Motivating Cadets to Promote

[Danger]

I am the new Bravo Flight Sergeant at my squadron, and fights are now being changed, in that now, flights are solely based on grade (and support staff) . Alpha- support staff and senior NCOs, Bravo-SrA to TSgt , Charlie, Amn-A1C ,and Tango- Training flight, new prospective cadets and basics.

My squadron is very low ranking, and all cadets except 1 are in phase 1, and 2.

Which gives me my problem, there are no cadets fitting the requirement of my flight. We can motivate cadets to promote, but in 2 or so months I still wouldn't have too many cadets in there. It would take a while to have a suffiecient amount of cadets in bravo.

What would you do? Temporarily change reqs to be a part of bravo? I'd really appreciate ideas. Thanks.

[jeders]

Personally, I would eliminate either bravo or charlie and fold it into the remaining flights.

As far as motivating people to promote, there isn't a whole lot that can be done. If they don't care, they don't care and will likely lose interest very quickly. So, what do you do? The leadership can restrict outside "fun" activities to cadet who have promoted within the last X months. Or the cadets can be warned that if they don't promote at least every Y months that they will be put on probation or terminated.

Now, if your wing has an active cadet leadership school program, then you can tout the merits and "fun" of those activities and point out that a certain grade must be achieved for participation. You can also potentially give certain perks to cadets above a certain rank.

But no matter what, I'd say your squadron has too many flights.

[lordmonar]

Ah.....problem analysis.

First....are your cadets NOT promoting in a timely manner?
+ Phase one cadets should be promoting on an 8-16 week rate.  If they are going beyond that you should be looking at why they are not promoting.
Are they failing PT?, AE? Leadership?  Are they not getting CD?  Look to see if you have systemic problems (i.e. only doing testing on one night a month, or PT not enough).
+ If the problem is not systemic....what are they failing?  If you need to stress AE or PT more...make a suggestion to your squadorn leadership to address the specific issues.

+ If the problem is is they just don't seem to want to promote......now you need to start looking for carrot and the stick.  Find something that the cadets want....and then use that as an incentive to promote.  Also consider suspending extracurricular activities if they don't promote.  In my squadron we gave them 4 months to promote....anyone over 16 weeks we started mentoring them more closely then we normally do.  We find out where they are struggeling and get them the help they need.  If it is just that they are not putting out the effort to study or do the SDA's or exercisizing regularly.....at about the 6 month mark we restricted them to just meetings...no ES, no color guard, no FTX, no O-rides, etc.  We of course made exceptions based on the individual cadet and his/her personal situation....but we at least had a frame work to monitor progress and land marks where we would step in to help them out.

Second....Instead of organising your flights by rank.....organise it by numbers.

Flight commander (1/2 Lt)
Flight Sergeant (CMSgt-MSgt)
Element Leaders (TSgt-SSgt)

That way everyone shares in responsibilities and get leadership experince and we are not robbing a more senior cadet of a leadership opportunity.