Understanding Professionalism in the Military

The purpose of this campaign is to have Soldiers at all levels understand what is needed to earn the status of “professionals”. Soldiers must understand their strengths and weaknesses to better themselves in their professions. Ethics, morals, motivation, and self-control are what build a professional. It’s crucial that all levels of leaders in the military incorporate and project these characteristics during exercises and training. The best way of incorporating this is through open discussion amongst Soldiers and leaders alike. Communication amongst us all will open up the meaning of what we contribute to the Army as a whole and how we are all professionals.

What does it mean to be a profession? Professions produce expert work through

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This distinction makes Soldier’s professions unique. In the Army National Guard and the Army Reserves, Soldiers have to juggle three separate tasks. They must maintain this preeminent military task, their civilian occupations, and their MOS. Being able to manage these three tasks shows the quality of personnel that we have in the Army and shows how our Soldiers are professionals.

As leaders, we have to take the time to develop our future leaders and make them professionals. We need to instill the skills, leadership styles, and ethics that we have gathered and learned from our mentors. It needs to be a top priority to pass down our qualities to help establish the Army as a profession. Our expertise, trust, development, values, and service are some of the key attributes. These attributes are the same as the Army Values that make us professionals. Loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity, and personal courage are the essential values that we need to pass down to our future

We can provide our Soldiers with updated records, ensure promotions are deserved and processed, and simply ensuring they’re records accurate. When we complete these “behind the scenes” acts for them, it shows we care about their well-being and shows them, through their records, where they excel and where they can focus on making improvements. The other role is to simply lead by example. We need to instill our knowledge, ethics, and leadership skills on them to help them grow in the areas where they can use the improvements. I believe these roles will help change our Soldiers for the better and make our Soldiers the next leaders and professionals of the Army