MRT teaches Soldiers, Civilians to be resilient leaders

By Lara PoirrierFebruary 28, 2017

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Fort Huachuca, Arizona -- A mobile training team from Fort Bliss, Texas, recently conducted a Master Resilience Training course here with almost 30 students, both active duty and civilian in attendance.

The MRT course teaches Soldiers and Civilians how to share and present the MRT material and concepts to their units and offices to educate others about the resiliency principals and also to assist with learning the skills to better cope with adversity, build resilience and optimize performance.

Units with certified Master Resilience Trainers have significantly lower rates of substance abuse diagnoses (drug and alcohol abuse) and mental health problems such as anxiety, depression and PTSD compared to units that don't have a MRT. The goal of the MRT is to increase personal readiness and optimize performance in individuals.

Erin Towner, primary instructor, Master Resilience Training Course, said MRT training is "important because our students say that they see Soldiers that are not equipped to deal with setbacks, to deal well with adversity. So a lot of the discussions are about the more junior Soldiers that they are working with and how they want to speed up their learning curve in terms of their ability to deal with difficult situations."

To qualify to the take the course, the trainees must have a certain level of experience and rank. For student Soldiers, they must be NCOs at a rank of staff sergeant and above. There were two sergeants in the class at Fort Huachuca, but they were recognized by their command and had written exception to policy letters so they could be in this course. For officers, they must be a rank of second lieutenant or above. Civilians can enroll too, but the majority of the trainees are active duty.

The training is ten full days. The first six days of the training, Towner said "the students are more in learner mode. We teach them 14 skills. The way the class is structured there is a whole group component. As the primary instructor, I'll teach them the new skill, I'll teach them part of the concept of the skill, how it works, and then they have the break-out portion where they are in smaller groups and they use the skill for themselves and there is more discussion of real world application of the skill."

The last few days the students are teaching the material back to the team and then team members give them feedback. At the end of the course, they take a test on the material and must pass to be a certified MRT.

"As a Master Resilience Trainer, the student needs to fulfill three roles one within that," Towner said. "One [role] is formal training. They are formally training their unit or their co-workers in briefings and practical experiences."

For the second role, "we also expect them to be able to operationalize the skills, in the moment," she added. "One of the MRTs, in one of his or her many roles -- say it's a platoon sergeant -- one of his Soldiers is having problems qualifying or hasn't been doing that well. And the MRT, or platoon sergeant, notices that the Soldier's thoughts are getting in the way. He could use that skill in the moment and operationalize it, without having to do any formal instruction. Teach him in the moment what he can do to get a handle on his thoughts to qualify and succeed."

And the third role is that "we expect [the] MRT to live the skill, to be resilient and to be able to explain to others how to be as well," Towner said.

Previously conducted in large training sessions, the MRT training is now offered in smaller classes of 30 to 60 students. Individuals interested in signing up for the MRT course can request it through their chain of command.

Towner said it can be a positive learning experience.

"This is the forty-fifth training that I've done," she said. "A lot of people start off with, 'I have to be here,' and at the end they say, 'I'm glad I was here,'" explained Towner. In two weeks, participants already see the practical applications just in the training alone.

"We are going to take the skills that we learn here and go back to our unit and use those to help out our Soldiers and make them more resilient," said 1st Lt. James Maffey, a student in the MRT training. "The word I like to focus on is 'mental toughness.' I think that is really what this helps you come away with. This isn't a rainbows and sunshine kind of thing. This is looking at actual evidence-based approaches to improve your performance and improve your leadership, especially for your Soldiers. The Army asks a lot of people and so these are evidence-based strategies that you can use to perform better under difficult situations."

Maffey said the favorite skill he learned about was Icebergs.

"Icebergs are very simply what people say on the surface is only a small part of what's going on underneath," he explained. "In an iceberg, you got 5 percent that you can see, with 95 percent underneath the water. So it's taking a step back and go to what are my deep held core values and beliefs that are going to trigger the emotional reactions and responses that I have.

"So especially for conflict resolution and for personalities that don't seem to work out," Maffey continued. "A lot of that is based on icebergs, these core values that they haven't identified with each other. So if you can help your Soldiers have that self-awareness, of what they are bringing to the table, or asking that question 'where is this other Soldier, or where is this other leader, coming from?', then it helps you to deal with that situation and have that self-awareness and social intelligence when you are handling other people."

Maffey said he's already referred people to take the course. Maffey joked that "it's a nice change to death by PowerPoint." Maffey said the active involvement is what makes the course so impactful with the small group interactions and practical instruction.

Sgt. Eugene Fisher also took the course. He said that "this course gives you the tools to help you be a better leader."

It's important to "know how people are thinking to relate to them," Fisher explained. "You can use it for Family members and use it for Civilians that you work with. It's not all holding hands and singing Kum Ba Yah for sure. Its real skills that you need to learn for everyday life."

Fisher said that the favorite skill that he learned was Activating Thoughts Consequences.

"One of the [skills] I really liked was the ATC," Fisher said. "The activating event to the heat of the moment thoughts, to the consequences or the emotions or reactions that you display. So if you have an activating event like a PT test or a death in the family. The heat of the moment thoughts are what get triggered and you sit there and think, all these thoughts, bad thoughts and good thoughts. Then it goes into the consequences, the emotions and the reactions. From that, you can learn, if you have any icebergs or thinking traps which are other skills that you learn about. The basis is the ATC and that leads to other skills.

"This is a great course to have and everyone should have MRT training," Fisher added. "I decided to take the class when I noticed that people were complaining about the training, and I wanted to bring a new, fresh perspective to the training because I think it's important."