Character Strengths of Junior Australian Army Officers.

Abstract

Armed forces view their officers' character as foundational to their ability to lead the personnel entrusted to them. The character of junior officers is of particular interest, because they must increasingly make quick, morally-laden decisions while dispersed among civilians without time to consult their commanders. However, little is systematically known about the character of officers. Accordingly, the present study was aimed at mapping Australian Army junior officers' perceptions of the chief aspects of their own character and also those of their main role models, specifically, their senior officers, including their trustworthiness as an essential aspect of effective leadership. The present study also tested whether these character perceptions were aligned with four core values of the Australian Army - courage, initiative, teamwork, and respect - which are intended to shape the character of its personnel. The respondents (N = 171 lieutenants) ranked how well each of 24 positive character strengths applied to themselves as individuals. To test the alignment of these rankings with the respondents' perception of their leaders' character, respondents nominated the five top strengths of their effective leaders. This study was approved by the Australian Defence Human Research Ethics Committee (ADHREC 009-2013). With regard to the first aim, five character strengths - integrity, leadership, good judgment, trustworthy, and teamworker - were ranked by the respondents as being their chief personal strengths at frequencies significantly above those expected from random allocation.With regard to the second aim, the respondents aligned the rankings of their character strengths with those of their effective leaders through the entire list, not just the highest-ranking items. Nevertheless, there were two significant differences. The respondents assigned their leaders higher ranks for wisdom than for themselves, but assigned lower ranks to their leaders for being trustworthy.With regard to the third aim, the respondents' perceptions of their chief character strengths were not well aligned with the four core values of the Australian Army. Teamworker was given a significant top ranking, but courage, initiative, and respectful were not. Thus, the respondents did not appear to respond according to organizational demand characteristics. The present study achieved its aims. First, it revealed five character strengths that junior officers in the Australian Army tended to see as their own chief strengths. Second, the junior officers saw their character strengths as aligned with those of their senior officers. By and large, this alignment extended across all the character strengths, regardless of their specific ranking. Subject to further experimental testing, this finding provides correlational evidence that junior officers may model their character on what they see in their senior officers. Third, in contrast, the junior officers' rankings were not well aligned with the Australian Army's stated core values. The junior officers saw teamworker as one of their chief strengths, but not courage, initiative, or respectful. This pattern does not imply that the junior officers rejected strengths as valuable but only that they are not among the junior officers' own chief strengths.