Improving the Leader Development Experience in Army Units

Abstract

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army or Department of Defense. THE ALL-VOLUNTEER ARMY will draw down by nearly 15 percent over the next four years while the nation concurrently makes difficult strategic choices defining the Army of 2020 and beyond. Faced with fiscal constraints and a challenging and unpredictable global environment, Army leaders seek the optimum balance among personnel, force structure, and readiness. Regardless of the outcome, the country will continue to rely heavily on the Army's professionalism and the talent of its leaders. To maintain this trust and preserve this capability, the Army must continue its efforts to focus on the human dimension by refining and adapting its approach to developing leaders. Recently, the Center for Army Leadership's annual assessment of attitudes and perceptions on leader development (CASAL) identified Develops Others as the lowest-rated leader competency for the fifth year in a row. (1) Just over half of Army leaders (59 percent) were regarded as effective at developing others by their subordinates. (2) The CASAL further revealed that one fourth (22 to 26 percent) of those surveyed indicated their units placed a or very low priority on leader development activities. (3) Feedback also highlighted varying degrees of leader and subordinate understanding of constituted leader development activities and programs as well as individual responsibilities as givers and receivers of leader development. (4) These trends span multiple years and clearly illustrate a deficiency in the perceived effectiveness of Army efforts to raise the next generation in the eyes of its most important audience, today's junior leaders. While the Army has enjoyed a stellar reputation for leader development for generations, the decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan has altered our expectations of what right looks like. The Army must now seize the opportunity to improve consistency and effectiveness of unit-level leader development to deliver capable leaders for the Army of 2020 and beyond. This is best achieved through a concerted effort to* Increase awareness and understanding about leader development as a process rather than an event. * Train and educate battalion and brigade-level commanders on the Army's expectations for them as key leader developers as well as on fundamental approaches to enhance their success. * Expand senior leader accountability of unit-level leader development programs. Leader Development: A Process, not an Event Army leader development is intended to occur across three complementary domains (institutional, operational, and self-development) through the lifelong synthesis of education, training, and experience. (5) Reaching a shared understanding of leader development is crucial to the subordinate's ability to recognize it when it is happening and to the leader's ability to identify and leverage opportunities to integrate it with everyday activities. Leader development is not the outcome of a series of classes or the product of a sequence of assignments, nor is it the job of one person or organization. It is a continuous process intended to achieve incremental and progressive results over time. (6) The CASAL results suggest the lack of an integrated approach as one reason for lower effectiveness ratings as junior officers consider the various leader development activities as isolated events rather than part of an ongoing process of development. (7) As businesses wrestle with designing effective leader development programs, they commonly cite a patchwork of programs inadequately linked to one another as a persistent obstacle to their effectiveness. (8) In its recently revised and published Army Doctrine Publication (ADP) 6-22, Army Leadership, the Army defines leader development as recruiting, accessing, developing, assigning, promoting, broadening, and retaining the best leaders, while challenging them over time with greater responsibility, authority and accountability. …