FORT LIBERTY, NC — Thirty-six top Advisors from across the Security Force Assistance enterprise attended the Advisor Development Program (ADP), which began April 30 and closed out May 3, 2024, marking the completion of the second event of its kind.
ADP assembles the best Security Force Assistance Brigade team-level leaders in order to recognize, develop and operationalize them through unique and forthright dialog with senior leadership. This dialog includes lectures, briefings and working groups designed to gather expertise and experiences from the participants. This not only helps solve the command’s issues at the tactical level, but increases the leadership potential of the Advisors.
Notably, participating Advisors attain a better understanding of the command’s priorities, operations and decision-making processes. Afterward, they get to take the knowledge and perspective attained and apply it within their organic teams.
“For me, the biggest change I see is awareness, having Advisors understand the bigger, broader picture and taking that back to their teams," said Maj. Jennifer Wong, 3rd SFAB military intelligence company commander.
The program meticulously covers every SFAB warfighting function, allowing team-level Advisors to engage with command staff, identify shortfalls and find solutions through collaboration. The engagements from the ADP are laying the framework for the next revisions to the enterprise-owned 350-1 training doctrine, which is annually updated and refined via organizational growth and input from bright minds across the enterprise.
Maj. Gen. Donn H. Hill, SFAC commanding general said, “I’ve been very pleased with the presentations, the working groups and the level of detail that the Advisors put into studying the problems, as well as the recommendations they’ve made. And, we’ve got a list of things that we’re going to implement based on the recommendations.”
The conversations held at the program aren’t just going to have an influence on the next updates to SFAB doctrine, but are having an immediate effect on dialog with senior leadership across the brigades.
“The last working group was on discipline and cohesion, and in the near term, I’m going to take the product that they put together and the notes I took from the presentation, and discuss those next week with the battalion and brigade commanders at the command forum,” Hill said.
Staff Sgt. Idis Arroyo, 1st SFAB command language program manager said, “I think this program was actually really good. Just the fact that they took a diverse group of us that have already been on teams and gathered all that information from us is so beneficial.”
This isn’t a program where the participants need to feel concerned that the lessons and topics discussed stop at the door. As they leave and return to their units they will carry on the knowledge they received, and the Command will take the solutions discovered and implement them enterprise wide.
“We’ve got to be able to address the problems that a proponent deals with and come up with solutions to those problems, and that is exactly how we framed it,” said Hill. “The Advisor Development Program is absolutely meeting its intent.”
For more information, or to volunteer for an SFAB, go to www.army.mil/sfab
Social Sharing