chuckle what if I don’t have time to explain the why to my troops for a decision I’m making during an operation US Army First Lieutenant so awesome thanks for your service US Army First Lieutenant get some and I I talk about troops and people in general never wanting a pain a plan to be imposed upon them and so that’s that’s what this question is kind of based around someone saying look you know you don’t want to just force people to do some plan you want to say hey what do you think you should do and hey here’s here’s what we’re doing and here’s why we’re doing it this is why it’s important that gets people to take ownership of it and therefore they do a better job so he must have heard me say that now he’s saying look sometimes I ain’t got time to be explaining the why when we’re getting this going on and that’s why this idea of explaining the why is true 99% of the time in an administrative situation in a situation where things are under control we’ve got time to think about what’s happening that’s when you can go and say hey what’s your butcher you know what do you think how do you think we should do this this is why I want to accomplish this this is the commander’s intent you can do all that stuff and that makes sense again in a administrative situation when there’s chaos and when there’s mayhem and when there’s uncertainty actually the opposite is true you actually want your troops to you they they want they want to see and hear clear directives from you they want to know what they should do in no uncertain terms and it’s you can think of situations where if you’ve seen let’s say a car accident right and you see people that are kind of frazzled if someone steps up into that situation no one’s doing anything that they’re supposed to be doing if someone said stops up and says you to start dragging that person over there you go call 911 they actually teach that you know when you when you’re learning about how to handle traumatic situations somebody needs to step up step back take charge of the situation everybody wants that to happen and that’s true in a combat scenario again is different from when we’re in the rear and where we’re formulating a plan and we’re safely going over whatever ideas we have and that’s when you want to get in input and feedback and you let your subordinate leadership come up with a plan that’s all good but that’s not true during it like I said during a pressure situation when there’s a critical scenario unfolding people want to be led now when you lead them in those situations you can still give orders by commanders intents you can still just give intent so an example of that and actually wrote my example down you can say like Delta one six we need high ground on the other side that Road make it happen mm-hmm so then the Delta one six commander goes okay I need high ground on the other side of the road there’s a good building it looks like that’s one we could take hey you know squad come with me and they go over and take down the building I gave them a still gave him commander’s intent I gave him very clear commander’s intent I didn’t really tell him why I didn’t say hey what do you think would be best do you think it’s a good idea to get high ground no I said go get high ground on the other side of the street that’s what I told him to do so I’m gonna let them figure out they understand what the intent is you could say something a little bit more specific you could give them an actual an actual directive you could say Charlie one six take two squads assault building 34 on the other side of the road get high ground on the rooftop go now where you have something it’s more specific mm-hmm again it’s not commander’s intent it’s directly I’m telling you what to do and a lot of times people are gonna want that they’re gonna want to hear exactly what to do in these pressor situations so depending on the level of experience that your subordinate leadership has depends on maybe how specific you’re gonna get with just given the commander’s intent versus giving something very specific to do both of those are the right answers if you have a good really good leader underneath you and you can just give him the intent and even let them come up the plan cool go with that if you got something that needs a little more guidance give them a little bit more specific guidance mm-hmm now obviously one part of that is you gotta have trust you gotta have trust with the with a subordinate leadership that you’re working with whether that’s you working with your whole platoon and you just got to trust your your squad leaders and your your fire team leaders but you got to build that trust through through training and through hard training through coaching them and mentoring it and again I hate using the word coaching and mentoring because that always gives an air of superiority mm-hmm and I’m not gonna want to come off across as superior to other people mmm why do I not want to come off as superior to other people well number one because it unifies our team more and number two because I’m not superior to other people mmm right I’m another person and my subordinates even though they might not have as much time and rank or experiences me they still might have great ideas and I respect that so this isn’t a hey I don’t want to use coach or mentor because I’m manipulating them and I want to make sure that they that they listen to me because I’m being a certain way with them no no I legitimately respect what they’re saying that’s the difference here so but that’s but my goal is to build trust and the other way that you build trust and I’ve said this before is by giving trust you know hey I trust that you can do this hey echo you’re gonna go take down the building I trust you’re playing come up with it make it happen boom you could do it you trust me more when I trust you you trust me and that’s what we want to do now when the operation is over and and now you’re in a post operational debrief then you can discuss why you gave a certain order or you can get feedback from them on why they executed a certain way and you can get the questions going back and forth and through that little question-and-answer period that takes place during a post operational debrief we get to know each other more we build more trust and we become better as a team hmm so that’s the way it works you don’t always have time to explain why pressure situations you lead
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