Leadership Skills to Manage Diversity in the Military

You can ask ten different Soldiers what an Army leader is, or what they believe a good Army leader is. It will not matter the rank, time in service or the maturity level of that Soldier because more than likely you will get ten different answers. Everyone has their own opinions on what an Army leader is, or what they believe a good Army leader is. By definition leadership in the Army is the process of influencing people by providing purpose, direction, and motivation to accomplish the mission and improve the organization (ADRP 6-22, 2012). There are three leadership competencies that make an Army leader; leads, develops and achieves.

The Army’s Professional Culture. Although there are multiple cultures throughout the formation, the Soldiers shed their differences and unit for a single belief: the calling of selfless service for the nation. Simply, the culture is to be a family. Soldiers not only have their families, but also their brothers and sisters in arms to share and pull each other through the darkest and happiest of times. Furthermore, climate complements culture. A Soldier must never feel like the Army is more of a job than a calling. Without selfless service, the formation loses its identity. Even if there are outliers in the formation, the Army reminds those individuals of their expected behavior through the Warrior Ethos. Additionally, an engaged leadership can mitigate a degrading climate.

For the next 10-15 years, leadership development is critical within the military. Training to develop agile leaders will yield a competitive advantage within both private and public organizations. Importantly, leadership training should mirror as if one would fight in the new Era International Security Environment. Such tenacity will confront limited engagements in the next 10 years, plus a great deal of offensive operations in the 15 years. Therefore, trained leaders are flexible to their changing missions, roles, and responsibilities, thus are more adaptive to compelling new conflicts.

Army leaders must balance the link between the Army’s culture and it’s climate and institutional practices. When there is a proper balance it has a huge impact on the mindset of the Army’s Soldiers. Their actions or inactions impacts the five key attributes of the profession, and the four fields of expertise, and have long term effects on the Army’s culture and climate. These actions influence Soldiers’ perceptions that they are serving professional who have answered the call of service to the republic, it is important that Soldiers understand that their role is a calling and not just a job.

The Marine Corps has 11 Leadership Principles. Of the eleven, there is one that states, “Seek Responsibility and Take Responsibility.” This is instilled in every Marine from Private (Enlisted-1) to General (Officer-10). Throughout the Bible, God placed responsibility upon His people and expected them to act accordingly. However, He did not punish the son for the father’s sin and vice-versa. There were times in the Old Testament that this occurred. For example, with Achan (Jos. 7:14-15) when he stole spoils from battle, did not confess it, and he along with his family was killed. Another instance happened when the accusers of Daniel and their families were thrown in the Lion’s Den (Dan. 6:24). Sande states, “Another way to avoid responsibility for our sins is to shift the blame to others or to say that they made us act the way we did.”

This start with artifacts, which make up the base level of what a Soldier is. (CG TRADOC, 2010, p.10) These artifacts then feed into the beliefs and values of the organization. If artifacts and values to not line up there will be an undermining of the authority within the organization. The next piece in the defining what it means to be a professional Soldier falls into three cultural dimensions; the personal identity, the community, and the hierarchy. (CG TRADOC, 2010, p.10-11) These three domains of culture do not always fall directly in line and do change over time. It a leader’s job to shape the interaction between them. This shaping is most evident in times of change when the largest schism between the three dimensions is likely to

The majority of my experience dealing with leadership in the Marine Corps had been both positive and negative. It always seemed like the great leaders that I did have the pleasure of following never had the chance to survive due to their power hungry superiors. We are all able to learn from the mistakes and success from all styles of leadership. What I am learning from this course is that each style of leadership can work depending on the type of organization. I try to imagine and embrace the thought of a world lead by transformational leadership. Leadership that would sets the standard for all organizations and leaders. Leaders should understand how significant their influences are and how they are in the positions to empower followers to invoke positive and ethical change that could create a ripple effect in today’s business world. In this paper I will be analyzing Martin Shkreli’s leadership style, focusing on how his values, ethics and abuse of power ultimately plummeted him into a pool of corruption and failure. Martin is currently one of the most disliked individuals in Wall Street, social media and by the consumers that rely on the life saving drug, Daraprim. Not only am I appalled by Martine Shkreli’s leadership style, I am also very disappointed with how long his followers encouraged his behavior. It is very important to understand that all of the responsibility does not fall all on the leadership. The boards of directors, stakeholders and the followers have as much

The United States Army is a gigantic institute with an international presence. One of its fundamental sources of power is the diversity of its personnel, which includes 1.6 million workforce across the active, reserve, civilian, and contractor parts. While the Army was at the vanguard of ethnic incorporation in the 1950s and at present is one of the most assorted institutes in the U.S., further advancement must be made on the diversity front. The term "diversity" can be classified along countless aspects; this paper concentrates on racial diversity since the exceptional and traditionally important role that race has in matters of diversity in the Army. Internal communications concerning delegate leadership throughout the force, the Army sketches power from its cultural and racial diversity.

Summary: In this article the authors are addressing future leaders, and they immediately inform the reader that because there is more complexity considerably more complex issues and technologies than a century ago in the operational military environment, there is a great need for military leaders to achieve autonomy in terms of adapting to and learning about the evolving environment. In short, leaders must be smarter and better prepared for a changing world.

“You can do what I cannot do. I can do what you cannot do. Together we can do

It is important for a leader to understand that completing essential tasks to meet mission goals, personal development, and providing future leaders the tools to procure success are all equally important and should be balanced. Times may call for one responsibility to be a higher priority that the other, so it is imperative that leaders are able to differentiate what skills apply to certain situations. “Strategic leaders, for example, must control personnel development, evaluation and certification, and assignment and utilization processes in ways that motivate aspiring professionals as they progress through a career of service,” (TRADOC, 2010). The cycle of learning, training, and accomplishing goals creates a culture of duty-oriented Soldiers with dedicated character and leadership

After fifteen and a half years later, I am in a position with the United States Air Force in which I can effectively influence the organizational behavior. As a senior non-commissioned officer (SNCO) I can teach, grow, and mentor a great number of very young people that make the choice to enter our ranks. With nearly 650,000 total force personnel, you can imagine the diversity that must be embraced. To fully discuss diversity within the military, we would be here much longer than this assignment allows. For today, I am going to hone in on the individual differences and intelligence.

We discussed what “The Profession of Arms” defines a HR role in the Army profession as “expertise, trust, development, values and service” (p.18). Nonetheless, what is the HR professionals characteristic? The characteristics that they describe are as follows: “skill, trust, leadership, character and duty” (p.18). The characteristics between a profession and professional are similar but they are performed at a different level. However, one characteristic they share in common is trust. Trust is the foundation where HRs engage effectively with civilians or military relations. Other attributes that a professional has is the drive and motivation to become a great NCO. We are provided with guidelines, doctrines, courses and most importantly, culture. In the reading, culture is the system of shared meaning held by its Soldiers, which are: “the shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterize the larger institution over time” (p.9). As leaders, we learn from one another. We analyze a NCOs way of teaching, the way they speak to other Soldiers, and the way they are looked upon through other NCOs. We then decide what kind of leader we want to become. It ever so happens that we know what we don’t want to become. We don’t want to be that NCO that doesn’t know his MOS, that doesn’t know how to cooperate with other Soldiers or plainly, doesn’t know how to be a leader. As NCOs, we all want to

This cannot be achieved however, if we do not understand how to operate within their sociological structure. Failure to recognize cultural differences and adapting to them will degrade mission capabilities, especially if support is needed from the indigenous people. Cultural awareness must be accounted for and incorporated into planning and executing, training and leader development, and continuously refined. It builds trust in our operations and demonstrates our commitment to resolve issues. It is not limited to building relationships among coalitions; cultural awareness is also useful to better understand our enemy, their tactics, and motivation for

The topic that I’m choosing is Chapter 17, “Managing a Diverse Workforce.” Although there is an improvement in the diversity in the workforce, there is still room for change. Businesses have made many changes to help enforce the laws that were passed regarding diversity in the workforce. Women have been integrated into the workforce and there also have been many immigrants from other countries that have been given a new start to the workforce in the United States. Laws of equal opportunity have been made to help increase the workforce diversity. The goal for full equality of women and persons of color in the workplace has not been fully met; however, the United States’ workforce has made a lot of progress.