Essay On Crucible Experience

Having served in various leadership positions throughout a ten year military career, I can point to my appointment as a company commander as my most significant crucible experience. Although the vast majority officers prepare for this role relatively early in their career, my assignment to the position occurred abruptly, unexpectedly, and certainly imposed some traumatic qualities within my life at the time. These characteristics seem to fit Bennis and Thomas’ description of a crucible event. Furthermore, I actually reflect upon this experience often and can know frame the experience within these authors’ definition. And finally, I can use this knowledge to my benefit as I move forward and assume future leadership positions within the Army.
Most officers probably looked forward to this day, but mine was a small affair. After all, my initial counseling from the outgoing battalion commander was, “consider yourself the interim commander, we need somebody to hold this property” Fine by me, I was leaving the Army, this would only delay me a couple months; an opinion I kept to myself. After all, I was well received within the company and got along with the NCO’s. My new XO and I were great friends, and it’s not like we had much to worry about. Equipment reset was going well, as were the personnel transfers in and out of the unit. My life revolved around NCOER submissions and equipment turn in. The new Battalion command team had transitioned as had the adjacent company commanders. I felt very comfortable with my guys, but began to feel very awkward outside the unit. After all, I was still the interim commander, and hadn’t even been to the career course; a fact some of my new “peers” would jokingly point out at command and staff meetings. In fact, the new BN XO one day casually told me “Don’t worry Brent, nobody’s expecting too much from you. Just think, if you do some small things well, it would be like a home run for you”. For some reason, that comment