Fort Bliss, TX –
Commandants from various NCO Academies (NCOAs) met at the NCO Leadership Center of Excellence (NCOLCoE) on Fort Bliss, Texas, to take part in the Commandant’s Training Council (CTC). The three-day-long event began on July ninth and was hosted by the NCOLCoE Commandant, Command Sgt. Maj. Tammy Everette.
On the first day, Everette met the group where she encouraged attendees to take an active role in mentorship and training. “Our focus should always be on warfighting and leading in a combat environment,” said Everette at the opening of the CTC. “We achieve that through a safe controlled training environment that we have now.”
On the second day, Army Training and Doctrine Command’s Command Sgt. Maj. Raymond Harris spoke to attendees and sat in on some of the breakout groups that were organized to address challenges and prepare for the return of land navigation training and tactical leadership evaluations.
Key to the success of the CTC were the breakout sessions, which divided the attendees into three groups each tasked with developing a plan to confront an issue that one or more NCOAs face. The groups were organized based around these common challenges, giving them a stake in developing possible solutions and action plans they can implement upon returning to their own NCOA. Some of the issues included addressing the difficulties in conducting training that the NCOAs may encounter. Ensuing discussions identified a couple of those issues to be securing needed resources and identification of appropriate locations for training.
Command Sgt. Maj. Raymond Miller, the commandant of the Hawaii NCOA was attending the council for the second time. He said that the event is a good way to tackle problems by drawing on collective knowledge and different points of view.
“We have an opportunity to maximize the use of people on the ground to solve problems,” said Miller during a breakout session. “We have a lot of very senior experienced Soldiers, and it is exciting to see what we can do.”
On the final day of the CTC, Forces Command’s Command Sgt. Maj. T. J. Holland joined Everette and Harris to hear representatives from each of the breakout sessions present ideas they had developed to address the respective issues each group worked on. In turn they received feedback on their solutions and were given suggestions on how to further develop the plans they had written out.
The objectives of the CTC were met and all in attendance left with new tools to help make their respective NCOAs better!