Woke up recalling a terrible time in my career while I was a 1SG

This one time I yelled at a SPC, who was to be the replacement armorer for the company for planning his wedding during the same time I slotted him for armorer school

Here goes...
#1SGconfessions

SPC was a good fit to be the armorer, in hindsight, he did an excellent job.

Naturally was hopeful to replace a good armorer for another, even better one.

My CDR at the time wasn’t v good at his job. Let commodity shops fall apart. I had to pick up a lot of slack.

Could NOT allow the Arms Rm to disintegrate, far too important. Put a lot of time into getting it squared up.

Selected my new armorer, and slotted him for class abt 3 months out.

Then he told me he was getting married at that time...

Then I said it

“Who the hell told you you could take leave?!”

Or let me re-type that:

“WhO tHe HeLl ToLd YoU yOu CoUlD tAkE LeAvE?!”

There’s, that’s better. That’s more like how it sounded.

Anyway...

I was caught up in the middle of things.
-A do-nothing commander
-Tons of upcoming training events
-Discipline problems in the company
-An absolute in-ability to get anyone slotted in schools, a problem across the BN...BDE really
-Tons of over things
-Don’t get me started on Mx

When I did get folks slotted, they didn’t make it into class.
1 guy showed up late
1 guy didn’t bring his paperwork to bus driver schl
1 guy wasn’t tracking he had school, didn’t show
Etc etc etc

Ldrship and administrative problems abounds, right. Yup.

Got him a slot, and he tells me he can attend and I fkin’ Bolo’d the response. Rly disgraceful. He’s out now (had plans to ETS prior to this incident believe it or not). I apologized profusely later to him and his wife. Made it up to them. we had a good relationship afterwards

Still bothers me nonetheless.

Point being, Ldrs under stress rly screw it up. When I left, my troops loved me, and I occupied that sacred position of legend status that some 1SGs get. So I’m not a bad dude/bad Ldr overall.

But I learned something from those tumultuous times

Ldrs are humans who can & do screw it up from time to time.

Stress is “one helluva drug.” Sometimes we gotta take a step back.

Now, I look for that in my subordinate Ldrs and coach them accordingly so they don’t feel the pressure like I did.

I also figured not to judge Ldrs right off the cusp based on 1 snap shot incident (usually w/ no context) [ at you AWTFM! for exasperating this]

We’ve all jacked it up at 1 point

*1 man’s fav Ldr is another’s worst

De-stressing is
Take care of urself when you need it

Now for my hot take:

Also learned not to be on a #MilTwitter high horse bcuz it’s happened to all you reading this.

It has. Trust me. And if you think it hasn’t you aren’t self aware.

Best to cut slack on Ldrs & coach them into not repeating it, than to throw vitriol at them