Developing Leaders in A Changing Army

The U.S. Army faces unprecedented change over the next 30 years. It is expected that future military operations will require increasingly precise coordination of dispersed forces addressing a full spectrum of missions ranging from intense combat to stability and support operations, to stopping terrorists. Army leaders will be faced with ambiguous, high-risk situations for which no SOPs have been developed; the effective development of these leaders is a continuing challenge. Future Army leaders will need to develop teams more rapidly, to resist stress, and to adapt more quickly and effectively in complex, volatile, and unstructured environments. They will require not only versatile decision-making and critical thinking skills, but creativity and the interpersonal skills to inform, persuade, and inspire confidence. Dispersed units will challenge them where traditional notions of cohesion and chains of command may be difficult to achieve. This will require the Army to improve its leader development programs and to accelerate the development process to provide the necessary training and experiences that young leaders will need in order to face such challenges earlier in their careers.

This R&D unit focuses on the creation and demonstration of tools to support and accelerate the development of leader skills and behaviors that will be required in future scenarios, and intends to do this by providing experiences through simulation and game technologies that would otherwise be experienced only through extended time periods on the job. We will follow an integrated approach to leader development that addresses the three skill types of developmental opportunities, i.e., institutional education and training; unit experience; and self-development. We have already developed empirically valid methods that embed experience in institutional education courses and preliminary self-development systems for teaching tactical adaptability, interpersonal skills, and social knowledge. We have developed a scenario-based "Think Like a Commander" compact disc that helps instructors/mentors teach versatile thinking skills.

In FY2004, we will:

• Validate leader adaptability self-development tools in web-based leader development work and handheld personal assistants
• Complete analysis and report for fifth year follow-up of Baseline Officer Longitudinal Data Set, treating officers' career status and assessment of leadership performance

Proponent: U.S. Army Command and General Staff College
ARI Unit: Leader Development Research Unit

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