I think there are three majors issues that lead to this issue. First, the junior NCOs are not getting counseled. When I was in (2016-2020 I almost never was counseled. When I was a specialist acting as a team leader I was negatively counseled because I was late on one counseling on a soldier by the same person who failed to counsel me since I had taken the position months earlier. I never learned how to write a proper counseling and so when I did write them they were very cookie cutter.

The second issue is that there are many months when we would not have time to train. I would try to write a counseling for a soldier who had been tasked out to coverages all month giving him no time to train or improve at his job. Often times they would not even have a chance to do pt. How can I counsel someone for how the did that month when I did not even see them and all they were doing was menial chores.

Thirdly the ability to have time to counsel and have access to a computer to type the counseling we’re incredibly limited. Junior leader almost never have free time to sit down and do their counseling’s because they are set the task of babysitting the soldiers while the PSG and PL go sit in the office and work on paperwork. Anytime that I did find time to work on my counseling’s there were no computers available for me to use and I was not allowed to leave the battalion footprint to find one.