Self-Awareness

Marco’s Story

SGT Marco Santoni is a team leader in a Military Police unit. His primary responsibilities are to lead and train the Soldiers in his team so that they can perform their law enforcement and other military police responsibilities in both garrison and the field. In addition to leading and training his Soldiers, Marco is responsible for briefing monthly statistics on unit law enforcement actions.

Marco was promoted to Sergeant about a year ago and has been in the Army for a little less than five years. He has had one Stateside assignment, which included a combat deployment, and served two years in South Korea. He has been at his current post for eight months and intends to make the Army his career.

Like most Soldiers, Marco has been tested in many different ways. Since joining the Army, he regularly earns a score above 285 on the Army Physical Fitness Test (APFT). He has also proven his ability to learn and work under pressure by earning the Air Assault Badge. Most recently, Marco’s leadership ability and professionalism were recognized in his nomination as post NCO of the year. Marco has an aptitude for learning foreign languages. In high school, he took three years of Spanish and excelled. His Spanish speaking skills have become a bit rusty, but he is still able to read and understand written Spanish fairly well. His aptitude for languages is reflected in his high Defense Language Aptitude Battery (DLAB) score of 107.

Marco’s Feedback

Marco has had considerable success in his work and personal activities. His commander often comes to him with special projects that require creative ways of communicating with others. For example, last fall, the commander asked Marco to help advertise the Provost Marshal’s safe driving campaign. The clever posters and Post TV spots that Marco designed earned Marco the Army Achievement Medal. More recently, the commander asked Marco to help plan a new youth outreach program. In addition to the commander tapping Marco’s talents, the first sergeant has repeatedly asked Marco to design and deliver NCO professional development training to noncommissioned officers in the company.

A few weeks ago, Marco asked Lucy Morgan, the head of his church’s Outreach Committee, to give him some feedback on his performance as a member of the committee. Lucy told Marco that she was very impressed with Marco’s ability to interact productively with those of different faiths and cultures. This ability was critical when Marco represented his church at the Area Interfaith Network meeting to determine how food donated to the local food bank would be divided among Network member organizations. On the other hand, Lucy told Marco that his late submission of the monthly Resources Reports hampered her ability to plan ahead.

Marco’s Self-Analysis

Strengths

• The skill or ability that I am best at is working with others who are very different from me.
• The personal quality that I rely on most for my success is flexibility and creativity.
• I would love to learn more about the Korean language and culture.
• The activities I look forward to include finding creative solutions to problems in the field, traveling, and meeting new people.
• Others think the best job for me would be Special Forces.

Weaknesses

• The situation that causes me the most frustration is doing paperwork and working in an office.
• I am most hesitant when I try to prepare the monthly law enforcement briefing.
• Others think I am not very good at administrative tasks.

Marco’s Strengths and Weaknesses

Marco determines that his strengths include cultural understanding and the ability to work with people from very different cultures, creative problem solving, physical strength and endurance, and learning foreign languages.

Marco determines that his weaknesses include administrative tasks, analyzing data and statistics, writing reports, and most indoor solitary work.