My Neighborhood Platoon

I have experienced both exceptional and terrible teams. The most profound group/team example I have experienced was during boot camp. To provide background and context, here was the situation. Members of my platoon were all transferred from our first assigned platoon to an overflow platoon, created to decrease overall group size. Amusingly, because everyone was selected alphabetically, the last name closest to the beginning of the alphabet started with R. Because this happened after the first week all the bonds that we had formed with our first platoon were broken, and we were nicknamed the bastard platoon. As a result of this perception we performed terribly at the outset, and we were in last place in all early inter-company competitions. Fast forward one month, we received a new drill instructor that was dynamic, charismatic, communicated high expectations, and made us believe that we were the best. As a result, our platoon reversed course and won every remaining competition to become Honor Platoon, out of a company of 6 platoons totaling over 1,400 Marines.

An anointed leader is one who is elected by the group they lead. An appointed leader is placed in the leadership position by someone else, for instance a manager. An emergent leader is one who come to position due to crisis, this leader rises to the demand of the situation that created the crisis. …show more content…
Gantt charts are named after their creator Henry L. Gantt an American management consultant. The Gantt chart was fascinating, I had never used one before, but was able to apply one to a current work project, and it was interesting to see the workflow illustrated by the chart. It is easy to see how this can be a useful tool for project