Dam Neck, Va. – If you’ve ever sat through petty officer leadership course and thought you could do lead it better, now’s your chance to chime in.
Commands must give sailors leadership training before they advance to the next paygrade. Now officials are looking to revamp this training for first and second classes — ground up.
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“We’re not going into this with any preconceived notions,” said Don Squibb, project lead for the review at the Center for Personal and Professional Development.
The review is being done in two parts, online surveys and in person focus groups, with the results from both going into a final report.
The online surveys are open to E-1 through O-6, active and reserve sailors. Three separate surveys are planned. The first, which aims to assess how much time sailors spend doing technical, management and leadership tasks, is up and running. Sailors can find it at https://www.research.net/s/LDRSHP_WORKTIME.
The focus of the follow-on surveys will be determined later, based on what areas researchers decide to drill down into, Squibb said. All surveys are anonymous.
The review also plans to have face time with sailors, as researchers travel to fleet areas to conduct focus groups.
Commands will be asked to nominate sailors for the focus groups, each of which are slated to be two hours long and will consist of a cross section of sailors, three from each paygrade, E-4 through E-6.
Sailors will be asked questions about their current leadership roles and will also be polled for ideas on training topics, based on what they feel they need to know in their current positions — or wish they’d known.
“We’re casting a wide net because we need to first define from the fleet sailor’s perspective what the training should be,,” Sqibb said.
