Are you receiving your initial and quaterly counseling regularly?

Before I retired, I never even got an initial counseling when I got to a unit. I tried to do my counseling forms for my soldiers when I had them. I was told that those are not a priority. I can agree that they are not in an emergency situation. But everything seems to be any emergency. The real emergency happens when they want to Art 15 or discharge a soldier. Then they ask for the paperwork and want it yesterday. I had a situation just like that. I politely reminded my PS that he told me not to do any until he told me to do them. Suddenly I am a POS NCO. I don't follow order and regs. Now he wants to counsel me and relive me as squad leader. I had all the statements ready and showed them to the PS but did not do the counseling be cause I was ordered not to. He told me to have the SM sign and back date them for the correct dates. I refuse to do this. I was called every name you could think of. I was not "doing what was best for the unit and the military" I was told. I learned to get things in writing and in this case I got it on tape!! I let him know I had a recorder in my pocket and if he wanted to we could take all of this to the BN CSM. He tried to order me to give him the recorder as it was an illegal recording. I just said we can go to legal. I had issues with this PS on many occasions. That is why I had the recorder. He would say things then lie and I wound up in trouble many times because of this person. This is why we have such issues. You are told not to do things and when you don't you are the problem. Then want to back date which is highly against regs. But it is done all the time. I got tired of keeping the cycle going so I did what I felt was right. It may not have been. But I feel that if you do the correct thing to begin with you won't have to do the wrong thing later. This PS never counseled any of the squad leader and I was one of them. He tried to get us all to backdate statements after that to cove his backside. I refused. He wound up in the training room. And the soldier in question was put into another platoon where they thrived and got promoted. Just goes to show how important good leadership can be. And when you have a bad leader you have to cover yourself and do the right thing and may even have to put your own self on the line to help a soldier.

After becoming more familiar with the regulation, and learning recently that I have become a rater I will insist on doing counselings and seeking to be counseled. I firmly believe that if it is worth doing then it is worth getting in writing.

I wasn't too happy when I had found out by a sergeant that I was her rater and she was due an eval next month.