Respect based on discipline, not popularity Discipline is the glue that holds a combat team together. Without it there is no unit cohesion, no espirit de corps, and no coordination. However, discipline is a complex product of training, leadership, and respect. It cannot be taught to those who were not given the tools from a young military member. In today’s military disrespect is more based on the situation your are in and whether you are popular with the group rather than a clear definition of right and wrong.
I have seen junior members in our army punk a senior noncommissioned officer with total lack of respect and was not punished and sgt’s ignored completely. But I have also seen many NCO’s punk a soldier because the soldier would not back down from right and wrong when lies and false information were being stated, just to protect themselves instead of admitting they were wrong. It is respect which creates devotion to the team, and the important part is that that respect flows both up and down the chain of command.
A leader respects the skills, strengths, and sacrifices of the people who work for him, and by giving that respect, in time and with effort, his troops come to respect him as well. That respect grows into devotion: the devotion of the leader to his troops, to do his best to see them through tough times and bring them home to their families, and the devotion of the troops to accomplishing the tasks of their unit under the vision of their leadership. If you cannot lead with this kind of devotion to your troops you must do the right thing and relieve yourself.
Disrespect, however, has exactly the opposite effect. If a leader disrespects his troops, he fails to earn their respect and therefore fails to create devotion to the team. His attitude will be noticed and will become detrimental to morale, which in turn will hurt the combat effectiveness of each troop as well as the whole. Because he cannot respect his troops, he will also fail to recognize their true strengths and employ his forces to the best of their respective abilities.
More and more this is what has happened in this current Army with low caliber soldiers being promoted to NCO’s ranks without the fundamentals of separation of junior enlisted personnel, leadership, and the basic soldiering fundamental maturity being grounded in. Leadership can destroy a soldiers motivation by their actions by not setting a standard high enough to challenge there soldiers, putting people that don’t qualify in leadership because of personal preference rather than professional responsibility, by rank and maturity, and constantly not living as a example to follow.
If, on the other hand, a troop fails to form respect for ANY leader, no matter how good that leader is at their job, then that troop forms a sort of uprising point… a point of discontention that saps unit cohesion and draws any other malcontents to it. Such behavior undermines the authority of the leader as well as the spirit of the unit which allows troops to go into combat together. As such, a person with such an attitude should be quickly silenced by his NCOs, SNCOs, and peers, who should quickly recognize the adverse effects his actions may have on the unit.
Finally, there is another type of respect that is important to a combat unit: respect for the enemy. Only by recognizing where your opponent bases their combat effective maneuvers and realizing the ways in which they shape their movement to maximize their strengths can one truly know their enemy… and by knowing his enemy, a military leader is able to employ tactics which avoid areas where the enemy is strong and instead strikes at the enemy’s weakness.
By failing to respect his enemies (on some level at least), a leader fails to recognize the value of the enemy’s tactics and therefore knows nothing about the enemy’s strengths. Without that knowledge, he can’t know anything real about the probable disposition of enemy troops, their movements in the field, and the points where it would be unwise to assault them. Every action, then, requires more effort and more sacrifice from his own side and plays into the well maneuvered plans of the enemy.
Quality management issue
a) review the definitions and components of quality management. Identify
an issue that could benefit from quality improvement in your workplace. (650 words)
b) Present
the issue and how the issue benefits from implementation of quality
practices. Present the issue and how this would benefit the
organization, employees, customers. (650 words)