I’m was told I have combative communication

I am currently in the military (18M). I graduated about a month after I turned 17 and didn’t want to go to college right away because I was tired of being in school at the moment. Fast forward to now I’ve been at my duty station for about 9 months and things are about to change.

Basically, I graduated AIT with a buddy of mine and he has more time in service than I do. So even if we’re the same rank he’ll be in charge of me. Our sergeants for our section are about to leave meaning it’ll just be both of us and our original first line who is about to become the NCOIC. One more thing is that this buddy of mine kind of has a language barrier so he isn’t as firm on things that he wants to say because he doesn’t know if he’s saying it right.

We had our monthly counselings individually the other day and my original first line said I need to work on my combativeness with communication. Something about me is that I really like to understand things and sometimes go in depth about why we’re doing the things that we do. I’m an analytical thinker. Only problem is that isn’t good in the military. Being a private and wanting an explanation on why you’re doing something especially if it’s dumb is a recipe for disaster. By combativeness, he means questioning authority or trying to understand the purpose behind a task other than someone told you so.

His main point was that he didn’t want me to have that combative nature with my buddy because of the language barrier. My first line and I going back and forth about the reasoning behind something was a little more okay because he was able to explain to me most of the time why. My buddy wouldn’t be able to do that as well and the more I question him and he doesn’t have an answer the more he’ll lose confidence in becoming a good NCO. I can recognize that which is why I try to limit as much of my responses to him about work as possible and also try and do things ahead of time so he doesn’t have to ask me. That way I can avoid any potential combativeness. But suppressing my questions or “combativeness” on top of the fact that my first line said there’s a “stigma” about me around the unit has really made me want to shut down my personality around anyone at work. He said that some find me to be bad with authority, a bad soldier to customs, and more. I bit my tongue to that part of the conversation and just nodded because I thought I was doing well at my unit. My command loves me. I have great relationships with the senior enlisted, although I don’t do a lot of the Army related volunteer stuff I volunteer for other things that help the unit based on the value I know I can provide and would have fun providing. It all just made me kind of shut off for a second.

After our individual conversation we had one with all three of us and I pretended I was unbothered and when we finished I just went to doing something productive for the rest of the day alone. Sorry for the long TED TALK. I guess what I want to ask is what would you do in my situation to try and stop the “combativeness”, get rid of the stigma, and stay mentally okay without suppressing my personality as much at work? I’m honestly getting really sick of the military and some of the only reasons I want to stay is because of the benefits and chance to reclass to a job I think I would like better. Other than that, I’m ready to finish my time here.