'Dagger' Soldiers take charge of their leader development

Photo By Staff Sgt. Wallace Bonner | Jeff Smith, founder, FiveSeven Solutions, instructs a group of Soldiers during a leadership development class at the Tower Chapel annex in Grafenwoehr Training Area, Germany, March 30, 2018. The training focused on providing tools to Soldiers to guide their own development as leaders using tools like journals where they reflect on their leadership goals and how to achieve them.  

GRAFENWOEHR, GERMANY

03.28.2018

Story by Staff Sgt. Wallace Bonner 

2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division Public Affairs

GRAFENWOEHR, Germany—Soldiers from the 82nd Engineer Battalion, 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team ‘Dagger Brigade’, 1st Infantry Division, participated in a leadership training development seminar at the Tower Chapel Annex in Grafenwoehr, Germany, March 28-30.

The seminar was designed to equip Soldiers with tools to help them grow as professionals and leaders.

“We use applied leadership development, where people decide where they want to go for the next month, year, or several years, on their own personal roadmap of leadership development,” said Jeff Smith, a civilian leadership consultant who led the seminar.

“We work through five basic questions; what are my leadership goals? What things are valuable and important to get me to those goals? Why are those things important or valuable? How will I move forward on a daily basis to apply those valuable things? Is there progress over time?”

He said they provide a journal for the Soldiers to take home with them to track their personal leadership journey, and they have actions that they work on over time. The biggest difference with this program and others is that they use applied techniques, whereas most other leadership development courses are theoretical in nature.

He defined leadership as the act of leading yourself or others toward very specific leadership goals, whether personal or professional in nature, such as reaching a certain rank in the military within a specific time period or being a good parent.

The Soldiers found it to be a very beneficial class.

“The class taught me about emotional understanding, such as if you’re having a bad day, you can’t necessarily let it show, because it’ll affect the people around you,” said Cpl. Kody Kennedy, multichannel systems operator/maintainer, 82nd En. Bn. “It taught you to really look into bettering yourself, before you can lead others in your group.”

Capt. Scott Ingram, chaplain, 82nd En. Bn., was the officer that coordinated the training at the urging of his battalion commander. “Lt. Col. Jesse Curry, our battalion commander, has been wanting to provide a personal leadership development course since he came into command,” said Ingram.

Ingram said he also thought it was good idea because it encouraged Soldiers to take deliberate steps to develop themselves into leaders.

“Good leadership grows out of the soil of self-management, self-leadership,” said Ingram. “It’s vital to sustaining readiness and bringing the unit together to accomplish the mission, like the one we have here in Europe,” said Ingram.

The Dagger Brigade is deployed to Central Europe in support of Atlantic Resolve, a mission intended to deter aggression in the region by sustaining and demonstrating a high level of readiness.

• Date Taken: 03.28.2018
• Date Posted: 04.07.2018 10:51
• Story ID: 272156
• Location: GRAFENWOEHR, DE