LEADERSHIP

LEADER TRAINING DOMAINS

U.S. ARMY ADP 7-0

Institutional Training Domain

The Army’s institutional training and education system, which primarily includes training base centers and schools that provide initial training and subsequent professional military education for Soldiers, military leaders, and Army civilians.

Operational Training Domain

The training activities organizations undertake while at home station, at maneuver combat training enters, during joint exercises, at mobilization centers, and while operationally deployed.

Self-Development Training Domain

Planned, goal-oriented learning that reinforces and expands the depth and breadth of an individual’s knowledge base, self-awareness, and situational awareness; complements institutional and operational learning; enhances professional competence; and meets personal objectives.

HOW LEADERS DEVELOP

U.S. ARMY ADP 6-22

Leadership—and increased proficiency in leadership—can be developed. Fundamentally, leadership develops when the individual desires to improve and invests effort, when his or her superior supports development, and when the organizational climate values learning. Learning to be a leader requires knowledge of leadership, experience using this knowledge and feedback. Formal systems such as evaluation reports, academic evaluation reports, and 360° assessments offer opportunities to learn—but the individual must embrace the opportunity and internalize the information. The fastest learning occurs when there are challenging and interesting opportunities to practice leadership with meaningful and honest feedback and multiple practice opportunities. These elements contribute to self-learning, developing others and setting a climate conducive to learning.

Leader development involves recruiting, accessing, developing, assigning, promoting, broadening, and retaining the best leaders, while challenging them over time with greater responsibility, authority and accountability. Army leaders assume progressively broader responsibilities across direct, organizational and strategic levels of leadership. Military leadership is unique because the armed forces grow their own leaders from the lowest to highest levels. The Army entrusts leaders to develop professionally and be ready to accept greater responsibility when called upon.

LEADER ATTRIBUTES

U.S. ARMY ADP 6-22

Attributes shape how an individual behaves and learns in their environment. The leader attributes are character, presence and intellect. These attributes capture the values and identity of the leader (character); the leader’s outward appearance, demeanor, actions and words (presence); and the mental and social faculties the leader applies in the act of leading (intellect). Attributes affect the actions that leaders perform. Good character, solid presence and keen intellect enable the core leader competencies to be performed with greater effect.

CHARACTER

Leadership is affected by a person’s character and identity. Integrity is a key mark of a leader’s character. It means doing what is right, legally and morally. The considerations required in leader choices are seldom obvious as wholly ethical or unethical. The Soldier’s Rules, which codify the law of war, outline ethical and lawful conduct in operations and are useful for everyday conduct (see AR 350-1). Leaders who unwaveringly adhere to applicable laws, regulations, and unit standards build credibility with their subordinates and enhance trust from the American people they serve.

Leaders of integrity adhere to the values that are part of their personal identity and set a standard for their followers to emulate. Identity is one’s self-concept, how one defines him or herself. Leaders who are effective with followers identify with the role and expectations of a leader; they willingly take responsibilities typical of a leader and perform the actions of a leader. Leaders who are unsure of themselves may not have a strong idea of their identity.

PRESENCE

The impression a leader makes on others contributes to success in getting people to follow. This impression is the sum of a leader’s outward appearance, demeanor, actions and words and the inward character and intellect of the leader. Presence entails the projection of military and professional bearing, holistic fitness, confidence and resilience. Strong presence is important as a touchstone for subordinates, especially under duress. A leader who does not share the same risks could easily make a decision that could prove unworkable given the psychological state of Soldiers and Civilians affected by stress.

INTELLECT

The leader’s intellect affects how well a leader thinks about problems, creates solutions, makes decisions and leads others. People differ in intellectual strengths and ways of thinking. There is no one right way to think. Each leader needs to be self-aware of strengths and limitations and apply them accordingly. Being mentally agile helps leaders address changes and adapt to the situation and the dynamics of operations. Critical and innovative thought are abilities that enable the leader to be adaptive. Sound judgment enables the best decision for the situation at hand. It is a key attribute of the transformation of knowledge into understanding and quality execution.

LEADER COMPETENCIES

U.S. ARMY ADP 6-22

There are three categories of competencies. The Army leader serves to lead others; to develop the environment, themselves, others and the profession as a whole; and to achieve organizational goals. Competencies provide a clear and consistent way of conveying expectations for Army leaders.

The core leader competencies apply across all levels of leader positions, providing a good basis for evaluation and focused multisource assessment and feedback. A spectrum of leaders and followers (superiors, subordinates, peers and mentors) can observe and assess competencies demonstrated through leader behaviors.

Leader competencies can be developed. Leaders acquire competencies at the direct leadership level. As the leader moves to organizational and strategic level positions, the competencies provide the basis for leading through change. Leaders continuously refine and extend the ability to perform these competencies proficiently and learn to apply them to increasingly complex situations.

LEADS

The category of leads encompasses five competencies. Two focus on the affiliation of the followers and the common practices for interacting with them. Leads others involves influencing Soldiers and Army Civilians in the leader’s organization. Extends influence beyond the chain of command involves influencing others when the leader does not have designated authority or while the leader’s authority is not recognized by others, such as with unified action partners. Builds trust is an important competency to establish conditions of effective influence and for creating a positive environment. Leader actions and words comprise the competencies of leads by example and communicates. Actions can speak louder than words and excellent leaders use this to serve as a role model to set the standard. Leaders communicate to convey clear understanding of what needs to be done and why.

Leaders are expected to extend influence beyond the chain of command, which usually has limited formal authority. This competency widens the responsibility and sphere of influence for a leader. Such influence requires insightful—and possibly nonstandard—methods to influence others. Its limited authority stems from the audience’s possible lack of the traditions, customs, and regulations of the Army and military forces. When extending influence, Army leaders have to assess who they need to influence and determine how best to establish their authority and execute leadership functions. Often they have little time to assess the situation beforehand and need to adapt as the interaction evolves. Extending influence is a competency that includes negotiation, consensus building and conflict resolution. Extending influence largely depends on the trust established with unified action partners and often applies to stability and defense support of civil authorities operations.

DEVELOPS

Leaders operate to improve or sustain high performance in their organization. They do so by focusing on the four develops competencies. Create a positive environment inspires an organization’s climate and culture. Prepares self encourages improvement in leading and other areas of leader responsibility. Leaders develop others to assume greater responsibility or achieve higher expertise. A leader stewards the profession to maintain professional standards and effective capabilities for the future.

Leaders are responsible for development. They must ensure that they themselves are developing, that they are developing subordinates, and that they are sustaining a positive climate and improving the organization. Leaders encourage development and set conditions while performing missions. Development occurs by having subordinates reflect on what happened during an event, by assessing whether units performed at or well above standard and why, in addition to having a positive mindset of improvement and learning. Every experience is developmental.

Leaders have choices to make about developing others. Leaders choose when and how to coach, counsel and mentor others. Leaders often have the freedom to place people in the best situation to maximize their talent. Then the leader provides resources the subordinate needs to succeed, makes expectations clear, and provides positive, meaningful feedback. While leaders need to develop others, they have to set a positive climate in which individuals and the unit can improve and operate. As part of their developmental responsibilities, leaders must prepare themselves and act to promote long-term stewardship of the Army.

ACHIEVES

Gets results is the single achieves competency and relates to actions to accomplish tasks and missions on time and to standard. Getting results is the goal of leadership but leaders must remain mindful that leading people and creating positive conditions enable them to operate as successful leaders. Getting results requires the right level of delegation, empowerment and trust balanced against the mission. Adaptability to conditions and adjustments based on adversarial actions are ever important elements of success.

TALENT MANAGEMENT