NCO - Know Your Soldiers

A key part of your job as a noncommissioned officer is to know your soldiers. It is essential that you know how your soldiers will behave in battle under stress and uncertainty. To do this you must know how well trained they are, how well they work together as team members and how they react to fear, uncertainty and stress. As a leader, you should demonstrate genuine concern for the well-being of your soldiers and for their personal and professional development, progress, problems, concerns and convictions. Know them. Know their goals and meet their families. This is not to coddle or cater to the soldiers but that you might, in a soldierly way, build a team of confident, well trained individual soldiers who operate as one and whose dedication to accomplishing the mission overrides any other concern.