What have you done to develop your NCO's outside of the military?

Once a quarter I assemble my NCO's and we get together and do an team building event. In October we went to Escape KC which is a place where they lock you in a room and you have to work together to find a way out. It promotes team work and gets everyone brainstorming to find a solution. Then afterwards we would go somewhere and eat and discuss anything that may be on their minds. From personal issues to military issues. And I try to pass on as much knowledge I can in a fun way without making it seem like work. They feel more relaxed and are open to discussing issues or asking for advice in a more calmer setting then the chaos at work.

Reading is good, Simon Sinek in particular is great (I like his lecture series on start with Why). to my NCOs, I always recommend The Book of Five Rings on Audio, its on iTunes for $2.99 and takes 1.5 hours to listen to. In command I had a good training rotation going where I would send a different platoon to the field for Drill [National Guard]. I would accompany the platoon in the field and the evening of Saturday we would cook out under the sky and talk about life and such. Setting up a situation to get NCOs in a small group worked much better for me than training meetings or random 1 on 1 encounters in the motor pool.

We talked a lot about resilience before resilience became an Army-Mandatory-Institutionalized-Thing ... mostly this was a retelling of some of Dave Grossman's philosophies on combat.

I think with your rank (and my rank) what we get what I call the fog of leadership. Our reality is skewed by what is presented to us. The psychological screens and masks that are automatically (sometimes unconsciously) put on by juniors in the company mean you've got to work hard at understanding whats going on down there. If you can successfully relax those screens for a bit you could bring out some of the topics in this or that book and it'll mean something. If you can't relax the screens it becomes some professional reading to-do thing.

After Simon Sinek's Start with Why, I try to translate big picture company ops to small picture NCO day to day actions. In every encounter I also remind the NCOs that the readiness of the Army depends first on Strength. We need troops to stay in uniform and a leadership environment that fosters retention of our talent.

Teams are built over lunch! Having lunch together every other week and one quarterly team-building event has brought us together. Helps to foster honest, open dialogue and respect each other as people, not just the rank. It's simple but important mentor ship!