Of history, warfare, leadership, and alcohol
By Sergeant Swivel Responsibilities of Leadership In many organizations, one of the primary duties of leaders is to develop their subordinates. Air Force Handbook 36-2618, “The Enlisted Force Structure,” or, as it’s known among Airmen, “The Little Brown Book,” lays out responsibilities associated with each tier of the enlisted forces, making sure to note that …
Continue reading "Learning from Bad Examples: When Poor Leadership Can Be Valuable"
So. I've been thinking about how there seems to be problems within the general officer/flag officer ranks when it comes to ethics - as in, the violations of ethics, specifically. And for a long time I've wondered how that happens. Then I took command. Let's talk for a sec about this. So I'm currently just …
Continue reading "Ethics: the Leader’s Struggle"
We talk a lot about mentorship in the military, but for most of us, we don’t have a good example of what that even looks like. It’s not as though there are mentors dropping from the sky to deliver words of wisdom whenever we need them. No, we’re more likely to end up Googling our …
Continue reading "When the Force is Not With You: Mentorship and Star Wars"
Guest post by XO of XOs Knowledge diffusion and leader development in the Army is at best, a slapdash effort. You finish the appropriate schooling level--maybe rotating through a leadership position, or not--and then get dropped into your newest assignment. Primary Staff, Command, on occasion the officer in charge of the officer (I had one …
Continue reading "Mentorship: Cross-Component Leader Development"
First off, no, this is not a discussion on the merits of leaders within the Rebel Alliance in the Star Wars universe, though if it were, I'd have to say that the Rebel leadership had very few merits and we should probably not emulate their chaos-based approach to warfare. What's I'd like to talk about is disruptive …
Continue reading "Being a Rebel Leader: Disciplined Disobedience in the Army"
Let’s face it: the Army can be a place that wears you down, both physically and mentally. It takes a special kind of person to be able to take the brand of crazy that the Army pushes year after year and walk away from it relatively unscathed. As such, it seems like you usually get …
Continue reading "The Military “Give a S**t” Spectrum"
As an Army officer, I tend to spend a lot of time talking about, well, talking about officer things. And no, that does not mean discussing polo, the price of cufflinks, sipping brandy, and thinking of ways to make our NCOs lives harder, as some circles might believe. Although the brandy thing isn’t too far …
Continue reading "7 Characteristics of Highly Successful Non-Commissioned Officers"
SPOILERS AHEAD. Most determine the great struggle in Star Wars to be that between the Light and Dark sides of the Force. But from a military perspective it has always been between a highly regimented Empire and a loosely organized Rebel force. And even within these communities there have been contentions as to how best …
Continue reading "A Leadership Vacuum: “The Last Jedi” and Mission Failure"
Today’s guest post comes from Barefoot Boomer. Boomer is a career Army officer and strategist. He is also a historian with an emphasis in American and German military history. The content and opinions of this article are the author’s only and do not reflect the opinions of the United States Army or the Department of Defense. Prologue: …
Continue reading "Guest Post: It Takes A Leader: Successful Integration of Combat Arms"
“War is a human endeavor—a fundamentally human clash of wills often fought among populations. It is not a mechanical process that can be controlled precisely, or even mostly, by machines, statistics, or laws that cover operations in carefully controlled and predictable environments. Fundamentally, all war is about changing human behavior. It is both a contest …
Continue reading "War as a Human Endeavor: How do we train for that?"
The Angry Staff Officer 
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