Self-awareness in Military Officers with a High Degree of Developmental Leadership

Abstract

Abstract Problem Statement: Being self-aware about your preferred leadership behavior is important for a military officer. Equally important is getting feedback that indicates how others perceive your leadership behavior. Purpose of Study: To investigate the degree of self-awareness regarding military cadets’ leadership behaviour and how this was correlated with others perceptions of the same leadership behavior. Method: This study was an explorative and descriptive study. 26 cadets at the Norwegian Military Academy filled out the Developmental Leadership Questionnaire (DLQ) measuring their degree of developmental leadership, as well as their degree of transactional leadership and non-leadership. The cadets also had to send the same DLQ to 6-10 commanders, colleagues and subordinates in order to get feedback from them on their leadership behavior. Findings and Results: It was found that the cadets scored themselves lower on both developmental leadership and on the positive parts of transactional leadership and higher on both the negative parts of transactional leadership and on non-leadership as compared to their respondents. Conclusions and Recommendations: In the scores the cadets gave themselves they scored quite high on developmental leadership and on the positive sides of transactional leadership, and quite low on the negative sides of transactional leadership and on non-leadership; one may conclude that they have a high degree of self-awareness. This also indicates that they are developmental leaders although they may not see this as clearly as their respondents do.