How are other team leaders adapting to the new soldiers coming in?

As old as the Army itself...some NCO said it about you. These new soldiers will say it about their new soldiers in 5 years. Just uphold the correct standards correctly, and things seem to work out.

Now I am willing to bet you think this is just an issue in the Army. It's not. I bought a fast casual restaurant a couple of years ago and my employees were primarily 17-23 years old. When I first started I too looked at them using myself as a lens or a base standard. Over time though (a few months) they developed and adapted and some started to take initiative without being told. I found that some of them were so good I could use them as team leads.......teaching the next batch of new hires. So my theory it is human nature to look at others this way and use yourself with 3-5 years of experience as a measuring stick BUT you have to be more realistic. Just to give you a few humorous real life examples of what I had to go through with new employees in the 17-23 year old age group......read on. This was in the past two years and fairly recent.

Had one of them come running up to me while I was in the stockroom doing inventory that the restaurant dining room toilet was flooding but he fixed it by closing and locking the door so the water couldn't get out (he was 17 and obviously his Parents took care of the bathroom at home). I had another 19 year old young lady when I asked her to start washing dishes tell me with a straight face as I was showing her how to fill the three sinks properly.........I would have to show her how to wash dishes because she never washed a dish before (I wanted to laugh but as you know some Parents do everything for their kids). Another guy, thought he had a great idea of using the french fryer for also cooking bacon because his Mom did that at home (yes we had Muslim customers). That incident pissed me off because I had to drain the oil and replace the filter and oil and listen to customers complain about not having french fries available and that I was incompetent. So in my case I did not have a Cadre of Drill Sergeants to pre-train these people for 4-6 months. Even if I did, some of that inexperience would still slip through because a Drill Sergant can't train everyone 100%. My favorite was a newly hired 17 year old telling a customer to go F himself, because he made a derogatory comment about his football team......I had to take a quick break there because I was laughing about it and you should have seen the look on the customers face. So the Assistant Manager, steped in and handled that one for me. Anyways, not in the Army now and was never a NCO but I can say your experience probably is not unique and you have to be patient and give people more time to develop.

So, it has been a very long time since I have been in your shoes, but the problems, as I remember them, were very similar, and the simple answer is that the team leaders don't adapt, the new Soldiers have to adapt. As long as you are setting and enforcing the standards there should be no issue, and if the new Soldiers can't comply then there are ways to get them to, and if that fails then they go home, plain and simple.