The Attritionist Letters: Subcontracting Leadership Development

In the course of reading “The Attritionist Letters (#10): Subcontracting Leadership Development?”, I have come to the following conclusions in order to answer a few issues / questions. The first issue to be addressed was, to dispute or defend the Author’s (attributed to Anonymous but penned by a “General Screwtape”) central position that training and education should be a centralized and standardized system. The second question was how does the Author’s view differ from Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication 1 (MCDP-1). And the final question was my personal opinion on subcontracting leadership, what methods & practices do I use to train my Marines, and how does that directly influence the leadership development of my subordinates. I will

Leadership development should come in the form of personal development from Commanders and from various Academies or Schools. This method would allow traditional and technical knowledge to be acquired in a manner which provides equal importance to each but by means of separate and distinct lessons.

Addressing the second question of how does the Author’s view differ from MCDP-1, I will illustrate that in three areas of responsibility for education, education content, and educational yield. “General Screwtape” makes several mentions of MCDP-1 in his/her assertions in order to illustrate his central position that Training and Education should be centralized & standardized rather than left solely to Commanders. Taken as it is stated by “General Screwtape”, TECom should totally control all aspects in regards to the Training and Education development of Subordinates which leads me to my response

My focus is to make sure that my Subordinates completely understand not only what they should be doing but why they should be doing it with a comprehension of how what they’re doing works when done correctly. When the Marines understand how something works when done correctly, I have found that they tend to retain the information better and longer. I also approach every situation, leadership challenge, dilemma, and training opportunity from the central idea that I was a junior Marine at some point and through that lens I consider what was most effective in training me and apply those lessons. I regularly self-evaluate using the Leadership traits & principles and task out my Marines through various methods requiring them to evaluate themselves similarly. I do not hand out answers to Marines asking questions but I do provide them with where & how to find the answers; and if I don’t know the answer or how to find the answer, I ensure that I don’t invent an answer in order to appear infallible, but remain humble and find the correct answer with the