Our intelligence NCO is the sweetest woman you will ever meet. She is two years from retirement and tells the boys to stop their “Tom-foolery” when they become too reckless with their jokes. She has a southern accent coupled with a soft grandmotherly voice. Her children are all grown up and have families of their own. Sadly, she is a widow. Her husband died a few years ago of cancer and her world now revolves around three of the sweetest Chihuahua’s you could ever imagine. Chico is her favorite followed by Miss Betty Davis and then there is Casper. Her son is watching her “children” for her while she is here with us and he sent her a heartfelt Christmas present, ornaments of their paw prints. She misses her “babies” so much, she almost came to tears looking at their tiny little paw prints in the white plaster. I asked her what she wants to do when she retires. She said, “I just want to live with my daughter and look after my grandchildren. That would make me happy.”
She makes me wonder where I will be when I reach that point in life. What will I have lived through at that point so far down the road? From what career path would I be retiring? There are so many questions that will only be answered with time.
Today we have a sensing session scheduled with the COL. Everyone is viewing this as a waste of time because no one ever speaks up during these meetings. I don’t think of it as a waste of time, but I do think of it as an opportunity to allow the boss to see what is going on in his unit. Yes, you must sensor yourself, this is not intended to air dirty laundry or reveal personal aggressions towards a single person or group. This is meant to help the unit as a whole function better and work better together.
The flaw surrounding this concept is a psychological conundrum. The term groupthink comes to mind. Groupthink is a psychological phenomenon that occurs within groups of people, in which the desire for harmony overrides a realistic appraisal of alternatives. In other words, group members try to minimize conflict within the group and this leads to the silence and sometimes unrealistic appraisal for a broken system. To combat this affect, we are first required to fill out a questionnaire on paper and anonymously. This creates the opposite effect where people find overconfidence in anonymity. A lot of negative feedback is gathered because the person filling out the survey knows there will be no repercussions and he/she will not have to justify his/her responses.
Therefore, the combination of the anonymous surveys and the sensing sessions brings a realistic approach to the command climate because you get the bad and the good. The key to all this is that the leader that this survey surrounds needs to combine this information in such a way to effectively identify problem areas and improve upon unit cohesion. The alternative is to ignore all of the above and check the box that says, “Conduct Command Climate Survey and Conduct Sensing Session.”
Unfortunately, our sweet intelligence NCO has the lead on this project. She is the one that must compile the surveys, present the findings to the Commander, and sit in on the sensing sessions to take notes. She gets frustrated because a lot of the feedback from the surveys is personal gripes and nothing is mentioned at the sensing sessions, but Soldiers openly complain with her in earshot that these surveys and sensing sessions accomplish nothing. She wants to yell at them, “It’s your own damn fault,” but she doesn’t because she has better things to do.
Today’s noodles were Sponge Bob! Thanks Pops!
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