By Ann Roosevelt
In October, the Army’s Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) is expected to release a Leader Development Strategy to coordinate and integrate service-wide initiatives to continually expand and improve soldier leadership skills throughout their service career.
Since 2007, TRADOC has been solely responsible for leader development, and in recent months the command’s Combined Arms Center (CAC) has been tapped to lead the effort, officials told reporters recently at a command-sponsored visit to its Ft. Monroe, Va., headquarters.
TRADOC Commander Gen. Martin Dempsey has made leader development and education the command’s No.1 priority.
CAC manages the training cycle, which is a combination of experience, education and training, which are the elements of the new strategy.
“The Army’s evolved from being training-centric to education-centric,” said W. Chris King, Dean of Academics at the Army Command and General Staff College, Ft. Leavenworth, Kan., and a retired brigadier general.
Early in a career training dominates, then comes experience, then more training and education, and as a soldier becomes more senior, education becomes the dominant approach, he said.
The Leader Development Strategy will aim to ensure service schools reflect current realities while preparing for an uncertain operating environment.
Education emphasizes “how” to think rather than “what” to think, for soldiers and civilian Army employees as well. Also, education must promote the understanding of the situation and the ability to continually reassess it as events more forward. Training must include complexity and the shifting nature of missions.
The definition of leader has changed over time, and moved away from the officer-focused efforts of past decades, King said.
Much of this thinking has come from the past years of conflict, where the definition of the kind of conflict forces face has been in doubt, as has its resolution. Increased complexity and increased uncertainty have come to the fore.
Army forces often operate in a dispersed fashion, where the adversary is not easily distinguishable from the population. This, coupled with technological advances, is pushing responsibility and decision-making further down the chain of command to brigade, battalion and company commanders, and squad leaders.
However, no one has been standing still, they said. Many changes have been made, with more to come, which will all align under the new strategy.
TRADOC Chief of Public Affairs Col. Daniel Williams said, for example, in Stryker Brigade Combat Teams, “every soldier on every vehicle must at least be able to lead the company.”
King said soldiers move from simple problems early in their careers to the more complicated, ill-defined or time constrained problems as their careers advance. The fundamental elements of soldiering that must be taught continues, but moving up the promotion ladder, training gives way to expanded education.
This means reading, understanding and discussion that leads to analysis and synthesis, King said. Blended into this are lessons learned from current conflicts that can be added into training scenarios, or discussed as intellectual problems.
“There are always new challenges,” King said. “There’s a higher rate of change than we’ve experienced before…[and] change is the only constant.”
Col. Daniel Shanahan, director of the Center for Army Leadership, said there’s a research aspect to leader development and education, particularly in knowing when change is needed.
For the past five years, the Army has conducted a survey of sergeants through colonels in all components, and is statistically accurate, he said. Asking what the Army does best, for the past five years the answer has been: “Get results.” However, those surveyed also said the service did a poor job of developing leaders and creating a positive environment. This is a clear pointer to the need for change, as is coming.
Leader development includes adding broadening experiences over a career, Shanahan said. Exposure outside of an officer’s core competency adds depth and breadth, and “builds great strategic leaders,” not just brigade commanders, Shanahan said.
This exposure builds leaders for the United States, not just the Army, he said. While how this works is not yet worked out, it could be officer or soldier-generated or assigned by the service, and it’s not something everyone would do, it’s not “ticket punching” work.
“In an era of persistent conflict, you cannot, for expediency’s sake, abandon leader development, because… as hard as it is, we have to focus on the long view,” King said.