Canadian Army Leadership In The 21st Century

Military Leadership in the 21st Centuryaims to provide junior commanders or entry-level military officers with an introductory-level appreciation of the key concepts and issues related to military leadership from a social-behavioral science perspective. The book focuses on "direct-level" or "team leadership". It has three main themes: (1) the human dimension of military operations and organization; (2) the main approaches to direct or team-level leadership, including the trait-approach, values or ethical leadership, and leadership styles and behaviors; and (3) the challenges of leadership in 21st century military operations, organizations, and, the 21st century military profession. Besides learning key leadership-related concepts and issues, readers are also introduced to key events, institutions and social-behavioral scientific research programs that have shaped contemporary military leadership doctrines and systems.

Examines military culture from a theoretical and a practical point of view Considers conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq that have highlighted the importance of culture as a concept in analyzing the ability of military organizations to perform certain tasks Culture has been described as the bedrock of military effectiveness because it influences everything an armed service does. The recent conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq have highlighted the importance of culture as a concept in analyzing the ability of military organizations to perform certain tasks. In fact, a military's culture may determine its preferred way of fighting and dealing with other challenges, like incorporating new technologies, more than its doctrine or organizational structure. of view. It focuses on the Canadian and American military cultures, and it provides the first detailed examination of the culture of the Canadian Forces. It also compares their culture to that of the US armed forces. The book concludes that while the culture of the Canadian Forces has been Americanized to a certain extent, the culture of the US armed forces, due to changes in their personnel and roles, has experienced a certain degree of Canadianization at the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st centuries.

In 2021, a sexual misconduct scandal struck the Canadian military, leading to a profound crisis in leadership. While some more recent allegations came to light before the #MeToo movement, these latest revelations have historical roots in the 1990s, an era known to service members as the “decade of darkness.” Due to drastic budget cuts and allegations of serious crimes perpetrated by its members, the last decade of the twentieth century was a tumultuous time for the Canadian Armed Forces. Amid this period, a human rights tribunal ordered the military to open its combat positions to women and reach full gender integration by 1999. Yet by 2021, women made up only 16.3 per cent of personnel; women and LGBTQ+ service members continue to face sexual harassment and abuse at all levels. In The Ones We Let Down Charlotte Duval-Lantoine looks at failed efforts to achieve gender parity during the 1990s. She reveals an organization unwilling and unable to change, and attitudes held by military leaders that fed a destructive dynamic and cost lives. As the military grapples with its failure to address cultural misconduct and change its culture, The Ones We Let Down reflects on whether the right lessons were learned from the decade of darkness.

While the Canadian Army has almost a century of intelligence experience, the truism that "how we define what we think we are doing when we are doing intelligence shapes how we do intelligence" is affecting the type of intelligence available to the Canadian Army today. To orient itself for the 21st Century, Army Intelligence needs to be re-oriented away from this information management construct and towards a knowledge management one, emphasizing integration within a Joint, Interagency, Multinational and Public (JIMP) framework to operate at both the operational and tactical levels, supported by the basic, current and estimative intelligence required to support not only force employment, but also force generation and theatre preparation.

This case study provides a "snapshot" of institutional leadership during the first two years or Canadian Forces transformation (2005-2007). While its focus is on the Canadian Forces (CF) institutional leader, it highlights how the institutional leaders achieve real change and equally addresses the difficulties and failures encountered. An analysis of CF Transformation is provided as an example of institutional leadership in action.