Competent Military Leaders For The 21st Century

Warfare in the 21st century is far different than warfare throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Conventional warfare was about kinetic force and bending an adversary by might and strength. Skills valued were those related to mastery of weapons and placing ordnance on target. Courage and valor were defined by conflict, militaries were distinct from the population, and occupation was an enduring stage of war. Contemporary warfare, besides continuing to be an exercise in military strength, is composed of missions that depend on skills to forge interpersonal relationships and build sustainable partnerships with a host of actors that once had no voice or role in conflict’s duration or conclusion. Today, final victory does not conclude directly from conflict, in fact victory may be subsumed into the larger and more consuming equation of international stability. Twenty-first century warfare is about counterinsurgency and counter-terrorism through an array of strategies that foster collusion and collaboration not acquiescence.Cross-cultural competence (3C) is a suite of competencies and enablers that have been identified as critical to instill in expeditionary military and civilian personnel in the Department of Defense (DoD). Defined as a set of knowledge, skills, abilities and attitudes (KSAAs), 3C promotes effective interaction across cultural divides through exchanging ideas and meaning across cultures, facilitating effective cross-cultural interactions to develop and sustain relationships and providing a means to discern meaning from foreign and culturally different behavior. 3C permeates DoD policy, doctrine, strategy and operations and is now being institutionalized in DoD military and civilian education and training. Cross-Cultural Competence for a Twenty-First-Century Military: Culture, the Flipside of COIN is a volume edited by two acknowledged experts on 3C in military learning, policy and research and explores the value and necessity of 3C to developing 21st Century warfighters. This volume features chapters by the editors and a host of multidisciplinary experts that probes all aspects of 3C, from concept to application. The message carried throughout Cross-Cultural Competence for a 21st Century Military is that contemporary and future security endeavors will be successful because winning wars ultimately rest on developing and sustaining cross-cultural relationships as much as it does on weapons and force.

This Army Field Manual is a capstone manual which describes the Army's view of leadership, outlines the levels of leadership (direct, organizational, and strategic), and describes the attributes and core leader competencies across all levels. The principal audience for ADRP 6-22 is all leaders, military and civilian. Trainers and educators throughout the Army will also use this publication. Commanders, staffs, and subordinates ensure their decisions and actions comply with applicable United States, international, and, in some cases, host-nation laws and regulations. Commanders at all levels ensure their Soldiers operate in accordance with the law of war and the rules of engagement. It establishes and describes the leader attributes and core leader competencies that facilitate focused feedback, education, training, and development across all leadership levels. An ideal Army leader has strong intellect, physical presence, professional competence, moral character and serves as a role model. An Army leader is able and willing to act decisively, within the intent and purpose of superior leaders and in the best interest of the organization. Army leaders recognize that organizations, built on mutual trust and confidence, successfully accomplish missions. Everyone in the Army is part of a team and functions in the role of leader and subordinate. Being a good subordinate is part of being a good leader. All Soldiers and Army Civilians must serve as leaders and followers. It is important to understand that leaders do not just lead subordinates-they also lead other leaders. Leaders are not always designated by position, rank, or authority. ADRP 6-22 addresses the following topics necessary to become a competent, multiskilled, and agile Army leader: - Understand the Army definitions of leader and leadership. - Use the Army leadership requirements model as a common basis for thinking and learning about leadership and associated doctrine. - Become knowledgeable about the roles and relationships of leaders, including the role of subordinate or team member. - Discover what makes a good leader: a person of character with presence and intellect. - Learn how to lead, develop, and achieve through competency-based leadership. - Identify the influences and stresses in our changing environment that affect leadership. - Understand the basics of leading at the direct, organizational, and strategic levels. Part One defines leadership, describes the foundations of Army leadership, and introduces the Army Leadership Requirements Model in Chapter 1. Part Two describes the leader attributes of character, presence, and intellect. Part Three describes the core leader competencies and their application. Part Four addresses the roles and responsibilities of organizational leaders in Chapter 10 and strategic leaders in Chapter 11.

The U.S. Army faces many challenges in the near future. Central to success in overcoming these challenges is the ability to develop tactical leaders capable of achieving Objective Force concepts. The course of Operation Enduring Freedom demonstrates that units have already put into practice Objective Force concepts in Afghanistan. The U.S. Army's vision of the future justifies moving towards a new operational doctrine. The threats posed by global instability and weapons of mass destruction affect the U.S. much more than in the past. Accordingly, the Objective Force doctrine provides the nation the capability to respond to a varying array of threats. Much more than attempting just organizational or technological change, the Objective Force concept aims to transform the U.S. Army's model of operations. This is the essence of a Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA). Past RMA's achieved success when leaders exploited technological advances. In the case of the First World War German Army, Second World War U.S. Army and Post-Vietnam U.S. Army, military forces developed and practiced transformations of doctrine before material and organizations evolved. Leaders made this possible. The key to success in executing transformational doctrine before all the enablers have developed is leader competence. Theory and practice associate a leader's level of competence with experience. Experience does not equal competence, but competence is not possible without experience. Objective Force leaders need augmented competence to overcome full spectrum global threats. Developing competent leaders for the Objective Force represents a significant challenge for the U.S. Army in the Twenty-first Century. Leaders require larger skill sets to achieve the Objective Force characteristics: responsiveness, deployable, agile, versatile, lethal, survivable and sustainable.

As the nature of warfare evolves, the Army must produce leaders who comfortably interact with diverse populations and embrace complexity. This emerging truth dictates a need for change in how Army officers are trained and selected to lead at the highest levels in order to regain the initiative in managing today's fluid operational environment. The concept of strategic leadership, therefore, must be examined closely in Army doctrine. Social, cultural, and complex problem-solving skills are becoming a priority and must be developed in young officers to provide enough knowledge for senior leaders to leverage later in their careers. Rarely does the typical Army career prepare someone to succeed in the strategic arena where the non-military elements of national power carry greater effects than large numbers of troops and equipment. The basic question addressed in this study is “how effective is the U.S. Army at developing strategic thinkers capable of leading decisively in complex and adaptive environments?” To answer this question, three distinct areas are analyzed: (1) the ability of the Officer Education System (OES) to distinguish critical abilities deemed necessary to succeed in the modern security environment, (2) the ability of the Officer Evaluation Reporting System (OERS) to measure an individual's dedication to self study and lifelong education, and (3) the ability of the same OERS to measure individual skills acquired through operational experience. The Army's current OES pushes the most complex topics to the final stages of an officer's educational career. As a result, few officers get a chance to expand their intellectual boundaries through critical and creative thinking prior to their field grade experience. Doing business this way denies the opportunity for junior level officers to develop the requisite skills needed to excel in the strategic arena. The Army must promote advanced educational opportunities as healthy and necessary to a young officer's career. As the key process for reporting a leader's abilities and potential for advancement, the OERS focuses primarily on current performance and provides little incentive to highlight an officer's dedication to career-long professional development. The over-valuing of short-term success negates the potential benefits of continuous learning, a long-term endeavor. The result of such short-sightedness stifles innovation while entrenching a “business as usual” approach to leadership development ignoring the changing operational environment. The personnel management system continues to emphasize combat deployments, regardless of skills acquired, over an officer's need for professional development. The current version of the OER fails to utilize the leader development aspects it was designed to accomplish. The Army must look into traits and attributes particular to leaders at the senior levels in order to develop context-based evaluation systems. Junior and senior level leaders should not be evaluated on the same scale. A way to accomplish this is to establish qualitative standards for branch qualification based on operational experiences, not just on the number of months assigned. To force a change in the culture and career progression of leaders prepared for 21st century warfare, the officer education and evaluation methodologies must adapt to reflect the complexities of the contemporary operating environment. To accomplish this, the Army must adjust its leader development systems to recognize and promote strategic thinking much earlier than in past generations.

As the nature of warfare evolves, the Army must produce leaders who comfortably interact with diverse populations and embrace complexity. This emerging truth dictates a need for change in how Army officers are trained and selected to lead at the highest levels in order to regain the initiative in managing today's fluid operational environment. The concept of strategic leadership, therefore, must be examined closely in Army doctrine. Social, cultural, and complex problem-solving skills are becoming a priority and must be developed in young officers to provide enough knowledge for senior leaders to leverage later in their careers. Rarely does the typical Army career prepare someone to succeed in the strategic arena where the non-military elements of national power carry greater effects than large numbers of troops and equipment. The basic question addressed in this study is "how effective is the U.S. Army at developing strategic thinkers capable of leading decisively in complex and adaptive environments?" To answer this question, three distinct areas are analyzed: (1) the ability of the Officer Education System (OES) to distinguish critical abilities deemed necessary to succeed in the modern security environment, (2) the ability of the Officer Evaluation Reporting System (OERS) to measure an individual's dedication to self study and lifelong education, and (3) the ability of the same OERS to measure individual skills acquired through operational experience.

"Since the publication of the first edition of Head Strong: How Psychology is Revolutionizing War in 2014, developments in military psychology have been rapid and important. So much so, that this revised edition is necessary to accurately capture the vital role that psychology continues to play in 21st century military success. The ideas contained in the first edition influenced emerging doctrine in the Army's Human Dimension, and informed military leaders around the globe of ways that psychological science and practice may be leveraged to improve combat effectiveness. Many of the predictions made in the first edition have come true, and new and exciting products of military psychology now offer novel ways of impacting military outcomes. This revised edition of Head Strong updates the 13 chapters included in the first edition with breaking news in military psychology, and adds new material to augment those chapters. Two entirely new chapters are included in this edition. The first is on character and discusses how to measure it, how to develop it, and how character plays a vital role in the performance of individual soldiers and their units. The second new chapter is based on a year-long special assignment the author spent working as a Fellow for the Army Chief of Staff's Strategic Studies Group, and captures the rapid developments in psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and other disciplines that may help the military optimize soldier and unit performance. Like the other topics in Head Strong, these two new chapters have significant applicability to non-military organizations including schools, corporations, and sports teams. Taken together, the updates and new chapters make Head Strong, Revised Edition essential reading for anyone interested in how the military, and by extension other organizations, may leverage psychology to improve performance."--

This is a book about strategy and war fighting. It contains 11 essays which examine topics such as military operations against a well-armed rogue state, the potential of parallel warfare strategy for different kinds of states, the revolutionary potential of information warfare, the lethal possibilities of biological warfare and the elements of an ongoing revolution in military affairs. The purpose of the book is to focus attention on the operational problems, enemy strategies and threat that will confront U.S. national security decision makers in the twenty-first century.

This book explores diverse cultural leadership styles and paradigms of leadership that are dynamic, complex, globally authentic and culturally competent for the 21st century. By redefining global leadership, the authors impart a new understanding of the criteria for selecting, training and evaluating leaders in the 21st century.