By CW4(P) Jeffrey D. Starritt: This fiscal year, the Aviation Branch and the Army established the Combat Aviation Brigade Command Chief Warrant Officer position. At units other than brigade level, Senior Warrant Officer Advisors provide a valuable service to commanders, staff, Soldiers and especially Warrant Officers. Those warrant officers who assume the additional duties in conjunction with their primary duties represent the Army Profession. — CW5 Randy Godfrey, Chief Warrant Officer of the Aviation Branch
The author, CW4 Jeff Starritt (left), HHC, 12th Combat Aviation Brigade, provides career advice to CW3 Heath Morecraft, Co. H, 1-214th General Support Aviation Battalion, in Mannheim, Germany./ The author, CW4 Jeff Starritt (left), HHC, 12th Combat Aviation Brigade, provides career advice to CW3 Heath Morecraft, Co. H, 1-214th General Support Aviation Battalion, in Mannheim, Germany./ ARMY PHOTO BY SGT THOMAS E. MORT, 12TH CAB PAO
Serving as the chief warrant officer of a battalion (CWOB) for just over two years, I came to the realization that we, as warrant officers, need to do a better job of mentoring and leading within the cohort.
Assuming the duties of CWOB, I didn’t know what to expect, nor were there many places to seek advice. I only knew one other person who had held the position, and that was the person I was replacing. He performed the job for over a year, but was also the unit standardization pilot, spending most of his time on those duties. With this in mind, my two main concerns quickly became how I was going to keep busy doing a job that didn’t exist as a standalone assignment before me, and what would my main focus be?
Learning the Ropes
To begin, I took guidance from my initial counseling, a well-timed document for me as I started just a couple of weeks before my battalion commander. He crafted a set of duties that put me on the right path. I knew that I would be reviewing Officer Evaluation Reports (OERs) and advising the commander on warrant officer manning, but those tasks would only come around once or twice a week and take very little time. What would I do with the rest of the week?
I soon figured out that mentorship would be the biggest part of my job. People brought questions about career progression, permanent change of station (PCS) moves, ethical dilemmas, uniforms, Officer Record Briefs (ORBs) and anything else you could think of. I was happy to answer questions I knew the answers to, research the ones I didn’t know the answers to, and give advice on all manners of subjects.
CW4 Jeff Starritt and wife, Beth, prepare to greet the next guest in the receiving line at the 5-158th Avn. Regt. Mission Complete Gala, Bad Windsheim, Germany, May 15th, 2015.I had to learn how to mentor the tech warrants in the unit as their jobs and duties are vastly different than mine. At a certain point, it seemed that I was the only one in the battalion doing any mentoring. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to do that work. I was enjoying myself and staying busy, but I thought that a lot of what I was doing should have been handled by peers and seniors at the company level. Why didn’t anyone at the company level know how to arrange a ribbon rack or determine if an ORB was accurate?
Nurturing Mentorship
I should have seen it sooner, but instead of mentoring individuals one at a time, I should have been teaching folks to be a mentor and impressing upon them the importance of all of us helping each other to learn and grow. It certainly was easier for me to spend time researching regulations on personnel actions than for someone who was trying to manage maintenance for 35 helicopters, but I couldn’t be the only guy around that knew how to write an OER support form. Bringing those somewhat conflicting thoughts together, I started putting my job in perspective. I needed to determine when to give an answer directly to one person, and when to try to give that answer to all of the warrants in the battalion, and when to have them figure it out on their own. If I was the only one giving out answers and advice, then would anyone else see that as part of their job?
In the end, reviewing OERs and advising the commander on manning turned out to be the only part of the job that I had to do alone, the rest of it I tried to turn into a team effort. Again, warrant officers need to do a better job of mentoring and leading within the cohort. That is starting to occur now that the days of 99% promotion rates are behind us, but we have a long way to go. There are some that think formalizing positions for senior warrant officers (like a command chief warrant officer at the brigade level) is not the right thing to do, but from what I have seen over the last two years, we have too many warrant officers that know very little of how the Army works outside of their lane. That makes it very difficult to provide the best service to the Army if we don’t know how we fit into the big picture. I didn’t come to this thought early enough to be very effective at working to show people how the Army runs (or even to really learn myself), but it is one area where formal leadership in the cohort can do a great deal of good.
CW4(P) Jeffrey D. Starritt was the chief warrant officer of the battalion for 5th Battalion, 158th Aviation Regiment and is now serving as the standardization officer of the 12th Combat Aviation Brigade in Katterbach, Germany.
The author, CW4 Jeff Starritt (left), HHC, 12th Combat Aviation Brigade, provides career advice to CW3 Heath Morecraft, Co. H, 1-214th General Support Aviation Battalion, in Mannheim, Germany./ The author, CW4 Jeff Starritt (left), HHC, 12th Combat Aviation Brigade, provides career advice to CW3 Heath Morecraft, Co. H, 1-214th General Support Aviation Battalion, in Mannheim, Germany./ ARMY PHOTO BY SGT THOMAS E. MORT, 12TH CAB PAO
CW4 Jeff Starritt and wife, Beth, prepare to greet the next guest in the receiving line at the 5-158th Avn. Regt. Mission Complete Gala, Bad Windsheim, Germany, May 15th, 2015.
