Resiliency: The Sergeants Major Positive Impact

Introduction

Sergeants Major are senior leaders who significantly impact their working environment, more so matters concerning staff morale and stress management. In addition, Sergeants Major assists their colleagues to work better by embracing positive psychology and resiliency that are powerful tools for managing unproductive behaviors and stress. Master resilient training (MRT) provides an effective solution to the emotional issues facing military personnel and which also places the Sergeants Major at the heart of intervention. As such, Sergeants Major can adequately utilize resiliency to help their colleagues in managing emotional problems. In this regard, the following discussion delves into how Sergeants Major can use positive psychology, acquired through the general master resilient training (MRT), to assist colleagues to boost morale as well as mitigate other stress-related detrimental practices such as substance abuse and self-harm.

Military as a Stressful Profession

Meredith, Sherbourne, and Gaillot (2011) maintain that despite the fact that virtually all professions have specific stress and stress causers, the military professionals undergo more stressing conditions. This is because the military personnel more often experience scenarios that end up converting them into inhumane people that in turn make them unsociable beings due to both acute as well as chronic stress. For instance, the scholars point at the issue where soldiers often rush to life-threatening areas where other people are fleeing from and refer to such as an excellent case of making them afraid and then stressed. Further, soldiers’ training hardly incorporates adequate stress management skills as the key objective of today’s training merely covers the use of sophisticated arsenals. Similarly, Molendijk, Kramer, and Verweij (2016) reinstate that military personnel often undertake their role with torn spirits as they weigh between flight or fight. Researchers argue that officers end up resolving to fight, which further exposes them to additional difficult scenarios which necessitate the profound utilization of skills and energy. Immediate use of high energy then turns on other reactions in the soldiers’ bodies which trigger multiple emotional issues such as shivering of muscles and pulse issues (Meredith, Sherbourne, and Gaillot, 2011). Molendijk, Kramer, and Verweij (2016) reinstate that the military stress causes varying side effects that provoke the manifestation of stressors anytime. In this respect, the scholars maintain that witnessing the death of a colleague or civilians during war significantly leads to stress. As such, leaders can play a great deal in assisting junior soldiers in stress management. 

In the same note, Molendijk, Kramer, and Verweij (2016) argue that although it is real that military personnel undergo massive stress in the line of duty, little efforts have been put in place to assist the situation. Moreover, the problems regarding stress reactivity as well as the manner in which soldiers ought to ensure nobility while facing highly traumatizing instances are vital in improving soldiers’ morale and positive psychology. Rubio et al. (2015) also identified that soldiers suffer profoundly from both psychological and psychosocial stresses not only when performing job-related tasks, but even when faced with challenging family circumstances that need high energy and also involves tension. The study further determined that soldiers often demonstrate more psychosocial stress symptoms on encountering or perceiving a potential threat that relates or resembles one faced previously. Equally important, the issue of chronic and acute stress is also covered by Gindi et al. (2016) who state that they have been significantly incapacitated scores of soldiers. This is because acute stresses amongst military personnel make them unable to differentiate between stressful job tasks from the domestic misunderstanding that need to be handled gently. On the other hand, the chronic stress incapacitates soldiers in that they undergo life-long depression. 

MRT as the Right Solution to the Emotional Issues Facing Military Personnel

While referring to the current shift of attention to the MRT, Pao (2010) reiterates that modern day’s military organizations have continuously devoted to developing their warfighters with something more essential than what they previously embraced. This new development is commonly referred to as the Master Resilience Training (MRT). It is offered to leaders of the army and navy troops to equip them with comprehensive soldier fitness skills. In this respect, MRT enhances soldiers’ social, emotional, physical, family, and spiritual strengths that in turn enable them to manage stresses from both the job and social. Notwithstanding, Pao (2010) maintains that such training is mainly targeted on army leaders who are required to pass the skills and knowledge to their juniors. Notably, the scholar argues that this type of coaching is currently given to Sergeants Major who play the most significant role regarding troop management and stress control amongst the personnel. With this regard MRT appreciates the need to assist soldiers as well as their family members and civilians on possible ways to develop more resilience, and in turn allow soldiers to incorporate better with the society despite undertaking highly stressful tasks. 

Moreover, de Visse et al. (2016) notes that while issues such as accidents, divorce, and death were profoundly traumatizing in the past, the MRT has allowed soldiers to major with the positives and not worries that are often accompanied by such incidences. This way, soldiers have been able to grow into better persons with adequate control of stressful scenarios and better service delivery. In the same token, soldiers undergoing the MRT are made to realize their weaknesses, more so while making decisions that involve high emotions. This assists them in remaining focused even in times that would otherwise distract them from functioning well due to emotional burden. Importantly, MRT program not only teaches military personnel on how to manage their stresses but also involves civilian studies regarding potential ways on how to control their emotions such that they do not affect their society members who are in the military. Similarly, skills acquired by military leaders, as well as fellow troops, through the MRT program significantly assists them to control their emotions and thoughts which further allow them to manage their individual and professional relationships better. Therefore, MRT gives military warriors essential tools and skills to cope with the emotional and mental stressors that they encounter daily, hence allowing them to lead balanced lives.

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How the Sergeants Major Can Adequately Utilize Resiliency to Help Their Colleagues in Managing Emotional Problems

De Visse et al. (2016) defines resiliency as one’s capability to utilize positive mental skills to maintain psychological steadiness and focus when facing adversities or challenges. Moreover, Seligman (2011) purports that leadership is defined by the extent to which a leader can influence his or her followers.  This way, the scholar argues that Sergeants Major too are able to influence their troops in matters regarding stress management, more so after undergoing the MRT programs that train them on resiliency. In addition, Sergeants Major too play a significant role in helping members who have undergone the MRT initiative (which significantly focusses on leaders with junior troops- merely brushing through the program) to uphold the skills learned. In this respect, Kwok, Wong, and Lee (2014) maintain that Sergeants Major, as military leaders can help fellow troops to embrace lessons learned through MRT by encouraging them to cherish the support and interactions that they get from the society. That is because a good relationship at the family level and amongst friends goes a long way in assisting one to accomplish professional tasks as required, and in a loving manner that significantly reduces the levels of stress encountered. Notwithstanding, such encouragement by Sergeants Major also promotes soldiers’ involvement in the community issues where the soldiers get vital support that in turn promotes their esteem (Hames, 2014). Similarly, there is a skill taught in the MRT program also encourages troops to view both job and social challenges as a learning process. Therefore, this is another way through which Sergeants Major can help fellow troops to mitigate stresses (Rice & Liu, 2016). This way, Sergeants encourage their fellow soldiers to develop habits that treat problems as opportunities to challenge one’s ability, and which also gives them the ability to grow and achieve more in life. 

Additionally, Wang et al. (2015) argue that Sergeant Majors are invaluable in leading fellow troops to avoid making dramas while in a crisis. This is attained when the leaders help colleagues to learn that challenges and stress are an ordinary part of life and can be efficiently overcome by responding to them in the right way. That way, soldiers can learn that the level of stress that they encounter, both in the job and in ordinary life instances depends on the interpretation of and response to events, and thus controllable. Moreover, Sergeants Major does a great job of encouraging fellow troops to celebrate their success. This is because the move silences any internal groaning and fears of failure that might have had emotionally bothered the forces while preparing for or undertaking any task. This, coupled with encouraging junior soldiers to embrace the habit of reviewing what succeeded at the end of each day, and congratulating self or group for the achievement is said by Rice, and Liu (2016) to be essential. This is because it trains the personnel mind to major on success instead of meditating on negativities and other failures that significantly hurt the soldiers’ heart, and make their brains worrisome. Notwithstanding, Sergeants Major can also assist their fellow soldiers to manage stress by encouraging them to develop achievable goals that are directed by purposes. This way, the leaders can adequately attain their objective by ensuring that the troops have realistic goals that are worked towards on a daily basis. This should then be coupled with the initiative of taking positive action even amidst adversities as it keeps one in control of things as reiterated by Esterhuyse (2013). Similarly, Faulk et al. (2013) argue that Sergeants Major can also impact their fellow soldiers positively by encouraging them to practice optimism as well as cultivating positive view towards self. This is because winning whatever situation simply requires one to set his or her mind to work for one’s benefits and not dwelling on challenges every time.

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In conclusion, the above discussion has successfully identified resilience as the most significant Sergeants Majors’ positive impact on fellow troops. This was achieved by proceeding through a set of three sections, one depicting the real situation of the military profession, where stress forms a significant part of their daily life. This is because they encounter challenging instances, which the ordinary human being often flees from, in most cases, without adequate training on how to manage them. These include both job and social-related challenges that affect soldiers’ performance both psychologically and psychosocially. In the second section, the above discussion has dealt on the MRT program that focusses on training soldiers on how to best manage stress and boost job productivity. This particular section has provided some of the effectiveness of MRT training and also established why Sergeants Majors are essential in troops as they are the primary focus of such training. As such, the second section serves as a link between the first and the third, where the stressful nature of the military profession is shown to be manageable through the use of resilience skills learned by Sergeants Majors during in MRT programs.