text: Leadership and Training for Sustainment Operations
  Sustainment commanders develop staffs and subordinate leaders that create agile and adaptive units, inspire
  resilience in assigned personnel, and maintain focus on the mission in the face of adversity. (See Chapter 2,
  section VI for various command and support relationships that can be used when adapting formations.)
  7-18. Quickly changing conditions and sudden transitions in operations may impact the teamwork and
  cohesion of a formation. Both require adaptation and sustainment leader attention. Examples of changes and
  adaptations include—
  • Changes to sustainment task organization.
  • New sustainment missions or changes in guidance.
  • Changes to operational plans and changes in sustainment missions and support requirements.
  • Periods of intense hardship and fatigue.
  • Sustainment mission failures or setbacks.
  • Reconstitution.
  7-19. Sustainment commanders must develop subordinate leaders that can adapt to the changes in the OE
  and the nature of large-scale combat operations. Training is the vessel to prepare for these changes and
  sustainment leaders must be adept at training task-organized formations and subordinate leaders. Sustainment
  units that can successfully adapt to changing situations depend on leader development and a command
  climate that encourages subordinate leader learning, independent thinking, and taking the initiative. (FM 6-22
  provides additional information on leader development in a learning environment.) Sustainment leaders
  establish conditions for subordinate adaptation by—
  • Developing sustainment leadership experience.
  • Fostering shared understanding.
  • Communicating with staff and subordinates.
  • Developing teams.
  DEVELOPING SUSTAINMENT LEADERSHIP EXPERIENCE
  7-20. The Army develops leaders who are agile, adaptive, and innovative through a mix of education,
  training, and experience. This encourages leaders who act with boldness and initiative to execute missions
  according to doctrine and orders. The goal is to develop Army leaders who clearly provide purpose, direction,
  motivation, and vision to their teams and subordinates while executing missions to support their
  commander’s intent. Sustainment commanders and leaders develop subordinates by preparing them and
  challenging them with greater responsibility, authority, and accountability. Sustainment leaders should
  prepare subordinates to succeed at the next level of responsibility, since large-scale combat operations may
  require them to replace sustainment leaders above them. It is the professional responsibility of all sustainment
  leaders to develop subordinates. See FM 6-22 for more information on leader development.
  7-21. Sustainment commanders and leaders can develop subordinates during training by accepting
  subordinates’ risk and providing accurate feedback at the conclusion of training. Sustainment leaders should
  allow subordinates to accept risk on their behalf during training. They should also ensure subordinates make
  analytic risk decisions while informing higher headquarters of the risks they are accepting. Doing so provides
  a valuable teaching tool to learn what risks are acceptable, which are not, and how to better analyze and
  assess risk.
  7-22. This method of coaching builds a leader’s trust in a subordinate’s judgement and initiative. It also
  builds the subordinate’s trust in the leader. During operations, sustainment leaders must intervene when
  subordinates take risks that exceed potential benefits. Sustainment leaders must inform leaders either at the
  time of the decision or during an after-action review.
  7-23. Instilling risk acceptance into sustainment leaders at all levels comes with accepting mistakes made in
  sincerity during training. Sustainment commanders that allow subordinates to learn from bad decisions create
  a learning climate that allows learning while gaining experience to thrive under pressure. Sustainment leaders
  should enforce the importance of bias towards action by highlighting decision making during operations.
  However, commanders should not constantly endorse or support mistakes that result from repeated lack of
  judgement or inability to learn. Commanders must not tolerate subordinates repeatedly failing to exercise the
  initiative and constant errors or inaction. To ensure subordinates learn from mistakes, sustainment
  commanders must—