The NCO Leadership Center of Excellence hosted the Commandant Training Council 16-20 May, to gather the commandants of NCO Academies across the Army and review new training materials and discuss issues.
Some of the new initiatives discussed were Talk Like a Leader and Write Like a Leader. The initiative falls into the category of Improving communication between NCOs and Soldiers. Talk Like a Leader is intended to assist NCOs in providing more relevant counseling and developing valuable life skills.
“Talk like a Leader is focused on improving two-way conversations during the counseling process,” said April Sanders of the Army Research Institute, Fort Hood, Texas, and is one of the developers of Talk like a Leader.
“As far as the benefits for [it], we have heard back from multiple people who have taken the class about the value it adds to help soldiers verbally communicate more effectively, help them deal with stress and improve job performance,” she said. “We have even heard from recruiters that it helped them in their jobs. The counseling aspect can really help add to the skills soldiers already have and provide guidance for growth.”
Write Like a Leader fulfils a similar purpose offering a document editing software similar to spell check to improve grammar, and includes a dictionary of words and acronyms commonly used in the Army that may not be recognized by conventional spell check programs.
“The goal with Write like a Leader is to make a tool that essentially anyone in the Army can use,” said Dr. James Deller one of the developers of Write a Leader. “They can use it to write official documents or it can be used on their off time for self-development. However it is used, it can improve job performance and their ability to write more effectively – an especially important skill for leaders.”
With the implementation of these new programs Army leaders should be better equipped to lead soldiers and improve their own leadership abilities.
A review of the leadership development program Project Athena was also provided. Where the projects success and evolution over the first year of its implementation was presented.
“What we wanted to do today was help explain the year one goals for Project Athena,” SGM Timothy Nellisen one of the project developers said. “What we wanted to do today was help explain the year one goals for Project Athena A key point is reviewing surveys and extrapolate key findings to see what is going well. On the individual level it is how great do you want to be, that is the ultimate question we ask everybody, do you think you are at the pinnacle or can you do better.” Project Athena is specifically designed to target the self-awareness and the self-development of a person.
Photos by Andrew Smith, Command Communications
Social Sharing