Lesson Overview
A good NCO leads soldiers. A better one develops them, so the section, the platoon, and in time the whole Army are stronger for the years that NCO served. The plainest measure of a leader is not how well the team performs while they stand over it, but how well it performs the day they are not there. That is built deliberately, over time.
Lesson 04 taught you to train: to put a defined skill reliably into a soldier. It ended by pointing here, to the work that begins where training a skill leaves off. Training builds a skill; developing builds the soldier. A good NCO does both, but they are not the same task.
A word at the outset, the same one every leadership lesson in this course carries. This is the understanding layer. The real work is done over time, in the appointment, with soldiers whose names you know, and is judged not in an examination but in what those people become. Learn here the shape of the work so you bring it to your own people knowingly.
By the end you will be able to explain the developing NCO's duty to grow the next generation and prepare successors; distinguish training a skill from developing a person, and mentoring from coaching; spot potential and stretch it with responsibility a little ahead of proven ability; use delegation as development while staying responsible for the outcome; give feedback that develops rather than merely judges; grow junior leaders; and explain why the test of a leader is how the team performs in their absence.
Key Terms
- Developing a person: the long growth of a soldier's judgement, confidence, character, and potential over time; larger and slower than training a skill, aimed at what the person can become.
- Mentoring: the longer, trust-based relationship in which an experienced hand guides another's whole growth, not one skill or one problem.
- Coaching: drawing a person's own answers out of them by questioning rather than giving the answer, used where judgement must grow; the technique introduced in Lesson 04, here turned to the long development of a person.
- Potential: what a soldier could become with development, as distinct from what they can do now.
- Stretch: giving responsibility a little ahead of a person's proven ability, with backing, so they grow into it; the chief engine of development.
- Delegation: handing over a real task together with the authority to do it, accepting it will be done differently and that honest mistakes are part of learning, while remaining responsible for the outcome.
- Developmental feedback: feedback given to grow a person; specific, balanced, and forward-looking, aimed at what they will do better next time.
- Succession: deliberately preparing those who will fill your place, so the unit depends on no one person and is never left without the leaders it needs.
The duty to grow the next generation
Begin with the duty itself, because the rest of the lesson is only the craft of discharging it. An NCO is not employed merely to lead the soldiers in front of them well today. The Foundations of Military Leadership course (LDR 201) named Develop as one of the four things every leader does: leave the people in your charge more capable than you found them. For the NCO this carries particular weight, because the NCO is the rank closest to the soldier and is therefore the Army's principal grower of people, just as Lesson 04 showed it to be its principal trainer. The senior soldiers of twenty years hence are, today, junior soldiers and young corporals, and growing them falls first to their NCOs.
Lesson 01 called the NCO the backbone of the Army and said a force is only ever as good as its corporals and sergeants. Beside the duty to develop, that saying gains a second meaning: the Army's strength tomorrow rests on whether today's NCOs grow their successors. A corporal who leads a good section for three years and develops no one has done half the job. One who leaves behind two soldiers ready to be corporals and a second-in-command ready to command has done the whole of it.
Underneath this lies the conviction the Foundations course called the most encouraging sentence in leadership: there is no member who cannot greatly improve. An NCO who privately writes a soldier off stops developing them, and the writing-off becomes true by neglect. The developing NCO assumes instead that almost everyone has more in them than they have shown, and treats it as their job to find it.
Training a skill, developing a person
Set development beside training, which Lesson 04 taught in full, because the two are easily confused. An NCO who treats development as just more training produces soldiers who can perform a long list of skills and still cannot be trusted to think for themselves.
Training a skill has a known correct method, a clear standard, and a defined end. There is a right way to set a bearing or apply a dressing, and the trainer passes it on by the EDIP cycle until the soldier can do it reliably under pressure. You write the aim in one sentence, confirm at the end whether the soldier has met it, and move on. The skill is finite: once sound, it is learned.
Developing a person is none of those things. It has no single method, because what is being grown is the soldier's own judgement, confidence, and character, which grow differently in different people. It has no clean end. And it cannot be confirmed in an afternoon, because its results show only over months and years, in how the soldier handles situations no lesson ever covered. Training puts something into a soldier; development draws something out of them and grows it. The same corporal does both: trains the recruit to apply a dressing, then over the following year develops that recruit's confidence, willingness to lead, and judgement about when to act and when to wait. The first is a lesson; the second is a relationship carried across many ordinary days.
TRAINING A SKILL vs DEVELOPING A PERSON
TRAINING A SKILL DEVELOPING A PERSON
---------------- -------------------
what grows a defined ability judgement, confidence,
(set a bearing) character, potential
method known and correct no single method; varies
(EDIP, Lesson 04) with the person
time a lesson; a serial months and years
the end when the skill is sound never finished
confirmed by "show me" at the end what the person becomes
direction put INTO the soldier drawn OUT of the soldier
tool instructing mentoring, coaching,
stretch, delegation,
feedback
A complete NCO does both, and knows they are not the same job.
This is the distinction Lesson 04 drew between instructing and coaching, now widened from a single problem to a whole person: not drawing out a soldier's judgement on one confused situation, but the patient work of raising a soldier who can be trusted to handle the next confused situation, and the one after that, on their own.
Mentoring and coaching
Two words attach to developing people, and they are not the same. An NCO uses both and should know which they are doing.
Mentoring is the longer, trust-based relationship in which an experienced person guides another's growth over time. It is about the person, across the whole of their development, not one skill or one problem. A mentor is the experienced hand a soldier can go to with a difficulty, a doubt, or an ambition; who knows them well enough to give counsel that fits them; who takes an interest in what they become. Some mentoring is formal. Far more is informal: the soldier who seeks out a corporal they trust, and the corporal who quietly takes that soldier under their wing. Either way it rests on trust built over time and cannot be ordered into existence. A soldier opens up to a mentor they have come to trust, not to a stranger assigned on a form.
Coaching is narrower: a technique rather than a relationship, though one of the chief techniques a mentor uses. It is drawing a person's own answer out of them by questioning rather than handing it over, which you met in Lesson 04 as the right mode for developing judgement. Its discipline is to resist the pull, when a soldier brings you a problem, to simply solve it for them. Ask instead the questions that let them solve it: "What do you think the real problem is? What have you tried? What would you do if that does not work?" An answer a soldier reaches under their own power is one they keep and can repeat without you. One you hand them solves today's problem and develops nothing.
Mentoring is the long road; coaching is one way you walk it. A mentor coaches often, but also tells hard truths, shares experience, steadies a soldier in a bad patch, and takes the long view a single conversation cannot. Resist the commonest failure of the well-meaning NCO: mentoring by giving answers. The soldier always told what to do grows dependent on the mentor, which is the opposite of the point.
MENTORING AND COACHING
MENTORING the long, trust-based relationship: guiding a
person's whole growth over months and years.
.--------------------------------------------.
| shares experience tells hard truths |
| steadies in a bad patch opens doors |
| takes the long view ................. |
| : COACHING : |
| : draws out their : |
| : OWN answers by : |
| : questioning, : |
| : not giving them : |
| :.................: |
'--------------------------------------------'
Coaching is a technique a mentor uses often, not the whole
of mentoring. The aim of both is a soldier who needs you
less over time, not one who depends on you more.
Spotting potential and stretching it
Developing people begins with seeing what is there to develop. The developing NCO looks not only at what a soldier can do now but at what they could become. This is potential, and spotting it is a real skill, because it is not always where you would expect. The loudest soldier is not always the one with the most in them, nor the one who finds the basic skills easiest. Some of the steadiest future leaders are quiet soldiers who do the right thing without being told, keep their heads when others lose theirs, or are the ones the rest of the section instinctively turn to. The NCO who knows their people, as Lesson 04 and the Foundations course both insisted, is the one who spots potential, because it is read off how a soldier behaves over many ordinary days, not off a single performance.
Having spotted it, grow it deliberately. The chief means is stretch: giving a soldier responsibility a little ahead of their proven ability, and backing them through it. People grow into responsibility given a little before they have fully earned it, in a way they never do if only ever given what they have already mastered. The art is in the size of the stretch. Too small and there is no growth. Too large and the soldier is set up to fail, which teaches them that responsibility is dangerous and that you will hand them things they cannot do. The right stretch is the next rung, not the top of the ladder: enough that the soldier has to reach, not so much that they fall, and always with the NCO close enough to catch a real fall before it does harm.
THE STRETCH THAT GROWS A SOLDIER
too little: task well WITHIN proven ability
|####################----------| comfortable;
no growth
the stretch: task a little AHEAD of proven ability, backed
|##############################=====|
^^^^^ reaches,
proven ability ........ here grows grows into it
too much: task far BEYOND proven ability
|##########===================XXXXX| set up to
fail; learns
to fear it
Stretch to the NEXT rung, not the top of the ladder. Back the
soldier through it, and catch a real fall before it does harm.
Backing the soldier matters as much as setting the stretch. To give someone a task ahead of their ability and then leave them to sink is not development but abandonment dressed up as a chance. The developing NCO gives the stretching task, makes clear they have confidence the soldier can do it, stays available without hovering, and steadies them if it wobbles. When the soldier brings it off, the NCO names it: "That was a step up, and you handled it." The soldier learns not only the task but that they are capable of more than they thought, which is the confidence on which the next, larger stretch is built. Develop a soldier this way over a year and you do not merely add to their skills; you change their sense of what they can do.
Delegation as development
Closely tied to stretch is delegation, which the developing NCO must understand as a means of growing people, not merely a way of getting work off their own plate. Delegation for convenience and delegation for development look identical from the outside, the same task handed over, but they differ in intent and effect. Only the second develops anyone.
To delegate for development is to hand over a real task together with the authority to do it. This is the part inexperienced NCOs most often withhold: they hand over the work but keep the decisions, so the soldier becomes a pair of hands carrying out the NCO's choices rather than a person learning to make their own. The judgement, the thing that grows, never passes across. Real delegation gives the soldier the task, the authority to make the calls, and the room to do it their own way. As the Foundations course put it, delegation is not abdication: you remain responsible for the outcome, set the boundaries, and check the result, but inside those boundaries the soldier owns the task and learns from owning it.
Two hard truths make delegation work. First, the soldier will do it differently from how you would have, and that is allowed. There is a powerful pull to step in the moment the soldier's method diverges from your own. Resist it. If their way will reach a good enough result safely, let it run; a soldier only ever allowed to do things exactly as you would has not been developed but used as a remote pair of your hands. Second, honest mistakes are part of learning, and a soldier never allowed to make one is never allowed to grow. The NCO's judgement lies in setting the bounds: the limits inside which a mistake is a lesson and not a danger, so the room to err never extends to anything that would hurt a person or fail someone who depended on the section.
DELEGATION: OFFLOADING vs DEVELOPING
OFFLOADING (work moves, nobody grows)
.------------------------------------------------.
| hand over the WORK, keep the DECISIONS |
| soldier carries out YOUR choices |
| step in the moment they do it differently |
| mistakes punished or pre-empted |
'------------------------------------------------'
result: a task done, a person unchanged
DEVELOPING (work moves AND a person grows)
.------------------------------------------------.
| hand over the TASK and the AUTHORITY to do it |
| soldier makes the calls, their own way |
| accept it will be done DIFFERENTLY |
| honest mistakes, within safe bounds, are lessons |
| you stay responsible for the OUTCOME and check it|
'------------------------------------------------'
result: a task done, a person larger
Same task handed over. Only the second develops anyone.
Delegation is not abdication: you own the outcome throughout.
Done well, delegation is among the strongest development tools an NCO has, because it is a plain statement of trust. The soldier handed a real task with real authority understands that the NCO believes them capable, and rises to it. The corporal who delegates the running of a stores check or the leading of part of a task, then stands back and lets the soldier own it, develops that soldier far more than the corporal who keeps every decision and wonders why their soldiers never seem ready for more.
Feedback that develops
None of this works without feedback, because a soldier being stretched and delegated to needs to know honestly how they are doing. Feedback is how development is steered. The Foundations course called honest feedback the single most useful gift a leader can give, and the one most often withheld. This lesson sharpens it into the kind that grows people, as against feedback that merely judges.
Developmental feedback has three marks. It is specific: it names the exact action and the precise fix. "Your orders were good, but you gave the timings before the situation, so the section was holding numbers it could not yet make sense of; give the picture first, then the timings" develops. "That was a bit muddled" develops nothing, because the soldier cannot act on it. It is balanced: it names what to keep as well as what to change, because feedback that is only ever criticism wears a person down and teaches them that being developed is being found wanting. And it is forward-looking: its purpose is the next time. The question is not "how did you do?" as a verdict closed and filed, but "what will you do better next time, and how?" Throughout, the discipline is the one Lesson 04 taught for correcting a skill: correct the fault, not the person, now applied to judgement.
FEEDBACK THAT DEVELOPS
SPECIFIC name the exact action and the exact fix
"give the picture before the timings"
not "that was a bit muddled"
BALANCED what to KEEP and what to CHANGE, both, not
criticism only: "the brief was clear; the
timings came too early"
FORWARD- aimed at NEXT time, not a verdict on last
LOOKING "next time, situation first, then timings"
not "six out of ten"
AIMED AT to grow the person, not to wound or to mark
GROWTH correct the fault, not the person (Lesson 04)
A verdict closes the book. Developmental feedback opens the
next chapter: the soldier leaves knowing what to aim at.
The richest source of developmental feedback is the honest after-action review, taught as a craft in the Junior Leadership Course (LDR 301) and named by the Foundations course as one face of Evaluate. The review is built for development: a soldier who reasons out for themselves what was meant to happen, what did, why there was a difference, and what to change has been developed, not merely told. The developing NCO uses it deliberately, drawing the quieter soldiers into the reasoning, coaching them toward the lesson rather than announcing it, and going first on their own mistakes so the soldiers learn that being developed is safe and honest, not a hunt for fault.
Growing junior leaders in particular
All of this applies to every soldier, but with special force to the junior leaders coming up: the corporals and section seconds-in-command who are the Army's next layer of command and, in time, its next NCOs. Their development most repays the effort, because they will themselves develop others. A junior leader you grow well does not just become one good leader but the source of more.
They are, in large part, the product of the Junior Leadership Course (LDR 301), which taught them to take a section, hold its standard, give orders, plan a task, lead in the field, run an after-action review, and look after their people. The developing NCO's job is to recognise that product and grow it further, because the course gave them the foundation but did not finish them. Leadership is grown in the appointment, not the classroom. What the new junior leader needs now is exactly what this lesson has described, turned on them: a mentor, coaching that grows their judgement, stretch a little ahead of where the course left them, real delegation, and honest feedback on how they are leading. An NCO who gives a newly-appointed corporal all of that over a year turns a course graduate into a real section commander.
There is a particular discipline here: develop junior leaders through their command, not over it. Watching a junior leader handle their section less well than you would, the pull is to step in and lead it for them, which fixes today's problem and undermines the leader you are trying to grow, because the section learns to look past their own commander to you. Resist it. Let the junior leader lead, coach them privately afterward, and correct them in front of their soldiers only when safety or the standard genuinely demands it, and then in a way that supports their authority rather than stripping it. This is the loyalty downward that Lesson 02 set out in the command partnership, applied to a subordinate leader: build their standing with their soldiers, do not spend it.
Succession and the test of absence
All the threads of this lesson gather into one idea, the truest test of whether an NCO has developed their people or only led them: succession, and the performance of the team in the leader's absence. The question is plain. If you were taken out of the picture tomorrow, posted, injured, simply away, how would your section perform? A team that falls apart the moment its leader is gone was never developed; it was merely driven, and its capability lived in one person who has now been removed. A team that carries on well has been developed, because its capability lives in the people, where the leader deliberately put it.
This is an uncomfortable test, because it cuts against a natural vanity. It can be quietly pleasing to be the indispensable NCO without whom nothing runs, and an insecure leader may even foster that dependence because it feels like importance. It is in truth a failure, and a dangerous one, because a unit that depends on any one person is one absence from collapse. In a small army where any soldier may be called away at short notice, that is a fragility it cannot afford. The developing NCO works toward the opposite: a section that does not need them, a second-in-command ready to command, soldiers ready to be the second-in-command. The aim of developing people, in the end, is to make yourself dispensable.
THE TEST OF A LEADER: THE TEAM IN THEIR ABSENCE
IF THE LEADER IS REMOVED TOMORROW...
NOT DEVELOPED (driven) DEVELOPED (grown)
.----------------------. .----------------------.
| section falters | | section carries on |
| nobody ready to step | | 2ic ready to command |
| up | | soldiers ready to be |
| capability lived in | | the 2ic |
| ONE person, now gone | | capability lives in |
| | | the PEOPLE |
'----------------------' '----------------------'
The aim of developing people is to make yourself
DISPENSABLE: a team one absence from failure was never
developed, only driven. Succession is the proof of the work.
This is why succession is a duty and not an afterthought. The NCO prepares their own successors deliberately, so that when they move on, as every NCO eventually does, the appointment passes to someone ready for it and the unit does not skip a beat. The duty runs all the way up the non-commissioned line: the corporal grows a soldier ready to be a corporal, the sergeant grows a corporal ready to be a sergeant, and at the top, as Lesson 08 (The Senior NCO: Authority, Judgement, and the Long View) will set out, the most senior soldiers carry the same responsibility for the whole corps.
The long investment in people
End on what this duty asks and gives back. Developing people is slow. Its results come not at the end of a lesson but months and years later, often after the NCO who did the work has moved on and will never see the harvest. It requires patience with people who are growing and will therefore stumble, the discipline to let a soldier do a thing imperfectly today so they can do it well unaided tomorrow, and the security of character to take satisfaction in another's growth rather than one's own indispensability. It is, in plain terms, harder and less immediately rewarding than simply doing the job yourself.
And yet it is among the most worthwhile things a soldier can do with their service. There is a real pleasure, deeper than the pride of a task well done, in watching a nervous recruit become a steady soldier, a steady soldier become a junior leader, and a junior leader become an NCO who develops others in turn, knowing you had a hand in it. The Royal Kaharagian Army is small, lightly armed, and built to serve and protect rather than to conquer. It cannot out-number or out-spend anyone, and its strength is and always will be the quality of its people. That quality is grown one soldier at a time, by NCOs who chose to develop their people and not merely use them, in the service of The Prince and the people the Army exists to protect.
This lesson has carried the NCO's craft from training a skill to developing a person. It picks up the coaching of judgement that Lesson 04 (The NCO as Trainer) handed forward, widens it into the long growth of people, and hands it on to Lesson 08 (The Senior NCO: Authority, Judgement, and the Long View), where developing people becomes the developing of the whole corps. It rests on the partnership of Lesson 02 and the standards of Lesson 03, draws its method from the Junior Leadership Course (LDR 301), and discharges in the appointment the duty to Develop that the Foundations of Military Leadership course (LDR 201) named.
In Practice: A Sergeant Growing a Corporal Over a Year
A platoon sergeant has, among their corporals, one recently appointed straight off the Junior Leadership Course: keen, competent in the basic skills, but new to command and unsure of their own judgement. The sergeant treats the growing of this corporal not as a single conversation but as a year's deliberate work.
The sergeant begins by spotting what is there. The corporal is conscientious, the soldiers like them, and they have a steadier head than they realise. The gap is not skill; it is confidence and judgement. The corporal hesitates, looks to the sergeant for decisions that are properly their own, and leads a little tentatively. The sergeant resolves to develop the judgement and the confidence, and settles into the role of mentor.
THE SERGEANT'S YEAR WITH THE NEW CORPORAL
SPOT sees potential (steady, liked, conscientious) and the
real gap (confidence and judgement, not skill)
MENTOR becomes the trusted experienced hand the corporal goes
to; takes the long view of who this corporal becomes
COACH answers questions with questions; draws out the
corporal's own judgement instead of handing answers
STRETCH tasks a little ahead of the course's product, backed:
a serial, part of a move, leading the section harder
DELEGATE hands over a real task WITH the authority; lets it be
done differently; lets an honest mistake become a
lesson, within safe bounds; owns the outcome throughout
FEEDBACK specific, balanced, forward-looking, in private after;
corrects in front of the soldiers only when the
standard demands, and then supporting the corporal
SUCCESSION a year on: a real section commander, and the start of
a sergeant. The platoon no longer depends on one person.
Across the year the sergeant does what the figure sets out. They coach rather than answer: when the corporal asks, "Sergeant, what should I do about the soldier who keeps turning up unprepared?", the sergeant resists solving it, asking instead what the corporal thinks the real cause is and what they will do if their first idea fails, so the corporal owns the answer. They stretch, delegating real tasks with real authority, letting the corporal do them their own way and treating an honest misjudged timing as a lesson and not a crime. And they develop the corporal through their command, not over it, correcting them before the soldiers only when safety or the standard demands, and then in a way that leaves their authority intact.
A year on, the change is plain, and it is the kind no skill lesson produces. The tentative graduate has become a real section commander, sure of their own judgement, trusted by their soldiers, and beginning, with a soldier of their own, to do for someone else what the sergeant did for them. The sergeant could instead have spent the year correcting the corporal's section to the standard themselves; it would have looked good, and nothing would have grown.
Check Your Understanding
- Explain the difference between training a skill and developing a person, using the contrast with Lesson 04 (The NCO as Trainer). Why can a skill be confirmed at the end of a lesson while a person's development cannot, and why will an NCO who treats development as merely more training produce soldiers who can perform a list of skills but cannot be trusted to think for themselves?
- Distinguish mentoring from coaching, and explain how they relate. What does it mean to stretch a soldier by giving responsibility a little ahead of their proven ability, why is the size of the stretch the art of it, and what must the NCO do besides setting the task? Then explain why real delegation hands over the authority and not only the work, and what the NCO stays responsible for.
- Describe what makes feedback developmental rather than merely a verdict. Then explain the test of succession, why an NCO who makes themselves indispensable has failed rather than succeeded, and what it means to develop a junior leader through their command rather than over it.
Reflection (write a short paragraph): This lesson argues that the plainest measure of a leader is not how the team performs while they stand over it but how it performs in their absence, and that the aim of developing people is, strangely, to make yourself dispensable. Think honestly about a real team you have been part of, in the Army or out of it, and ask how it would have performed if its leader had been taken out of the picture: was its capability grown into the people, or did it live in one person? Then turn it on yourself. Think of one person you are responsible for whom you could develop, and describe the stretch you could give them, the authority you would have to hand over and resist taking back, and the honest, forward-looking feedback you would give them. What is hardest for you about letting them do it their own way and make their own honest mistakes, and why is doing so the heart of developing them?
Summary
- A good NCO leads soldiers; a better one develops them, leaving the section and the Army stronger than they found it and preparing their own successors. The plainest measure of a leader is how the team performs in their absence, and this quiet form of leadership outlasts the appointment.
- Training a skill (Lesson 04) has a known method, a standard, and a defined end, and puts an ability into a soldier; developing a person has no single method and no end, grows over months and years, and draws out the soldier's judgement, confidence, character, and potential. A complete NCO does both.
- Mentoring is the long, trust-based relationship that guides a person's whole growth; coaching is the technique, used often within it, of drawing out a person's own answers rather than giving them. The aim of both is a soldier who needs you less over time, so beware mentoring by handing out answers.
- Spot potential by reading what a soldier could become off many ordinary days. Grow it chiefly by stretch: responsibility a little ahead of proven ability, to the next rung and not the top of the ladder, backed through.
- Delegation develops only when it hands over the task and the authority, accepts it will be done differently, and lets honest mistakes within safe bounds become lessons, while the NCO stays responsible for the outcome. It is not abdication; done well it is a statement of trust.
- Developmental feedback is specific, balanced, and forward-looking, aimed at growth and the next time rather than a verdict on the last; it corrects the fault and not the person (Lesson 04). Its richest source is the honest after-action review (Junior Leadership Course, LDR 301).
- Junior leaders, the product of the Junior Leadership Course (LDR 301), most repay development because they will develop others; grow them through their command and not over it. Succession is the proof of the work and a duty up the whole non-commissioned line, reaching the long view of the corps in Lesson 08 (The Senior NCO: Authority, Judgement, and the Long View). Developing people is a slow, selfless investment whose aim is to make yourself dispensable, discharging the duty to Develop named by the Foundations of Military Leadership course (LDR 201) and mastered in the appointment itself.
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