Not too long ago, a friend of mine who is also a new officer had an interesting issue in his section regarding some leave requests that were put in for a couple of his guys. Two people had put in their leave requests to two separate mid level supervisors for the section, and had received approval. It wasn't until later when it was passed up to my friend that the two requests were compared, and it was discovered that not only were both requests for the same time period, but it would leave the section undermanned.
Ordinarily, leave requests are granted without any trouble at all. After all, leave is something all personnel are given and are encouraged to take. On top of that, it looks bad for the unit if personnel have their leave requests denied, as this indicates either the leadership isn't putting a particularly high priority on welfare, or there's a severe enough problem in workload management that it's tying people down. However, there is always an ever present obligation to meet the needs of the mission, and supervisors can give mission requirements as a justification for denying leave if they really must. Usually though, people that have to work outside their normal hours receive some form of comp time.
This produced for my friend a bit of a conflict: He had an obligation to take care of his people, but he also had an obligation to keep his section running.
In the end, one of the original requests got the dates adjusted for unrelated reasons and this removed the conflict, but my friend was getting ready to back fill the two positions for that leave period. He had gone around the office and asked those of us who had experience in the section if we could help out, and he was prepared to chip in some extra time in the office as well. He could have randomly picked one guy and had them take the brunt of the hard lesson on coordination, but instead he opted to do what he could that would allow his guys to take their time off while minimizing the impact on the rest of the office.
It may not seem like very much, but this story illustrates how seriously we take the leave requests that make up part of our "care for people" equation. No one particularly enjoys having to sort out such matters when it happens, but when we're called upon to do so we do whatever we can to work our available resources to accommodate. Those same people will, in turn, will usually chip in where needed to help out their peers and subordinates. We get the job done, but we'll always take care of our people at the end of the day. We're proof that any organization work its salt can do both and be successful.
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