SHARP
Leadership
Sensing sessions are an important tool leaders use to stay informed of what is important to soldiers. Recently,
several sensing sessions were conducted throughout the Battle Group. In these sessions, a discussion point was
made about the “paranoia” of working with females.
When you couple a unit comprised mostly of male soldiers and the recent push for SHARP training, it becomes
all too easy for paranoia to spread. Comments such as “we want to remove the risk all together and just avoid
them if at all possible” re?ects a soldier’s reluctance to interact with female soldiers.
This mindset can be detrimental to our ranks.
Imagine if leaders were to exclude females from performing tasks or if they were denied job opportunities because there was fear that working with them could lead to a SHARP complaint. In essence, this is comparable to
victimizing that female.
When the rumor-mill spreads that a female soldier may have been sexually assaulted, there is sometimes the tendency to group all female soldiers as potential victims. The stigma that all female soldiers are possible victims
potentially cuts that sol