above above level leadership okay to protect that time yeah it really like i like it it probably needs to be established in the division that like hey this is something that we're going to do every day because now all the brigade commanders are in brigade sergeant okay that's the division standard you know just like we carry around on the books with this and tell me everything else about myself that I have to do. I'm going to flip set up and say, okay, start-up training is on Thursdays, blah, blah, blah. It's from this time to this time. These are your left and right limits. We outline them, right? And then we go by that. It's something to protect it because if I just say, hey, my company, we're going to run start-up training, it's not going to happen. Battalion is going to come down. They're going to have tasks for me. It's going to be my priority versus a hire's priority, and I'm really not going to be able to get it there unless I'm as good as first-arm barley and just make it happen, right? which I mean, like somebody who's out there and just, they're good with it. Yeah, I think it needs to be protective. I think it goes into that, the discussion about time, right? Time, time, time. You know, I don't want to go into hip pocket stuff that that should be, you know, done whenever you can, but we can all at this table recognize on any given day, any given day, Monday through Friday, if you're working through the weekends or whatever, that we have a lot of time that could be utilized for army things to better our subordinates and ourselves and we don't utilize it right um and that goes to me it goes into that not wasting soldiers time and and having a purpose and a direction and and having a class that that can be engaged engaging you know yes it is very nice to have protected time but we all know depending on where you're at, depending on the op tempo, you may not get that, but still empowering your young soldiers and having that leader engagement to make sure that they being engaged the lower leadership or lower your soldiers during those down times when you just sitting around waiting for a formation or whatever the case may be there stuff that you could be training There's stuff that you can be doing that, that doesn't have to be white space. Utilize, utilize the time you have. Yeah. I think you need to guide them too. Like let the, the younger dudes are going to knock out that hip pocket thing. I don't know if we have like a podcast series or anything that like kind of mimics that. but like i think they're going to be the guys taking charge of it but we got to like really mold it and i know like i the majority of my experience comes from being being a fister uh but if you let fisters like do their own thing uh on a day-to-day basis and you're like hey maul's go train these guys he's going to teach them bomb tables he's going to teach them cast triple a like all like the the shiny object stuff they're not going to know their one five subsequent corrections they're not going to know their six elements and go to break them down they're not gonna be able to you know understand what my methods of engagement my methods of fire control are and how to like break all that stuff down i realized some of the people in the our listeners might be like what is he talking about but like all the fundamentals of like really what makes you a good fister at the end of the day if i can't control f-16s nobody's really they're going to look at the jtac or they're going to look at somebody else to do that yeah but if i can't make a call for fire like dance for me you know i'm saying like be able to really manipulate it that's where i think good fishers come out of but that's i'm kind of going on a rant right now however they need to the younger guys and girls need to be focused on like hey this is what i need you to develop these people to be able to do yeah it's where yeah i think we talk about direction and just going off what you said you know direction for sarnstein training same with hip pocket training like when you have downtime this is what i need you to train on uh when you're at the individual level when you have downtime, this is what we're studying as far as hip pocket goes. So as long as they have good direction, I feel like it's easier for them to execute. A lot of times the NCOs, like you go tell them, like, go train, but brand new E5 just got promoted. He doesn't really know what to train. And then you've got to have that squad leader and that platoon sergeant that also oversees that training when he can, right? You've got to make that time yourself to oversee that training because like you were saying, those younger junior enlisted guys, they're going to train what they think is the cool stuff, right? Like I'm going to train the cool stuff versus the basics and getting good at the basics that are going to make us a lot better at our job. Yeah. I think – I really like – I think that the – like there's a reason it's character than presence on the NCOR, in my opinion, because you've got to be present for these things. And another thing is like the lower guys are going to recognize when you're not. Yeah. You know, when you're just showing up at random times or whatever just to show up, you know, because you maybe know that somebody else's hires going to show up. Like, people recognize that. But being a leader that's present in everything is, like, it's huge to me. Well, and that's, and not to, you know, Sergeant Bruno, your point about, hey, protected time often does get stepped on. I think having protected time is important because if for no other reason it gives your, the higher headquarters or the higher echelons, right? So if we're talking certain time training is happening at the team squad level, well, then the platoon team level and the company team level, you can build in those other echelon training events to pull them out and protect it. You're giving me a reason to train on stuff and like shut down the office and actually focus. Because the higher up you go, the more staff work you're doing. So protecting that time also means, hey, we need to figure out something for the staff to do, which can pull up the companies, which can, you know, then enables those lower level tactical actions. But then we can also help mold and shape those mid-level leaders, those senior leaders, et cetera, et cetera. To kind of go off of what you're saying there and what Sergeant First Class Bruno said earlier, you know, and those organizations that have those high op tempos, you know, when we're stepping on that protected time, I feel like it's even more important to protect that time in those organizations that are so high tempo, because if we're not protecting that time, then we're losing out on that valuable training that we can give not only junior enlisted, but also our senior enlisted and our officer counterparts. You know, so then it just goes by all this time, just goes by the wayside that we missed those opportunities. A hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah. I think to circle back, right. The original question, leader's time versus sergeant's time, the issue is trust, right? I think that's possible. We hit that in the LPD today is that we, at some point in that organization, they lost trust in NCOs, right? And so to gain that back, right, it's just like, you know, the easy answer is like, all right, we're just going to do it for them. It's just like having a little kid, you know. it's easier to put your kids shoes on for them than to teach them how to put their shoes on and have them tie their shoes sometimes it takes a little bit more time and effort but at the end of the day it's going to make them a better human being slash organization so it's kind of where i think that's a really good point right there uh i really appreciate everybody coming on um as we're running close to time here does anybody have any final closing comments on on the start of the time chain versus leaders' time chain. I think I'm good. I think we hit the nail on the head. Yeah. Well, listeners, I really appreciate everybody tuning in. As always, if you have something specific that you want us to focus on or maybe if you want us to come back and talk about something that we've already talked about before, we can always do that. All right. Hey, thanks for listening. We'll see you in Torbjord. Thank you for joining us on The Crucible, the JRTC experience. The Joint Readiness Training Center is the premier crucible training experience. We prepare units to fight and win in the most complex environments against world-class opposing forces. We are America's leadership laboratory. Again, we'd like to thank our guests for participating. This podcast was created and produced by Mr. John Mabes. Executive producer is Lieutenant Colonel Drew Zabriskie. It was recorded by Captain Jermaine Branch and edited by Mr. Travis Boyle. Series intros were built by Chief Thomas Rich and vocals were done by Mr. Robert Chopper. 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