What I Got Wrong: A Special Forces Officer’s Leadership Failures

By Brett Simpson, MTI Contributing Writer

1) I Waited Too Long to Lead 

How indecision and fear of fallout let dysfunction take root on my team. 

I arrived at the team as a brand-new Special Forces Detachment Commander. A week later, the new Operations Sergeant (senior enlisted advisor) arrived. He was stepping into the role after a guy who was practically a legend in our unit. The team was watching both of us closely. I knew that much. 

From the start, there were signs. He inflated his marksmanship scores. He “self-reported” fitness numbers that didn’t match what we saw. One of our guys told me he’d caught him rounding his own times down and rounding others’ up subtly shaping the scoreboard in his favor. 

Then there was the TDY trip. He didn’t just cross the line; he flaunted it. Open adultery, zero discretion. “What happens on TDY stays on TDY,” he said with a grin, like it was a joke we were all supposed to be in on. It wasn’t just personal conduct; it was a message to the team about the kind of standards we would maintain. 

But I didn’t act. 

Part of it was hesitation. Part of it was the strategic picture. Six teams were competing for two deployment slots to Afghanistan. We believed maybe correctly that firing our team sergeant would take us out of the running. 

So I waited. 

I told myself I was preserving the team. Really, I was preserving my own position. I thought staying quiet was tactical. What it really was… was weak. 

Eventually, the situation forced itself. The friction got too loud. The trust too thin. And the guy was gone. We got a new team sergeant, hit training immediately, and started rebuilding. We recovered fast. We ended up being one of two teams selected for Afghanistan, and the only one from our AO detached from the company and sent to a small combat outpost. 

The team still saw me in a good light. We were tight. We had momentum. But I knew I’d waited too long. I’d let someone else shape the early tone of the team, and I’d done it out of hesitation, not strategy. 

Lesson learned: Don’t let time do what leadership requires. If you see rot, cut early. Waiting only makes you part of it. 

2) I Let Ego Hide My Inexperience 

How pretending I was ready put my team on the hook for my gaps. 

I joined the team as a former infantry officer, combat-deployed, airborne, ranger qualified. I had the experience to look the part. And that was the problem. 

My team assumed I was squared away. I let them. The truth was, I wasn’t where I needed to be. Not technically, not tactically. I lacked reps. I lacked confidence. But I kept my mouth shut. 

Then came a company training event. 

We were being evaluated by our leadership on individual soldier tasks. Part of that was an evaluation of our marksmanship capabilities—one of the courses of fire: rifle to pistol transition, one shot each from the seven-meter line. I didn’t know how to do it cleanly. I fumbled the movement. Blew the mechanics. My guys watched it unfold, so did the Sergeant Major. 

The fallout didn’t hit me. It hit them. 

They got chewed out for not training their 18A. But the failure wasn’t theirs. It was mine for letting ego cover over reality. I should’ve owned my gaps early and gotten to work. Instead, I let them carry the weight for something I was too insecure to admit. 

Lesson learned: Rank doesn’t shield you from exposure. It just delays it. The sooner you admit what you don’t know, the faster your team can start trusting you. 

3) I Missed the Signs 

How failing to truly know my guy led me to overlook a silent crisis. 

We had a new teammate show up right before deployment. There wasn’t much time to onboard; he got slotted in, and we hit training hard. Then, we deployed. 

I didn’t know him well. That’s not an excuse; it’s the root of the failure. 

In country, it started to show. He was checked out. Isolated. Angry at odd moments and flat during others. Not sleeping. I chalked it up to the usual: stress, tempo, maybe friction with the mission. I figured if it got bad, he’d come talk to me or someone else on the team.

He didn’t. 

And I let him suffer in silence longer than I should have. When it finally became unignorable, we pulled him from the deployment. Got him the help he needed. But it was late. And avoidable. If I’d made the effort early to connect to know his baseline, I would’ve seen the shift. Instead, I led from a distance. That cost him more time in the dark than he ever should’ve had to bear. 

Lesson learned: Leadership isn’t about checking in. It’s about knowing well enough to see when something’s off before it breaks. 

4) I Let Pressure Stall the Right Call 

How I let optics and chain-of-command pressure steer a decision that should’ve been simple. 

Our enabler had flown in from a base that was dealing with a full-on COVID outbreak. At the time, our camp had zero cases. We were clean. 

A couple days after he arrived, he started showing symptoms.  That should’ve been it: isolate, quarantine, treat symptoms, report it up. But the politics kicked in. Reporting the case would’ve made it another COVID-positive individual linked to our Higher Headquarters, a camp already under scrutiny for botched protocol enforcement. 

Word came down not formally, but clearly: wait a day. Retest. Maybe the initial test was bad. Maybe it’ll resolve. Just don’t rush to report anything. The enabler needed to fly back soon. If he missed that window, ops shifted. 

I knew what the right decision was. But instead of making it, I looked sideways.  I put it on our Special Forces Medics. Asked for re-evaluation. Framed it as a clinical judgment call when it was a leadership one. I let them carry the weight of a command decision I wasn’t willing to own. 

Eventually, we isolated the guy. We did the right thing. But not because I stood firm. Because we ran out of delay. 

Lesson learned: Passing hard calls downstream isn’t leadership. It’s self-preservation.

Brett is a US Army Special Forces Officer.