Confidently Incorrect Squad Leaders
TL;DR (because this turned out way longer than I thought) - If you are squad leading, confidence is important for cohesion, but do not casually brush aside the advice from your squad (within reason) or treat them like new players that don't know how to play just because they are advising a different strategy. Sometimes, they may know something you don't.
I may need to give some background to this, which may also be a bit of a rant.
I mostly SL nowadays, but when I first join a server, I usually just join whatever squad is open as starting a new one would be pointless as the game is already started or about to start.
A few days ago I joined a squad named "mech inf" on attacking team in an invasion game, cool someone actually using one of the 3 LAVs we have to their fullest.
SL, has everyone load up into the LAV and tells us were going to hot drop on the first cap. I asked him if we were gonna have any help since 7 people alone are not going to be able to take the cap from 20+ defenders. His response? "Nope, we don't need any help, we have a LAV." It was at this point that I noticed the other 2 LAVs were not yet taken and no squad had claimed them, meaning we were going to have absolutely 0 support. I asked the SL if we could at least have a couple of us take another LAV for support since they are all available and he said "No, we won't need them". So I sat in this LAV resigned to our fate, knowing exactly what was about to happen.
For those of you veterans, I don't need to describe the events that followed. You already know what happened. Extremely predictable outcome.
10 minutes later, we basically repeat this same process. And then again 10 minutes after that...
I would have left this squad and joined another if there were any available, but there were not.
By the time the game ended, our SL had lost 4 LAVs in about 40 minutes. 3 of which had all of his squad in it that either died with the LAV or on the first cap. So I tallied the total tickets lost by this one SL to around 70-80. A single SL cost the team a full 30% (at least) of the teams entire starting ticket count with little to no impact.
In all of my 3k+ hours in Squad, this SL had to be the most confident sounding SL I have ever heard. Which, on its own is not a problem and I think is great for making sure your squad at least thinks you know what you are doing.
The problem is when an SL is both confident AND makes poor decisions...repeatedly, while also ignoring or dismissing any advice from his squad. I try not to back seat SL or wreck the cohesion of a squad by openly criticizing the SL, but god damn it is hard sometimes.
Ok, rant over.