[bumby]

This is a perspective that is bandied about quite a bit, but I don't think it's exactly true (or at least not true to the extent presumed). Personally, I've only heard it come from people who have little actual military experience.

Leadership capital is a perishable resource in the military. Junior troops are not dumb and if you treat them like crap and just use the justification that they signed the contract, you won't be a very effective leader. If I leader has to use that type of tactic (or use their rank, or whatever), it's an indicator they've messed up somewhere along the way. The power dynamic isn't as cut-and-dry as most outside the military think. It's not unheard of for junior troops to get a bad leader fired, and in the absolute worst cases junior troops can put a poor leader's lives in danger. The idea that good military leaders would tell their subordinates to pound sand because they signed a contract is more of a trope than reality.

There's a surprising amount of times when the incentives align for a military subordinate to NOT listen to orders and leaders have to actually rely on the social capital they've accumulated by building trusting relationships with their subordinates.