Transformational Leadership In The Military

I believe in transformational leadership. Transformational leadership is a style of leadership where a leader works with subordinates to identify needed change, creates a vision of what that change end result should be, and executes those changes with the combined help of his subordinates through inspiration and charisma. I find that it is far easier to tell a soldier to “do as I do” than to try and explain how to become successful in the military. I have continuously molded and changed my leadership philosophy over the past two years. I promoted to E5 Sergeant in February of 2015 and have held an E6 squad leader position since July of 2015. The learning curve going from Team Leader to Squad Leader was steep; however, there are key concepts
A high level of charisma can overcome many obstacles such as low morale, bad attitudes, and difficult conditions.
4.) Trust and failure: In my opinion, establishing trust in my subordinates is the most difficult part of leading a squad. I believe that you must allow for others to fail in order for them to learn from their mistakes. The most difficult part of this is delegating responsibility to the lowest level and enabling the trust for them to accomplish the task or mission. I must also trust the soldier to own the task and make sure they accomplish it to the best of their ability.
I have learned a lot about applying my leadership philosophy over the past two years. I am in charge of my platoon’s physical training plan. In August of 2016 I changed our training schedule to increase the overall performance of the soldiers in the platoon. I set the example of training with intensity and pushing the soldiers with rigorous physical training. I saw an opportunity to instill the growing stronger philosophy in the soldiers of the platoon by enabling them to take ownership of the PT program. In September of 2016, I began assigning soldiers as primary instructors for PT and giving them the opportunity to take ownership of the task. Overall our platoon APFT average increased by 20
I removed myself from the team leader positions and put soldiers in charge of the training and culminating exercises instead. This accomplished trust in the soldiers and allowed them room for failure and growth. After every iteration of training I pulled the soldier in charge for the iteration and gave them personal feedback. I encouraged them to remain charismatic and trust the soldiers around them to accomplish their missions. These simple actions led to overall success of the training events and received high accolades from the Observer Controllers (OC) for my unit’s ability to perform leader development while training for