Developmental Counseling: Fill & Download for Free

The Army basically needs to get out of the 1940’s. Computerization to the Army was basically to convert paper to PDF. The amount of forms is staggering, and I really can’t fathom why one would need to type any of your basic information when you needed a chipped ID card to log on.Take the APFT failure counseling. This is done a DA Form 4856 Developmental Counselling form, populated with the counselled soldiers information and scores, some mandatory boilerplate about what happens if the soldier fails another APFT, and some plan for the them to do more pushups. Failing APFT and Height/Weight is two seperate counselings. This PDF is normally emailed to the soldier, the soldier digitally signs and emails the PDF back where their first line leader signs it and emails it on up the chain. Why isn’t there an App for this?The Army needs a smartphone with some sensible apps and a CAC reader.

There is a lack of emphasis on followership. It is discussed the NCO acadamies but not integrated well into Soldier development. Specifically developmental counselings are far in between and NCO’s rarely focus on aligning a Soldier’s goals with the Army as a whole in a clear manner.Becoming a leader is all about developing character. Part of character is selflessness. You will serve at different capacities that benefit an organization from strategic and staff levels. It’s important to understand the position the organization needs you to be and how you will develop in ways you may not fully appreciate at the moment. What you want should take the back seat for now and demonstrate that you can develop character and selflessness for the betterment of others.

I won’t say this was my “most proud” case, but it was a memorable one. It was the case against a worker at a board and care home who was accused of sexually abusing two of the developmentally disabled young men who resided there. Unfortunately, developmentally disabled witnesses do poorly on cross-examination and are easily confused, tripped up, contradicted, etc. The defense attorney had a field day destroying my victims on cross, and repeatedly pointed out with other peripheral witnesses that there was no corroboration of the victims’ claims — no forensic evidence, no percipient witnesses , just the testimony of these two young men who seemed to be unreliable in recounting facts.I knew the defense was going to rely heavily on the “no corroboration” argument in closing argument. The night before closing arguments I had an epiphany — while there was no external corroboration, there was a lot of internal corroboration in that the two men’s stories jibed in numerous respects, even though they did not know each other and stayed at the home at different times. Many details of their description of the assaults — some important, others less so — were either very similar or identical. So I created a large chart that listed 14 points of internal corroboration that could not have all been coincidental.The defense made a powerful closing, arguing that one simply could not rely beyond a reasonable doubt on the word of men who clearly made so many mistakes and testified to things we knew could not be true. We might have sympathy, we might have suspicions, but a man’s life was at stake and this testimony was totally uncorroborated.In my rebuttal, I brought up the chart and meticulously went through every point of internal corroboration. There was no these way two developmentally disabled men could independently come up with factually interlocking stories unless it had actually happened.After the jury went out to deliberate, defense counsel complimented me on the argument and said he thought he had the case won until my inspired rebuttal. The defendant was convicted as charged.