Soldiers attending this week’s Master Resiliency Training continue to send in their thoughts, and we’d love to hear your feedback. What do you think of the program? What questions do you have? Drop us a line in the comments section.
Maj. Damon Delarosa, Student, Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth Kan.
We continued to press on today in MRT. The focus of the day was on building character strengths. In order to prepare for today’s class, all students had to take the University of Pennsylvania’s VIA Survey of Character Strengths which rank orders 24 character strengths. I think the results of that survey surprised many people; I know I was surprised with my results. Two character strengths that I believed would be in my top five, leadership and courage, were in the bottom third of my strengths. After further analysis I realized my top five character strengths define my leadership and make me a better leader.
As a result of my analysis, I also realized that some definitions used in the MRT course, and specifically on the VIA survey, are not exactly the same as the ones we use in the Army. Therefore, these differences in definitions may cause some confusion and frustration with soldiers involved in the program. As long as facilitators are aware of these definition differences and incorporate that into their classes, it will minimize confusion.
After four days of class I believe this initial MRT class has a lot of the right people in the audience. Most of the attendees in this course are from TRADOC as drill sergeants, AIT platoon sergeants, and chaplain assistants. However, I am concerned that there is a lack of tactical/operational level leadership here that can bring these skills back to deploying/deployed units. I would argue that these soldiers should be a priority. The leaders here can certainly impact entry level soldiers, but once these soldiers get to their units they will not have leadership that understands the program/resiliency concept. For me, this raises the question of will these tools be forgotten and lost if they are not cultivated and grown?
This raises an interesting topic that several of us have been discussing: how do we implement the resiliency program at the organizational level? Since the results of an individual’s survey are supposed to be confidential, the resiliency program is being billed as an individual responsibility and as an individual self-improvement program. In order to ensure maximum impact on soldiers, will this program evolve into quarterly training or mandatory resiliency stand down days? As a future S3, I have the ability to influence battalion/brigade training, but how do I do that without mandating/dictating that soldiers participate in this program? The unfortunate truth is that if soldiers are given an option of doing resiliency modules on the computer or playing Halo, they will most likely choose Halo. I am sad to say that this program will probably not achieve the desired results if it is left to the individual to do on their own without regular facilitation.
