What is leader development Army

The changing face of the battlefield means Soldiers who traditionally may never have expected to find themselves in combat have to be prepared. The enemy will not stop and ask if you are infantry, armor, or field artillery before they attack. Everyone is a Soldier first and that means you have to know the basics.
SMA Jack L. Tilley

Mentoring helps soldiers to establish realistic personal and professional goals, and also helps them stay focused. Counseling tells soldiers where they stand, and it helps them focus on their goals. We must capitalize on everyone’s capabilities. We must see the good in everyone. We must see the good in our friends. We must see the good in our family. We must see the good in our leaders. We must not see through people, we must see people through. We must counsel them, coach them, and guide them. If you treat a person the way you see them, they’ll stay that way; but if you treat that person the way you want them to be, chances are they’ll change. If you see me as a lazy old bum, I’ll stay that way; but if you see me as a mature, intelligent person who can go out and make a lot of things happen, then for the most part I’m not going to go out and disappoint you. Whichever way you push me, that’s the way I’m going.
SMA Gene C. McKinney

The most enduring legacy that we can leave for our future generations of noncommissioned officers will be leader development. The three pillars of leader development are institutional training, unit expertise, and self development. The Noncommissioned Officer Education System that is now linked to promotions and our functional courses, such as the First Sergeant Course, serves as our institutional training. The second pillar is our unit leader development. The most important place for a noncommissioned officer is in a unit- leading and training soldiers and being developed by unit leaders based on the commander’s training plan. The third pillar is individual study and self improvement. This includes staying current on new battle doctrine and enrolling in self-development training and education.
SMA Julius W. Gates

As a leader, when the workday is over, there are other things that you have to do. You have to counsel those soldiers that you want to keep and promote. They need some help- help that you can’t give them in your specified training time. I’ve reminded many NCOs that they wouldn’t be where they are today if someone hadn’t given them a little extra time. I know I wouldn’t be where I am.
Anybody who comes into the NCO Corps has to be recommended by an NCO, whether it be a squad leader, section leader, platoon sergeant, or first sergeant. We’re the ones who really open the door for them. One good indicator as to whether a soldier should become a future Army leader is whether you are willing to let that person lead one of your loved ones. That’s the kind of person we need. Identifying good soldiers- potential leaders- and turning them into good noncommissioned officers is a complex process. The bottom line is simple, however: weed out the poor performers; teach the right soldiers the right things; and recommend the best soldiers for promotion and retention. The only way to prepare good soldiers to become noncommissioned officers is to place them in leadership positions and increase their responsibility according to their ability. This process takes time and patience. Noncommissioned officers make noncommissioned officers!

SMA Glen E. Morrell

When you pin that first stripe on, you’re going to have to make a mental adjustment. You’re going to have to weigh being a good friend on the one hand with being a good leader and dispatching your duties and responsibilities on the other. When you do, I think your peers must understand, “He was selected to be a leader.” I think most of them do. Sometimes you’re tested by your peers. That’s when you have to let everybody know: “Look, I was selected and I’m going to be the best possible leader that I can be. If I have to get on you now and then, that’s the way it’s going to have to be. I’m going to make you be good soldiers. At the same time, I’m going to develop you and give you a chance to be leaders, too.”
SMA Glen E. Morrell

When I ask NCOs if they have counseled their soldiers, I usually get a positive answer. But I bet that if I looked at the counseling statements, most- if not all- of them would be negative, indicating that the bad soldier is getting most of the attention. What is wrong with a positive counseling statement for the good soldier? And more importantly, what is wrong with paying more attention to the good soldier? We certainly have the tools available today to turn our attention to the good soldier.
The transformation that takes place when you say, “Jones, you are in charge,” is amazing. We would be much better served if we could do a better job of accentuating the positive. Pat that young NCO on the back when he does it right. Better yet, have the guts to underwrite NCO mistakes and back up our junior NCOs. Finally, look for solutions and suggest them instead of problems to our commanders.
SMA William A. Connelly

A pat on the back- applied at the proper moment in the circumstances- can have a dramatic influence in developing a leader.
SMA William G. Bainbridge

Do not assume that you already “know” what leader development is. To paraphrase numerous articles and books on developmental systems, three things must be present for a developmental system is to be effective: Intention, ownership and accountability. Intention is the organization’s desired outcome of development. The organization must fill in the blank of the following sentence, or the developmental activity will be just that-activity with no purpose: “We want to develop leaders who _____. Ownership means that senior leaders of the organization establish leader development as a priority, not just in writing, but in word, deed, and action. Ownership also relates to the individuals’ within the organization being prepared and are willing to develop. Accountability entails senior members being held accountable for how well they have developed those junior to them (subordinates), and individuals being held personally accountable for their own growth”.

You will be leading others your entire time you are in our Army. The best leaders understand that it is never about them, it is about those whom they lead. The following approach to the study of this topic is meant to help you develop yourself, and in turn be better prepared to develop others.

Leader Development

“The best leaders create environments that allow individuals to grow and trust subordinates.”

-General Odierno

The purpose of this topic is to help educate maneuver leaders about the nature and importance of leader development in our Army. Good leaders produce more leaders, not more followers. Developing leaders is not a matter of resources; it is mainly a matter of commitment.

The Myths: Leader development is having OPDs and NCOPDs regularly. Leader development is your assignment progression over time. Leader development is counseling and mentoring. Leader development is something that TRADOC does – meaning it is synonymous with education.

As defined in the Army Leader Development Strategy, leader development is, “A continuous, progressive process by which the synthesis of an individual’s training, education, and experiences contribute to individual growth over the course of a career”. Leader development is a mutually shared responsibility across three domains: the institutional Army (education or training institutions), the operational force (organization or unit), and the individual. As illustrated in the below diagram, the three components of leader development occur in each of these domains. Surrounding the model are peer and developmental relationships that provide context and enhance professional growth. These relationships are critical to overall development and involve sharing, counseling, reflection, coaching, mentoring, and 360 degree assessments like the current Multi-Source Assessment and Feedback (MSAF) program. These relationships and programs increase a leader’s self-awareness through objective feedback from multiple perspectives.

How Leaders Develop

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Army Leader Development Model

There is a distinction between leader development and leadership development (defined as, enhancing a leader’s ability to influence others within a given social context), the Army merges the two in its description of a developmental process that is intended to produce a leader embodying the attributes and competencies defined in ADP 6-22 , Army Leadership.

Developmental processes, such as that depicted in the Army Leader Development Model, describe how a leader within an organization develops. Consistent with the Army model, most literature on developmental processes highlights three components of development: Challenging Experiences, the Readiness of the Individual to Respond to the Challenge, and Reflection.

Readiness of the Individual. We have to assess the readiness of the subordinate with respect to the challenge for which they are about to be presented and we must decide if it is appropriate. A basketball team of 9 yr olds should probably not be “challenged” with playing the Lakers. There is no hope, and it is very doubtful that any development will occur. What is more likely is an emotional outcome of crushing failure. The Asymmetric Warfare Group coined the phrase, “Training at the Threshold of Failure”. It would be simple to replace “training” with “development”:

Implied in all of the above is that the senior leader must have a pretty specific understanding of the subordinate’s capabilities, if the experience is to be challenging, yet attainable (the sweet spot). Said another way, en masse development has some utility, but the best development occurs when it is individualized.

When discussing Challenging Experiences, we often equate that to challenging training events; ones that have curveballs thrown in to test our agility, or mental resolve, etc. That is a normal association, but experiences can come in many forms: challenging educational experiences, a challenging public speaking engagement, counseling a troubled family, or being given a staff project that appears on the surface to be “too hard and too complex” for what you believe your capabilities to be. Anything that stretches one’s capacity can be considered a challenging experience.

Reflection is probably the most important part of the developmental process and the most misunderstood and least applied. As soon as we complete the latest task, assignment, or mission and no matter how challenging it was, we move immediately to the next task. Reflection includes feedback (to include 360s), coaching and mentoring. Self-reflection is also a powerful tool, but it is not enough. If you reflect wrongly, or in a shallow fashion, then you might misinterpret the lessons you learned from that experience. This is where more experienced leaders coach, counsel, share, explain, and put into context what they think you might have learned from that experience. That feedback might not be 100% accurate either, but if nothing else, it has given you a different perspective.

The Army grows its own leaders. Unlike large organizations in the civil sector, the uniformed Army does not routinely recruit, select, and assign mid-grade and senior level leaders from outside its service. Development of a senior uniformed leader begins two decades prior to the organization’s employment of that individual. The Army develops adaptive leaders through training, education and experiences within a mission command climate.

How is the Army doing with respect to developing leaders? The survey indicates that we can do better. Over the past three years, “Develops Others” has been our lowest rated leader competency. The two highest rated competencies have been “Achieves Results” and “Leads Others”. In short, it appears that we are strong at “doing”, but weak at “giving”.

An Approach to the Study of Leader Development.

Read the Army Leader Development Strategy (ALDS) and the Maneuver Leader Development Strategy (MLDS) along with the Army leadership doctrine. Then select an article such as The Building Blocks to Leader Development to help you gain a broader perspective on leader development. Next, select a book such as High Flyers to then mature your own theory of leader development.

Finally, after reading a book and an article on leader development, transition to a book or article on how military leaders developed. There are a few books listed under this topic, and several more under the self study topic on Military Leadership.