31 Things Your Senior Rater Would Like You to Know That He Probably Won’t Tell You

As an opinion piece you can like it or dislike it. I applaud LTC Edwards for sharing his experiences and observations. Like anything, take it with a grain of salt. This is the view from his foxhole. I found several points useful.

I am glad he shared. What have you done to improve the Army today?

Some of it makes sense, but in my opinion a lot of it was BS, and if the author took whether an officer "chose a good wife" into his determination of what kind of OER you get, that's pathetic. Same for whether or not your kids happen to behave at a unit function. There was a time when it was routine for an OER to include a comment or two about the wife. Then the Army said to knock that off, that we are evaluating the officer, not the wife. Seems like this officer didn't get the memo.

There's lots of other examples, but basically a senior rater is supposed to evaluate your potential to perform at higher levels of responsibility. If he is looking at most of that stuff he lists, he's doing a disservice to the rated officer and the Army.

OK, whoever drinks this Kool Aid had better find a new line of work. Most everything there is secondary or tertiary to any real evaluation. If I caught a Dept Head using a list like this, they'd be in for some serious office time. Performance, making any command more successful, likelihood of success at the next rank,etc. are paramount and this list of style points is useful for the category the command puts a member if if they're near the cut line. There are only three categories. The 1/3rd you really want to push forward, the 1/3rd you don't want to harm, and the 1/3rd that sooner or later are better off parting ways. BTW a problem in some of those are just secondary symptoms of a much larger problem that you'd see on the primary grading elements.