Some Psychology and Management as a SL

[Kesserline]

Goooooood morning everyone.

Today we shall speak about some things useful that you may wanna know if you want to try SLing.


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Better void than disloyalty

Think about what you gonna say. If your comms are ignored, or your orders ignored, it may affect the image that the rest of your squads have of you. A leader with no authority, nor charisma, will only inspire pity and disloyalty. Be sure that you can enforce your orders and your comms.

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Loyal ones : Pillars of Leadership

Having friends, buds, people that know you and respect your skills/leadership are the ones that you MUST use to create a group dynamic. To control a squad, you may need at least 2 persons following you. They will create the "sheep-crowd dynamic". Marines are like sheep. They follow the crowd. Create the direction, and with enough intertia, the rest of your squad will follow.
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Marine RP =/= Player state of mind

A true soldier doesn't really think about if he has to obey, but how he may obey. All roleplayers and players do not share this state of mind, as they think as themselves, as free humans with no training nor mind-conditioning. Therefore, you need their respect, you need them to understand you.

To ease that you need :
- At least a good reputation as a regular squaddie/SL
- Some decent skills as not being a dipshit
- Not being a cunt/a dick : be nice towards others, or at least, be fair
- Greet and reward people for what they do. If they do a good job, that may not worth a medal, but some "Good shit lad !" or "Keep up the good work !" is largely appreciated.
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Positive state of mind

Do not get confused with being naive.

The positive state of mind is to avoid using too many of the "dark words". Replace retreat by fall back. Replace : WE ARE IN THE SHIT by REGROUP AND RALLY !.

Keep the banter and the light shit talk to lift up the spirits. As a SL, or aSL, you are the steps needed to climb the stairway to victory. Without you, marines are like penguins in a super bowl. You have a duty, not only on your skills, nor your tactics, but your ability to keep your men fighting. They do not fight anymore if their morale is broken.
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Tactical insight and decision making

You may not make the good choices. But make choices. With experience, and with the advice of some good veterans under your command, you will reduce drastically the amount of mistakes you will make.

You are yourself, with your own mind, thinking with your own ideas, your own words. You are limited by yourself. Do not ignore external intels given by your squaddies, Command or other units. You need to have as much intel as possible to avoid bad decisions. Withdrawing through a hostile area filled with X-rays is the last thing you wanna do, but listening to global comms or your squaddies may get you that intel.

Imagine that you are in a location, let's say Dorms, on Big Red.

You have a main entrance north west, south west. Little entrances from rooms west. Access to bar S-E and access to EVA East-N-E.

If reports say that hostiles outside Lambda, or around Lambda. Consider all locations East of yours as contested or potentially hostile. But you can, for example, run as fast as you can north and south and west to flank, withdraw, or regroup. If you are to head east, do not travel fast, but as a moderate-steady path to avoid losing troops on the way.

If you are to push, yeah, run fast and charge. But if you have no hostiles and you just want to go from point A to point B, consider that you need to adapt your speed to the environment you are facing. Clear/Contested ? Fast or normal speed. Contested/Hostile ? Normal to slow speed.

Always consider that areas can has three status : Friendly (FOB/Almayer/fortified outpost), Contested (any location that is not filled with 3+ aliens) and Hostile (basically, the Hive, or any location with a main group of X-rays inside).
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Information transmission and loss

When you say something, consider that only 50% of the people will get the message. To make your comms more interesting, more impacting, you need to make them short.

It's like insults ! Saying : "SHUT THE FUCK UP" is way more impacting than "Please, would you have the courtesy of stop emitting sounds with your mouth ?". Order + short details. RALLY + LOCATION. PUSH + DIRECTION. NAME + ORDER + DETAIL. MCBADLY, RALLY ON ME. Add more details but very short. "YOU ARE OVEREXTENDING".

Use caps like a 9 y-o kid on Call of Duty, when on fight. You need to attract attention.

Do not use caps all the time, especially, when you are not in combat, just to avoid the annoying-boring shit. People will assimilate then that you are using caps-lock for orders with importance, and they will give more importance to your orders. And they will also understand when you are speaking normally and will consider your intel as not prioritary.

Someone talking normally all the time doesn't inspire authority.
Someone screaming all the time, doesn't inspire authority.
You have to mix both, using it wisely to create and attract attention to what you say, depending on what you want people around you to understand.
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Panick/Routed : usual patterns

What is shown on some video games is that a unit, when its morale is too low, will stop responding to your orders, or worse, doing other shits on its own.

Let me tell you that : it's even worse IRL.

When a human being panicks :

• He will not listen to you anymore OR will listen to only ONE order, randomly that you gave. (The randomness of the order folllowed depends on what the players fears/wants. If you ordered a tactical withdrawal and a flank, if the player is panicked and wants to hide, he'll be more likely to simply fucking back off and abandon the flanking order.)

• Your unit will simply stand the fuck at the same place. It's an emotional/body paralysis (you probably noticed it IRL for mates during exams, or facing danger : agression, accident, and stuff). People tend to simple being blocked due to not know what to do.

• Your unit will do completely jackshit and act according to her own agenda/priorities unrelated to your orders.

A human panicking, when doing something, will be WAY LESS regarding to details, to risks, to analysis.

When falling back, they'll just fucking run in the global direction where friendlies should be, even if they the way they want to take is filled with enemies.

When shooting, they'll not notice the persons in their lines of fire (noticed the increasing FF during stressful situations ? It's a cause of that, people panick, they don't know what to do, they are not calm.)

That's how, as a SL, you have a job to do. Your presence, your talking, and your ACTUAL presence on their visual, that's how you win points. Your "L" icon is a visual landmark. Your presence/aura is rock where they can stand. Your talking is their lifeline giving them calm, giving them a meaning.

Keep talking, repeat your orders, gather them on you. Even if panicked, at least, they'll follow you like sheeps. And if they follow you ? At least they give you their firepower on your precise location, allowing you to pursue maneuvers or to survive a deadly counter-attack.

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That's all for today, I'll try to see if I need to add some other psychology-management shits if I remember using them on leadership roles.

[Alchemist120]

Pretty useful information for beginning SLs. Thanks for this text, but could you please write more about fireteams and other squad management stuff?

[Kesserline]

I am against the use of fireteams exception for very situational strategies.

Fireteams go against the "Alpha Wolf Leader" and goes against the sheep-crowd control.

Fireteams means spreading the organization and the rally points of your squad on several persons. Are these persons reliable ? Is your Spec a baldie ? Or willing to lead ? Is your SG the same ? Do you have a reliable Engie corporal or PFC able to lead ?

Then, also, it multiplies the comms, and you are the ONLY one in your squad with the big text. Meaning that if you want to help your FT leaders to relay their comms, you have to repeat their orders. Meaning that you are doing the OW job for your FT, as SL, just like the LT is OWing your whole squad for you.

In my opinion, FT are only useful when you are on FOB duty and you have to prepare a QRF or a Patrol fireteam. Otherwise, it's useless for all the reasons above.

Marines are players, not real marines. They are focusing on visual things HUD (the L icon above your head, maybe the Spec or the SG icons ? But are they real leaders or just here for the pew pew ?). Marines follow orders and the hierarchy, players are not forced to do that. So, you have to ease things for them.

Fireteams make things complicated. It's awesome on Military Simulation RP (if you know Arma 2 or Arma 3).

When you see that even some vets die in chokepoints without an ounce of common sense, you have to make things easy on them. One FT, if not, no FT, and everyone follows you. It makes the pressure high on you, but at least, if you are confident about your abilities, you'll get the job done, and the marines around you will fulfill your expectations.

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For the other squad management stuff, remind your spec to not be a dipshit, he looks like one. He is not a rambo, but a huge force multiplier. If he is a RPG, order your flamethrowers to pair with him. (Flamers + RPG = awesome to ensure kills). If he is a B18, warn your squad to be ready at all time to push and follow the B18 as it needs support to ensure assaults.

If you don't know your SG, ask him to always cover marines and avoid as much as possible to be on point. If you have reliable marines, ask them to babysit the SG or to battle-buddy with him.

You have to create synergies. If you are not on FOB duty, and that you can keep your engies. Ask them to only build light fortifications (like 2 or 3 cades at max) to prevent counter attacks and give solid acid-cover.

If you are stopped, ask for light outpost fortifications. Basically a big square, nothing fancy, just one layer, but enough to have a triage center, a SB, and a strong rally point for other squads or late-waking reinforcements.

For your medics, it's fucking situational. Either you have badass and awesome medics such as Alicia Parker that is able to follow your squad almost non-stop, even on offensives. Either you have some slow-minded medic that needs to be on a triage center (outpost or FOB) and is not really mobile.

When you are on a defensive perimeter (e.g Fixing power and you have to cover the area while your engie-nerds are doing things with wires and cables), ask marines to cover all entrances and get inside the location. Encourage them to pair up with buddies they know to make them stronger. Marines tend to create bonds with others, making them very powerful. A marine that is being ambushed by a xeno will suffer heavy fucking retaliation if his buddy is around. At the contrary of a random marine that may be tempted to flee and abandon the ambushed marine.

Always make, after every push (when you lose momentum) a rally&regroup time. f you lose momentum, and that the location is not good to be hold (chokepoint, or you have no fortications, or not enough time to make fortifications before a possible counter attack) withdraw and get back from where you attacked.

Give some rest to your marines, and allow stragglers and late-waking marines to join your squad. You need a steady supply of freshblood, ammo and things.

Also, you can also give time for other squads to make their way to you, or flank around you as you are getting the attention of the hive. A squad making an assault is promised to get his ass counter-attacked in the next 10 minutes, it's guaranteed. (Xenos are like : OMAGAD THEY ARE ADVANCING AT X LOCATION !) If you are pushing too good, the Queen herself will get here to mess you up.

Always be fresh as fuck, and your squad too.

[Rio]

Don't forget one of the most important rules

Don't sperg out. I know from real life experience that the biggest way to lose the respect and confidence of your subordinates is to show them you lack composure. Showing you have no control over yourself hangs a neon sign above your head that you are not fit to handle a stressful situation if your first reaction to having your feathers ruffled is to turn into a miniature tyrant (that's the sergeant major's job).

[Park]

Although I am not the greatest SL I have found some tips that have helped me during my rounds.

1. Delegate Wisely
As a squad leader and as a leader in general you will have to learn how to delegate effectively the responsibility of completing an assignment to other members in your team. You have to understand that you are one of the many cogs which allows a squad to function. There are numerous times where you MUST give other cogs in your squad, (e.g. engineers, medics, smart-gunner, specialist) tasks simply because you cannot accomplish that objective alone. Here are some tips on delegating.

-Let Go: Understand you alone cannot build the FOB or push into a hive. May leaders have a fear that if they do the work themselves that their team may have the inability to accomplish the task. Sure there will inevitably be baldies in any squad but that simply means you must start small. If you're afraid your team is not effective give them small tasks and work them up to larger ones in attempt to build not only trust in them but trust in you.
-Establishing Priority: When you're delegating a tasks to other members to your squad remember to set priorities. For example, emphasizing the building of a barricades on a known flank instead of adding another layer to an already large FOB can be extremely important. Telling your team what HAS to be done and what NEEDS to be done is crucial to any objective
-Play to Your Squad Mate's Strengths: Not all your squad mates are created equal and some will inevitably possess a higher skill set than others. When you're delegating tasks try to look for the squadie with the most relevant skills and aptitude for the job.
-Trust, but Verify: Once you have delegated a task trust that your teammate can execute the objective, however, do not be afraid to verify that the task is moving as planned.
-Feedback: Remember to always give positive feedback if the member or members in which you delegated a task to is performing well but at the same time if they have failed to complete a task or reach expectations do not be afraid of giving constructive criticism on the matter.

2. Communicate
Far too many squad leaders communicate far too little. Although it is difficult to keep your squad up to date on matters that are changing both in the CIC and on the battlefield squad leaders must make an effort to get their team the information they need to do their objectives quickly and efficiently. I have also found that a squad is less likely to follow with a silent SL at the helm. Speak and your Squad will listen and hopefully follow.

3. Set Goals
Every member in your squad needs a goal to strive for. These goals give your team members direction and purpose. Set specific and measurable goals with your team and regular monitor the progress in achieving that goal. If your goal in a mission is to retake a specific area on the map such as say Medbay on Big Red both you and your team can both easily measure how successful that endeavor is.

4. Recognize Accomplishments
Although you might find it hard to recognize the accomplishments of your members while at the same time fighting. Do. Recognize the accomplishments of not only individuals but of your team itself. Recognize the badass endeavors that a marine has done yell, "GOOD SHIT, XXX" if they manage to kill that Ravager or Hunter or whatever. Understand that this feedback causes a positive feeling not only in the person that accomplished the task but a positive feeling in the rest of your squad. Knowing that someone is there to recognize when they pull of a stunning manuever or kill a xeno is nice to know. This positive feedback is easy to do, takes only a second, and has a massive impact on squad morale and cohesion.

5. Don't take it all too seriously
At the end of the day even with all this 'tacticool' nonsense this is not a real military operation but just a game. Winning or losing does not really matter but the journey to those results. Have fun, banter with the other members of your squad, try to make friends and it will make the round more fun for you and your squad. I encourage every SL to make their squads an enjoyable environment and a fun place to play in because a squad that works hard and plays hard will always be more loyal and energized.

[PerfectDeath]

Does the SL pointer still get bugged on some maps? I Havn't played prison in a while but there was one round where I spent over 20 mins as the only medic trying to hook up with the squad and the only directions I received from both SL and LT were "SOUTH" when the squad actually went north to research, then west before moving south to the place just west of the canteen. The SL indicator would periodically point in random directions and it didn't help.
Our original position was a FOB in engineering more south, so the squad suddenly packed up and diverted all the way around the station's eastern half to get to the other side of the canteen's sealed door. Half the squad was scattered and aimless being told to go "SOUTH". xD

[Kesserline]

Added the panicking/routed part.