NCOs and Warrants

We Need Each Other

Chief Warrant Officer 2 Dylan C. Fackler

U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command

August 29, 2025

Download the PDF

I was a private in a battalion intelligence (S2) shop in the 1st Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division in 2009. My first line NCO served his entire enlistment in the same shop and was preparing for his Expiration Term of Service (ETS). His best advice on any day was to bide my time and ETS as well. Luckily, I had a succession of senior NCOs invested in my development.

These dedicated NCOs sent me to multiple Military Occupational Specialty (MOS)-specific training courses and counseled me on what the Army was outside the 82nd. Not all Soldiers have this luck at their first duty station.

I was promoted to staff sergeant in that shop and believed I knew all I should at that grade to develop the junior enlisted personnel entrusted to me. I was confident and wrong — classic Dunning-Kruger effect in action. Such bias “causes people to overestimate their knowledge or ability, particularly in areas with which they have little to no experience” (Vandergriendt, 2022, para. 1).

Fast forward to 2021. I was a warrant officer in the 82nd Airborne Division, this time in the 2nd Brigade. From this new vantage point, I saw the same confidence and minimal development I once had as a young NCO.

To increase professional development over the next two years, I cultivated intrinsic relationships with the NCO corps across the brigade, resulting in more cohesive training (a core NCO and warrant officer responsibility).

Relationships matter for NCOs and warrants seeking to maximize training in the institutional, operational, and self-development domains of the Army Leader Development Strategy (ALDS) (Department of the Army [DA], 2013).

Relationships Matter

If you talk to a technical warrant officer or chief warrant officer 2, assume the individual was a higher-performing NCO in the recent past. This period marks a fleeting window in which the warrant can more easily communicate their developmental successes and failures as NCOs and how they can support such growth in others. My experience created a valuable middle ground for speaking with NCOs about the relationships between the ALDS’s domains (DA, 2013).

My initial investment in relationships came from speaking with sergeants and staff sergeants to get their junior enlisted to attend training run by my company and the other companies across the installation. By my tenure’s end, these shared training events cultivated “junior” Soldiers who developed into the NCOs in charge of their shops.

The next collective training cycle began with NCOs who possessed a broad network (despite being on their first assignment). These NCOs sought training for themselves and their Soldiers with an installation-wide network crossing major commands and branch expertise.

The dividends of this network approach to development were immediately evident in training and operations. Our rotation at the Joint Readiness Training Center in Fort Johnson, Louisiana, had cross-unit communication at a level I have rarely witnessed in similar exercises. I attribute this to the relationships built from the previous year of collaborative training between NCOs and warrants that connected the domains.

Institutional Domain

The Army’s NCO Professional Development System (NCOPDS) is an unparalleled resource, giving our NCO corps a competitive advantage in multi-domain operations (MDO). That wasn’t my opinion when attending the Basic Leader Course, Advanced Leader Course, and Senior Leader Course. I lacked the perspective I gained during my first National Training Center (NTC) rotation as a warrant officer.

These touchpoints at NCOPDS and my branch Center of Excellence kept me grounded in Army doctrine. I spent seven of my 11 enlisted years in the Special Operations Forces. During this time, I fell out of sync with what the Army and the Military Intelligence branch expected of me at my grade and experience. NCOPDS and later the Warrant Officer Basic Course filled this developmental gap, enabling me to excel at NTC.

My advice to all the NCOs I work with is to avoid taking NCOPDS for granted and invest time and effort to learn something or help others out of practice due to recruiting, drill, or other broadening positions. This approach reinforces your foundation, broadens your professional network, and provides valuable coaching repetition.

Operational Domain

We had limited time to get through critical evolutions building toward our Combat Training Center (CTC) rotation in the 82nd Airborne Division, a challenge likely common to every division. As a brigade-level warrant officer, I could keep quantitative statistics on my brigade analysts. However, I lacked qualitative knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of every NCO analyst across the brigade.

The qualitative assessment was NCO-owned and NCO-driven. The first-line NCOs were able to communicate after each training event what stuck at the Soldier level and what didn’t. This feedback was critical in effectively leveraging the warrant officer cohort across the installation to support and refine training at the individual level, empowering the brigade to achieve its collective tasks.

NCOs aren’t alone in leaders’ time training. They can and should reach out to warrants, former NCOs, and experts in their craft to assist in training. One of my most successful relationships in the brigade was with an infantry platoon sergeant who regularly requested I brief his platoon on real-world military capabilities and operations. This situation grew to his NCOs training mine in fieldcraft and vice versa in intelligence support to operations.

NCOs don’t need to be experts in every task. Warrants can help you find the experts and build your networks. The NCO-warrant relationship significantly contributes to Soldiers being better trained, ready, and lethal as an organization.

Self-Development Domain

Throughout my career, I’ve heard civilian education and degrees are the foundation of the self-development domain. I can’t discount the value of a degree, but I see a pool of learning opportunities expanding outside traditional degree programs.

The mission may require fundamental skills outside the scope of an undergraduate education — skills acquired in weeks or months instead of years.

I ask myself: “What skill sets and resources enhance the mission and service member? How do we leverage them at the pace and scale needed?”

The answer to these questions lies in collaboration with NCOs who can provide the essential information for the skills and proficiency levels individual Soldiers need to develop in the time available.

Warrant officers can assist in the networking and resourcing to make this happen. It may take the form of professional certifications (e.g., IFPC, C++, Ethical Hacking), topical learning applications (e.g., Coursera, Udemy, Mimo), or even just participating in communities of interest (e.g., amateur radio, branch-specific Microsoft (MS) Teams channels, orienteering clubs). The world of self-development is endless, and keeping service members in a learning mindset builds better people and Soldiers.

Conclusion

Each leader development domain can only teach some of what MDO will demand from our service members. Warrant officers and NCOs are responsible for the training that binds the ALDS domains into relevant expertise. Collaboration results in more effective training that focuses on mission and Soldier needs, and builds more capable and lethal organizations.

NCOs amplify their ability to teach, coach, and mentor their Soldiers when they seek out and talk with warrant officers. Warrant officers should listen, contribute their experience, and network. This collaboration is the essence of the symbiotic relationship between NCOs and warrants, and it reinforces why they need each other.

---

References

Department of the Army. (2013). Army leader development program (DA PAM 350-58). https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/pdf/web/p350_58.pdf

Vandergriendt, C. (2022, March 11). The Dunning-Kruger effect: What it is & why it matters. Healthline. https://www.healthline.com/health/dunning-kruger-effect

 

Back to Top