Y’all started a great discussion after our post about PAO positions at the brigade level. Lots of competing ideas, all coming from the right places. What’s the right answer? I don’t know, but I believe brigade PAO positions are worth protecting.
Here are some lessons I learned as a deployed BCT PAO captain, in 2015-2016. Maybe I would’ve learned different lessons in different ways if I hadn’t had the job, but I’m glad I did.
- Foster a one-on-one relationship with my commander.
- Brief without a script.
- Write and implement my commander’s unique communication strategy.
- Deal with ridiculous requests without being able to have a senior PAO make a decision.
- Handle competing priorities from multiple higher headquarters PAOs.
- The pros and cons of PA Detachment augmented support, from the brigade’s perspective.
- Be new, earn respect and be liked among a staff where everyone else has worked together for years.
- Work when everyone else was off because I had to, not because someone told me to.
- How it feels to be looked at as just another jabrone captain on the staff.
- Most of the jabrone captains on the staff work for someone else, with their own personality and agenda. They’re all jealous that the PAO doesn’t.
- Where I can and shouldn’t rely on company commanders for support.
- Be completely and utterly alone.
- How to prove to the commander I shouldn’t work under the Information Operations officer.
- How to get all staff primaries to attend, and help them feel involved in, a murder board for the commander.
- How and when to walk into the commander’s office with a problem.
- Rest of the staff is at meetings, MDMP or an exercise? Be there too, even if you’d have an alright excuse to miss it.
- You get the best evals when you stop caring about your evals.
What have you learned?
(Photo by Sgt. Erick Yates, who helped me learn some of these lessons, DVIDS)
