From the author: The most important tasks in managing the socio-psychological climate and forming a cohesive team are a comprehensive study of collective opinion and mood, conflict situations and relationships, discipline and traditions of the military collective. Formation of a collective opinionImportant The cohesion of the military team plays a role in the formation of collective opinion. Thus, when a team is just being created, it is much more difficult for the commander to form a common opinion because the soldiers have not yet become close and do not understand each other. It is known that a young soldier pays special attention to his commander, to senior and authoritative soldiers. During this period, so-called compliance is observed, or, in other words, the susceptibility of newcomers to the individual opinions of individual unscrupulous soldiers. It is then that an individual-group opinion may appear in the team that differs from the opinion of the commander and the majority of the personnel. As a rule, a negative group opinion protects careless, undisciplined individuals and comes into conflict with the general opinion of the team. Research shows that the commander’s opinion on various issues of service for the majority of soldiers plays a decisive role in the formation of certain views and judgments in them. Thus, almost 70 percent of the surveyed soldiers and sergeants stated that their opinions on official matters completely coincide with the opinions of commanders. Power and experience, respect and trust make every word of the commander authoritative and impressive. This alone, not to mention other reasons, obliges the officer to avoid rash judgments and conclusions. Psychologists recommend: before uttering any thought out loud, an officer must think it over carefully, since it will certainly affect the behavior of his subordinates. The persuasiveness and categoricalness of the officer’s words, as evidenced by the practice of everyday life, do not leave even a shadow of doubt about the correctness and clarity of his position, especially in combat conditions. The decisive prerequisite for the stability of the collective opinion is ideological conviction, love for the Motherland, faith in the commander and one’s weapon. Deep ideological conviction, patriotism, unity of thoughts of commanders and subordinates provided our military collectives with steadfastness in battle and the will to win in the most difficult conditions. Society is specific people, they have specific interests, their own joys and dramas, their own ideas about life, its real and imaginary values. This idea is also true for a military collective, in which the specific interests of specific military personnel become the source of group and collective assessments and judgments. And it is no coincidence that success is achieved by those commanders who promptly respond to the cognitive needs and interests of their subordinates with the help of sustainable feedback from each soldier and improve the quality of individual educational work. Let us note here: everyday practice convincingly confirms that the higher the quality of individual influence on a warrior, the sharper his vigilance and the more effective the opinion of the collective. Close spiritual contact with a person, the ability to understand his thoughts and interests is a guarantee of mutual respect, unity of views and maintaining a healthy moral atmosphere in the unit. Where individual educational work is weakened, where, simply put, they do not know how to carry it out, do not listen to the voice of subordinates, do not give the necessary advice and recommendations in a timely manner, various unfounded judgments and even negative opinions arise. Group (collective) opinion as a social - the psychological process has three conditional stages of development. At the first stage, warriors perceive, experience and evaluate an action or event, each of them has their own subjective assessment and strictly individual opinion-judgment. At the second stage of forming a common opinion, warriors exchange thoughts, assessments, and judgments. This stage can take place calmly within eachgroups. At the third stage, groups of warriors, as a rule, argue, defend their assessments, points of view, emotionally convince each other, come to a unity of views. In order to optimize the management of collective opinion, an experienced commander will not miss the moment of the first stage, when the warriors are still experiencing excited their event and attitude towards it have not yet been formed. The main thing at this moment is to prevent the emergence of immature views and biased assessments. The officer is assisted in this by active officers, warrant officers, and sergeants, who, constantly being among their colleagues, quickly react to the news, give it a correct assessment, and form a positive attitude towards the perception of information. At the second stage, it is more difficult for the officer to change the incorrect judgments of individual servicemen, since individual group opinion has a certain inertia. In this case, the best countermeasure may be to provide the group with additional facts without mentioning incorrect judgments. Managing group opinions and providing principled criticism and self-criticism is not easy. The experience of working to form a mature collective opinion shows that it is necessary to criticize, first of all, not minor mistakes and individual statements, but serious violations of military discipline or a stable negative orientation of the individual. Unfortunately, sometimes some young officers try to make almost every case of violation of statutory provisions a subject of discussion among personnel, trying to enlist the support of a collective opinion, which in practice does not justify itself. The support of fair criticism by the team and the strengthening of its severity by the general population depend on the maturity and organization of their subordinates. opinion. Collective opinion is successfully formed at general meetings. In advanced units they are preceded by a lot of organizational work. They also give an important place to group conversations. The methodology for conducting these conversations is quite simple. Questions, as a rule, are posed by an officer, and one of the soldiers answers them, while others complement or refute him. The officer directs the conversation so that everyone speaks out. Sometimes this does not work out, since some soldiers are silent, embarrassed to seem funny, incompetent . A separate conversation is conducted with the silent ones, during which the commander finds out their opinion on a particular issue. The officer carefully analyzes the results of group and individual conversations and draws a conclusion about the nature of the collective opinion on this issue. In some cases, written questionnaires and personal interviews are used to analyze the collective opinion. They may contain questions that reveal information about an individual or a team, facts of behavior in the past and present, assessments of events or attitudes towards an individual warrior, group, collective. It is advisable to conduct conversations as often as possible in order to record the level of development of the psychology of the collective and the dynamics of collective opinion. Thus, constant and reliable communication with personnel, regular information about current events, improving the moral education of soldiers, an active, offensive fight against petty-bourgeois psychology are the most important conditions management of collective opinion. Management of collective mood What is collective mood? Collective mood is an indicator reflecting a complex range of feelings, emotional experiences, passions and affects that take possession of all personnel in a variety of situations and significantly influence their life and activities. Collective mood has contagiousness, great impulsive force and dynamism. It mobilizes or restrains collective consciousness, determines the nature of public opinion in interpersonal relations, and influences the style of leadership of the team. All this emphasizes the need for a thorough study of various forms of collective mood, knowledge of the reasons when it passes from one form to another: from positive to negative, from unconscious to conscious, from hidden to open. The mood of a collective or group of warriors can bevery different, but for its general characteristics diametrically opposed assessments are important: positive and negative. A positive mood (“major”) includes emotions and feelings such as satisfaction, cheerfulness, inspiration, optimism, joy, a sense of professional pride, a sense of beauty, a feeling of love to the Motherland, happiness. Negative mood (“minor”) is characterized by dissatisfaction, uncertainty, pessimism, despondency, boredom, anger, despair, irritability, anger, fear, panic. Most often, negative mood occurs as a result of dangerous situations, hyperstress and shock. Consequently, a negative mood is a kind of signal of anxiety and bad relationships, a low level of team cohesion, extreme discomfort of the situation, strong stress, etc. How is the collective mood analyzed? The commander can analyze the collective mood by observing the reactions, statements, and emotional manifestations of soldiers . However, this method is quite complex and uncertain, since a soldier, trying to characterize his well-being, as a rule, coordinates it either with his moral principles or with the opinion of his comrades. In addition, a warrior’s appearance (his apparent gloominess or concentration, inspiration or nervousness) does not always reflect his true mood. It happens that behind external calm a person hides both joy and grief, love and hatred. For a more specific and more visual assessment of the collective mood, an officer can use the technique of emotional-symbolic analogy, which is based on specific connections of color, verbal symbols with emotional states person. For example, red color means a very joyful, enthusiastic mood; yellow—good, even mood; green—calm, balanced; white - indefinite, neutral; blue - unsatisfactory, slightly reduced; blue - sad, depressed; purple - bad, alarming; black color - a very bad mood, complete depression. How to assess the dynamics of the collective mood in a military team using this method? Let us refer to the example of a specific sociological study of one unit. Two warriors were trained, who took turns, replacing each other, using a standardized interview. The warrior-interviewer three times a day (morning, afternoon and evening) asked each of his colleagues to characterize their mood, pointing to the corresponding color of a pencil (card). The study lasted for 26 days. When the subjects named either red or black, an attempt was made to find out the reason for either an enthusiastic or depressed mood. The results were generalized, averaged, and color matrices were built in which changes in the collective mood could be observed throughout the day, week, month. Thus, in most cases, daytime and evening mood was determined by the formed mood in the morning: the higher the mood in the morning, the higher it is in the afternoon and evening. To the question: “Who shapes your mood in the morning?” — the answers were very different, but the main generator of the morning mood turned out to be the officer (ensign) who was present at the rise. The good mood of the commander, a kind joke, emotionally stimulated his subordinates, but if the commander was dissatisfied with something in the morning, loudly “scolded” the sluggish soldiers, promising to punish them, then the mood in the team decreased. It was found that during the week the collective mood was predominantly calm , balanced, efficient. On the color matrix it is depicted in green-yellow. On Saturdays and weekends, the collective mood increased and became orange, and on holidays the red-orange color predominated. The collective mood consists of group and individual emotional states. Therefore, it is advisable for the officer to know in which group and whospecifically, it is a source of good or bad mood. In the team under study, so-called optimistic leaders and pessimistic leaders were identified. About 20 percent of the subjects had a persistently positive mood, while 9 percent were in a consistently low state of health. It was not possible to find out the prevailing mood of two warriors (they constantly answered the questions with the color white). The officer needs to learn to control his emotions, know how to eliminate both personal irritation and ways in which he can raise the mood of the team. A personal example of cheerfulness and optimism is quickly transmitted to subordinates and activates military work. A subtle joke and an encouraging word from an officer, even in difficult conditions of military activity, relieve fatigue and instill confidence in success. And vice versa, if the commander shows nervousness and is indignant at the actions of his subordinates, then the team becomes infected with a bad mood and worsens the results of the service. This is especially noticeable in teams on combat duty, on military campaigns, in units located at remote “points” where people lack emotional comfort. In this regard, the commander should not forget the pedagogical advice of A. S. Makarenko about promising lines, about the need to manage the collective mood, to form “tomorrow’s joy” (close, medium, distant) in relation to various tasks of the team and its individual groups. The military team experiences negative emotional changes when, for example, some soldiers are replaced by others, a new commander comes. As a rule, the departure of an authoritative commander or other officer reduces the collective mood for a long time; soldiers worry, get nervous, and sometimes enter into emotional conflicts with the new commander. The general mood is reflected by the feelings experienced by young soldiers in the new team. To create a positive collective mood, the commander increases the role of optimistic leaders. Each unit has warriors with natural humor, optimism, charm, responsiveness, and sensitivity. They involuntarily create an atmosphere of good health around themselves. Warriors are drawn to them, wanting to receive a charge of positive emotionality and dispel homesickness. A generalized image of such a warrior was created by the poet A. Tvardovsky. His Vasily Terkin is an optimistic soldier, capable of raising the spirits of the soldiers even in the most critical situations of front-line life. An officer can, with the help of such optimistic leaders, form a good mood group in the unit, which would carefully analyze the mood of the personnel, get closer to those soldiers who are experiencing negative feelings, and would provide an emotional uplift for the entire team. Experience shows that good mood groups assist the commander in uniting military teams and creating a healthy socio-psychological climate. It is unpleasant for every person to be a constant object of jokes, and even more so when a cruel joke hurts pride and humiliates a warrior in the eyes of the entire team. Therefore, the good mood group, on the instructions of the commander, first of all began to re-educate the mockingbird soldiers, lovers of rude jokes. Of course, not immediately, but in the unit the number of hazing due to the emotional incontinence of individual soldiers decreased, the moral climate improved, and the cohesion of the team increased. Even in ancient times, melodies against despondency, irritation, and anger were known. Music psychotherapy is still effectively used to eliminate negative emotions. Music is a means of increasing human performance. I would like to say separately about military music. Developing a love for it among military personnel is important. It has been established that it preserves strength and causes military inspiration, relieves fear and promotes the manifestation of heroism. Everyone is well aware of the exciting beat of military drums and the piercing sounds of the signal trumpet. Rhythmic brass music