Taking on your first company command is a major milestone in an officer’s military career. The opportunity comes with great responsibility – leading and caring for soldiers, training them for combat readiness, enforcing standards and representing the unit.
As a new company commander, you may feel the pressure to prove yourself and deliver results quickly. However, calm confidence, focus on priorities and developing your team will be key to making an impact.
Here are my top 8 pieces of practical advice for new company commanders to lead effectively and succeed
1. Build Trust Through Engaged Leadership
The foundation of successful leadership is building mutual trust and confidence with your soldiers. Take time to actively listen to them, understand their needs and what motivates them. Be approachable and connect with them professionally and personally.
Walk the ground frequently and resist the urge to lead from behind a desk. Share hardships together in the field and advocate for your soldiers’ welfare to build loyalty.
Trust is hard to gain but easy to lose – never compromise on integrity, transparency and your commitment to your troopers. Lead them firmly but fairly and they will walk through walls for you when it counts.
2. Determine and Communicate Clear Priorities
As a new CO, you will be pulled in multiple directions amidst competing demands. Determining and sticking to your vital few priorities is crucial. Identify what clear, realistic objectives you want to achieve during your command upfront.
Communicate these early and consistently to your NCOs and officers. Aligning the entire team to focus energy on what truly matters most, while balancing routine unit duties, will drive outcomes. Recalibrate as needed but maintain focus.
3. Support Your Fellow Company Commanders
While focused on your unit, also make time to regularly connect with your peers. You are in this together and can learn a lot from one another’s experiences and insights.
Avoid negative competitiveness. Instead, be generous in providing mutual mentorship, advice and assistance. institutional knowledge and resources wherever possible. Celebrate their successes and help pick each other up after setbacks.
4. Invest in Your Continued Professional Development
The learning never stops. Be proactive about your own self-development as a leader and soldier alongside commanding your company.
Pursue professional military education courses, mentorships with experienced field commanders, and self-study into leadership, manoeuvre warfare, tactics etc. Lead PT sessions discharge appointed duties with your unit and set the example.
Make time to reflect on and learn from both your failures and wins. Applying these lessons will make you a stronger commander.
5. Encourage Open Two-Way Communication
Foster an environment where there is open communication, both top-down and bottom-up. Be transparent in sharing wider mission objectives and command decisions with junior officers and NCOs. Welcome respectful questions.
Actively seek inputs, ideas and feedback from the boots on the ground to gain situational awareness. Juniors often spot risks and have innovative solutions missed from the top. Listen, process and close the loop.
Curb TOK and enforce proper channels. Your accessiblity should not undermine the formal chain of command. Guide them to the right forums to be heard.
6. Lead Out Front With the Men
You were chosen to command not based on words but deeds. Demonstrate care for soldiers and enthusiastic hands-on leadership out in the field.
Join your men in sharing hardships during training and operations. Perform tasks alongside them occasionally rather than just inspect. Let your actions reflect your values and priorities every day.
This builds trust, sets the example and motivates soldiers to give their all when it matters. They will follow your lead. Officers eat last.
7. Develop Junior Leaders and the NCO Corps
The key to a highly effective company is developing your up-and-coming platoon, squad and team leaders into confident, empowered and capable junior leaders.
Provide opportunities for challenging assignments, professional development, mentoring and skill building. Let them stretch their abilities and support them through failures. Recognise excellence consistently.
Coach patiently to develop young but promising NCOs into the spine of your unit. Their growth will amplify your impact.
8. Delegate Key Responsibilities Decisively
Resist micromanaging. With growth, an open door policy becomes unsustainable. Prioritise and delegate appropriate tasks decisively to platoon and company HQ elements. Enable subordinate leaders to exercise disciplined initiative within your intent.
Empower the XO role fully. Develop SOPs to streamline routine decisions via proper channels. Provide high-level guidance and check in routinely, but avoid stripping away ownership by dictating approaches.
Trust your team and they will rise to the challenge. Let them lead.
Assuming company command is a privilege and sacred responsibility. While challenges loom, leadership grounded in trust, mentorship, communication and hands-on engagement will set up your unit for success. Stay focused on your ultimate purpose – developing cohesive teams ready to fight and win.
Remain humble and continue learning. Draw strength from wisdom of past commanders. Stay just, courageous and loyal to your calling. Maintain perspective by spending time with family. With will and faith, you will persevere.
I wish you all the best. Welcome to command! The soldiers need your leadership more than ever.Serve them well and write your own chapter of proud service and sacrifice. Lead the way.
Principle 1: It’s the last 20% that requires real leadership
Pareto’s principle suggests that achieving 80% completion rate in any task is simple, but that you will expend your energy in closing with the last 20%. When a 100% solution is required – vaccinations, passports, pre-deployment training – your leadership and command are critical.
Don’t begrudge the effort you put into that last 20%. No matter how effective your command team, it requires real effort to achieve that 100%.
Don’t Begrudge The Toughest 20% – Advice on Company Command
By Major Dave Godfrey
The sum of your experiences, deployments and courses throughout your career go some way to prepare you for Company Command. However, the full spectrum of the task at hand is rarely apparent until a good proportion of the 2 years has passed. By this time, you wish you’d known more up front.
I’m now a few years out of company command. I’ve also had the privilege of seeing others command companies through the lens of being a Brigade Chief of Staff. With the combination of hindsight from my own command and insight from my current job, I’ve reached a few conclusions about company command.
If you think of your company as the point in the Army’s hierarchy where the email stops and the people start, you get at your core purpose; translating higher intent into military effect through the application of leadership and management. To deliver this, I found there to be two overarching principles that company command requires.
Outgoing Commander Advice: Capt. Quigley
What should a new commander do?
What is important is for new commanders to establish a framework for continuous dialogue, constructive feedback, and ongoing leader development. New commanders should use their initial counseling to conduct an overview of their systems of success, expectations for enforcement at echelon, and how the company can enhance those systems over time.
How should a Commander develop a leader?
In the field, commanders should design leader professional development that is grounded on squad tactical tasks that nest within platoon and company mission-essential tasks. Finally, a new commander should consider hosting squad-level competitions, ideally monthly.
How do you support a new commander?
Support Your Fellow Commanders Commanders, especially those new to the role, should focus on standing with their peers instead of standing apart. Collaboration, cooperation, and unity of effort are the watchwords and guiding principles in peer relations.
How do I become a company commander?
Read articles or books about military management practices or leadership skills to grow professionally in your position as a company commander. Ask for feedback from your battalion commander and actively work to improve in those areas. Learning new skills can help you understand different ways to lead your unit effectively. 5.
