Overview
Gather ’round! We’re about to shed some light on a few strategies for successful verbal responses during MOST inspection competitions!
Inspection is always a game of chance and it’s entirely possible that what goes into grading/scoring the competition will go beyond what you can prepare for by both reading the SOP for the competition, dissecting the scoresheets, or referencing drill manuals.
This is because inspection, even when briefed by the meet host to perfection, comes loaded with a certain set of expectations drawn from every judges’ unique experiences in the military or with previous competitions.
When we brief judges, we often tell them specifically what to ask, what to grade, etc. and even then, there is still a chance judges will go “off card.”
Therefore, these are some GENERAL best-practices that you can likely default to and then adjust based on your unique competition schematic.
Greeting the Judge
Most competitions will give you some sort of verbiage to utilize when an evaluator steps in front of you to begin the personnel inspection. Most are a generic greeting of the day followed by an indication that you are prepared for the inspection.
We recommend giving the following greeting:
Good [morning/afternoon/evening], [Rank]! Cadet [Your Last Name]!
Notice anything missing?
We recommend NOT giving your cadet rank. Why? We’re hoping to “lead the judge.”
This means that it’s very likely that if the judge is used to hearing greetings containing cadets’ ranks, not hearing one might prompt a questions such as, “What is your rank, cadet?”
Boom. Easy. Almost too easy. And that’s one question down!
We also omit items like “…is standing by for your inspection!” at the conclusion of the greeting. We don’t hate it and if you have something conservative, we generally don’t advise changing it necessarily. We always start without it because it’s more words to get tongue-tied on, isn’t typically crucial to scoring, is less assertive (placing the emphasis on the judge to continue the inspection), and isn’t where we’d prefer to run the clock down. THAT part is coming up next…
Inspection Responses
When it comes to responding to questions, there are a few rules of thumb we always advise:
- ALWAYS RESTATE THE QUESTION – This ensures several things. Firstly, it helps us by jarring our brain one last time before giving a response. If we’ve practiced correctly, though the pressure may be hiding the answer from us, restating the question may trigger muscle memory! Furthermore, it helps our teammates anticipate what kinds of questions might asked. Because most judges “cascade” down the line (i.e. the first squad/element judge is ahead of the others and so on) and because judges often take their cues from one another, restating the question confidently helps signal to our teammates what may be to come!
- TAKE YOUR TIME – There is no prize for rushing through a response. Don’t be afraid to take a breath and take your time. Not only are you running the clock in your teammates’ favor, you’re also giving yourself time to process your response while showing off your outstanding poise and control under a stressful situation!
- LEAD THE JUDGE – Inspection can’t take forever and here’s a little secret: inspection is usually the “gate-keeping” event of the competition. This means if inspection runs behind, the competition runs behind. It’s the event the meet hosts are most closely monitoring to be on time because timing is about 90% up to the judges and their pacing. Leading the judge is one of our greatest strategies and it works like this: with every possible answer, give just SLIGHTLY more information than is necessary to answer the question but in a way that may prompt a secondary question. For example, if you’re asked for an individual’s name, don’t just give the judge the first and last name, ALSO give them their middle initial. This helps “lead” the judge towards the next logical question!
What If I Don’t Know the Answer
If you look at MOST inspection scoresheets, correct answers to knowledge-based questions are a minority of the points. Far more important is your bearing, confidence, poise, and intensity throughout the process.
Here are a few scenarios:
- You’ve given the wrong answer to a question and realized it shortly after beginning the response. In this case, we recommend confidently stating, “Permission to correct myself!” before giving the correct answer.
- You’ve given the wrong answer to a question and you’ve realized it too late to realistically stop yourself from finishing the response. In this case, we recommend finishing the answer with as much confidence, bearing, and intensity you can possibly muster.
- The question asked of you is not within your service’s regulations or doesn’t pertain to something you’d learn in your specific branch of JROTC. We recommend stating something similar to, “[Rank], this information is not contained in this cadet’s course of study!”
- You really just have no idea of the correct answer to the question given. We recommend confidentially stating, “This cadet does not know!” When pressed for a reason, we recommend, “No excuses, [Rank]!” Don’t fake it here. And try not to let this be an answer more than once or to something everyone SHOULD likely know.
Here is what we do NOT recommend:
“[Rank], this cadet does not know the answer to your question but will find out and return with the correct answer!”
You aren’t likely to return. And we’ve seen judges annoyed at cadets who do. If you don’t know, say you don’t know and move on down the road with confidence!
This is why we study!
The study of knowledge is not necessarily to earn points towards a great score – though it certainly doesn’t hurt us! Studying knowledge helps us avoid the NEED to give one of the responses above!
Wrapping Up
How you respond verbally during an inspection is one of the most important elements of walking away from that event feeling confident in a job well done!
Make sure your team is practicing all the above items while preparing to include restating the question with every answer!
It won’t be enough to simply give the correct answer, you must know how to deliver that information successfully as well!