Coaching, Mentoring & Developing Soldiers
Use counseling, coaching, mentoring, feedback, goals, and developmental opportunities deliberately to build Soldier competence, confidence, and future potential.
In this guide
Development Is a Leader Responsibility
Developing Soldiers is not an extra task reserved for formal counseling. Leaders develop people through daily feedback, challenging assignments, training, coaching, mentoring, education, reflection, and deliberate follow-up. The goal is greater competence, judgment, confidence, self-awareness, and readiness for increased responsibility.
Counseling, Coaching & Mentoring
Counseling reviews performance, potential, events, expectations, or development and normally produces a plan of action. Coaching uses observation, questions, feedback, and practice to improve a specific skill, behavior, or performance. Mentoring is a voluntary developmental relationship in which a more experienced person shares perspective and experience to support another person’s longer-term growth. Leaders should understand the differences and use the right approach for the need.
Start With the Soldier
Development should be individualized. Learn the Soldier’s duties, strengths, weaknesses, goals, interests, experience, aspirations, and current performance. A new Soldier may need task competence and confidence; an experienced specialist may need leadership opportunities; a new NCO may need practice counseling, planning, and supervising.
Set Useful Development Goals
Good goals are specific enough to guide action and measurable enough to assess progress. Connect goals to duty performance, Army requirements, and the Soldier’s professional aspirations. Break large goals into achievable steps with resources, suspenses, and follow-up points.
Use Experience Deliberately
Development often occurs through doing. Give Soldiers appropriate opportunities to lead a class, brief a plan, train a task, manage equipment, solve a problem, or serve in a position of increased responsibility. Explain the purpose, establish boundaries, observe performance, and conduct feedback afterward.
Feedback That Produces Growth
Effective feedback is timely, specific, factual, and connected to a standard or desired outcome. Explain what happened, why it mattered, what should continue or change, and what the Soldier can do next. Balance recognition of strengths with correction of deficiencies.
Build Self-Development
Leaders cannot personally teach everything a Soldier will need. Help Soldiers learn how to assess themselves, seek feedback, study doctrine, use Army learning resources, practice weak areas, and track progress. Self-development works best when the Soldier owns the effort and leaders reinforce it.
Match the method to the development need
Start by asking what the person needs to do differently or understand more clearly. A near-term performance skill and a long-term career question call for different conversations, even when the same leader helps with both.
Worked example
A specialist wants to become more confident presenting a short training brief. A coaching session could begin with a two-minute practice brief. Ask the specialist what went well, identify one specific improvement, demonstrate it if needed, and repeat the brief. Keep the feedback narrow enough to apply immediately. A separate mentoring conversation might explore which kinds of leadership opportunities interest the specialist and what experiences could help them make an informed career decision. The mentor can share perspective without promising selection, promotion, or a particular assignment.
Your practice checklist
Choose a routine, non-sensitive example. Work through each step on paper or use these checkboxes as you read. Checks reset when you reload the page.
Common mistake to avoid
Giving advice too early can hide the real problem. Before describing your own experience, ask what the Soldier has tried and what result they want. Avoid an overwhelming list of improvements after a single practice attempt. One achievable change, followed by another attempt, can produce clearer evidence of development than a long lecture.
Explain it in your own words
Answer each question before revealing the explanation.
Which method fits practicing a short brief?
Coaching is a useful fit: observe an attempt, discuss a specific improvement, practice again, and compare performance.
Who owns the person’s career decision?
The Soldier does. A mentor provides perspective and questions, while official requirements and the Soldier’s goals guide the decision.
Sources & further reading
These are MILCOMPASS explanations and practice examples. The underlying doctrine is ATP 6-22.1 — Providing Feedback: Counseling-Coaching-Mentoring / FM 6-22 — Developing Leaders. Follow current official publications and applicable command guidance for real requirements.
- Combined Arms Command: counseling, coaching, and mentoring
- Army Publishing Directorate: check the current publication
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