Over the past few days, Soldiers at the Master Resiliency Training Program have been focusing on building character strength and strong relationships. Read Major James Hayes and Major Scott Stokoe’s guest blog posts from MRT as part of the new Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program.
We spent the last couple days reviewing our character strengths based on the VIA survey taken online as part of the course and worked on connection skills. The wrap up the session, COL Williams from CSF answered many of the questions about implementation and the future of the program.
I believe reviewing each Soldier’s character strengths is beneficial to achieving self-awareness. My top 5 strengths of the 24 provided were right on track after reflecting how I see the world and react in daily situations. Working through the connection skills module was helpful by getting more in detail than our usual Army leadership communication classes.
The information provided by COL Williams on the future of Resiliency training answered many questions of my questions, but I’m still about the implementation of a formal Army policy requiring, regulating, or mandating the implementation of the resiliency program at the unit level. I didn’t get a chance to catch COL Williams at the end of the training day, but will do so tomorrow. It was good to hear the program is one of the top priorities for the CSA and that the Army is dedicated to the future of program. Again, if the program receives the sufficient level of emphasis, I foresee tremendous benefit for our Soldiers as we compliment our physical fitness with mental strength and agility. In the spirit of full disclosure…my top strength is hope and optimism.
-Major James Hayes, Student, Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, KS
Today we concluded the core training for the MRT program. During the last two days, we focused on building character strengths and strong relationships. Question… If asked, could you list your top five character strengths? Better yet, take it to the next level and list 24 of your character strengths. Before yesterday, I don’t think I could even name 24 character strengths. Yesterday, we took some time to examine our strengths and I was able to look at 24 of them and how they ranked in my life. I wasn’t really surprised by my top five, but beyond that, I was very surprised at how they fell out. Looking critically at my core strengths and how they influence my behavior provided excellent insight into why I operate the way I do. Tied into my own self exploration, we also learned about identifying character strengths in others and how doing so is a vital part of overcoming challenges and building effective teams. Many times as leaders, I think we tend to misalign Soldier (or personal) strengths with the tasks we need to accomplish. The result is increased stress and decreased performance, both of which negatively impact resilience. The MRT small group exercises on character strength illustrated how the identification of and proper alignment of strengths could make us more resilient and enhance overall performance.
Today, during the building strong relationships training, we focused on communication. Communication is often the root cause for a number of issues we face in the field, the office, or at home. Had we communicated more effectively, many of those issues would not have been issues. We typically have the best of intentions when communicating, but lack the skills to make sure we do it effectively. The small group exercises today enabled us to critically examine how we communicate and how others communicate with us. We had the opportunity to try different communication styles and see the impact of each. Most importantly, we learned how to utilize effective communication in our interactions with others. After today’s exercise, I feel more confident in my communication skills and look forward to exercising them at work and at home.
After five days of MRT, I feel more energized and confident. I have been able to learn and internalize important resiliency skills that will positively influence my actions, my performance, and those around me. The best part is that the skills learned will influence each of the five dimensions of Comprehensive Soldier Fitness: 1) physical, 2) social, 3) emotional, 4) spiritual, and 5) family. Before MRT, I worked to improve each of these dimensions alone. MRT has provided a means to improve them simultaneously. Aside from myself, I feel energized and motivated to train others on the resiliency skills learned here. The cynic may say that I have “drunk the Kool-aid,” but the energized, confident, and resilient feelings were common sentiment felt by many (if not all) participating in the training. Once fully underway, I am confident that resiliency training will be in high demand.
-Major Scott Stokoe, Student, Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, KS
