Hi there,
I am wanting to progress to the rank of FS, however I need to take more of a mentoring role and more of a wellbeing role for my squadrons NCO team. We had 3 NCO’s and promotions have just happened.
My question is, how can I take on these roles if I am helping with different activities in squadron, and on courses/training weekends?
Cheers
GeoC
Mentoring is in effect passing on knowledge/experience and advising / supporting people who are unsure about what they are doing.
“Well-being” (a current buzzword) is essentially the old-fashioned being a friend, asking if people are OK if they haven’t been at the sqn for a while and taking an interest in them. Whatever it is you are doing both or these things fit into them and not entirely separate.
However don’t ignore your own well-being and potentially get bogged down in other people’s problems and ensure boundaries are maintained by keeping it to cadet things and not life in general.
Have you been told this or are you assuming that is what you have to do?
Simply put, you don’t have to. Completely agree with Teflon, it’s easy to get too focused on other people’s wellbeing and not keep a check on your own. As a senior NCO it would be right for you to guide your JNCO’s but the best thing you can do is lead by example (be a role model) and let the sheep follow your lead. Well-being (welfare) is a whole different ball game where you would probably be best advised to escalate that to your staff. Being a friend is one thing but worrying about someone’s well-being is beyond the call of duty at your level.
This is what i’ve been told, we have CWO’s on squadron who done the mentoring role, and with only having a low number of NCO’s there wasn’t anything for me to mentor. This meaning i can’t progress and now we have 2 more Corporal’s, so i could mentor them? but i don’t exactly have the time to focus on them as well as the other NCO’s and the cadets.
Well, if you do the mentoring job properly and develop them, then they’ll take on some of the burden of looking after the other cadets…
As a sergeant you should be focussing less on the cadets and more on the NCOs. If something needs to happen with the cadets then you should get the NCOs to do it, rather that do it yourself. Taking a step back can be difficult, but that is the way of things. If you do everything yourself there would be nothing for the JNCOs to do (and you would go mad).
Our squadrons discipline is very poor, and it’s down to me rather than the JNCO’s controlling it so it all lands on me.
Yes, but the point is that you should be working to make it something that the JNCOs are doing, rather than you directly.
The way we do it is so we have the jncos to warn them and then the sncos, I try to get the jncos to do it but they never do, so it gets left to me
And what are the consequences on the Cpls for them not doing their job?
Escalate it. If they’re not pulling their weight, then why do they have the stripes?
Nothing happens, I tell them that they need to do it and not me or the cadets won’t listen to them and still nothing happens.
So take it up a notch. Got a FS and CWO above you? Adult NCOs? There’s a rank structure, use it.
Accepting poor performance and not challenging it isn’t a good look for trying for promotion, is it?
I’d speak to the JNCOs pointing out that the behaviour they are seeing is exactly the same as they showed so they should expect no better. Sow as you reap sort of thing.
Then speak to the cadets en masse with a message that their behaviour is not what we expect and as when you become NCOs you will have the same problems as we see now. Although not your place to say, you could imply it’s not behaviour expected of potential NCOs, just to put the message out there. From my POV if an NCO said something like that it’s not really wrong to say it.