Military Leadership Competencies

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.

Leadership development in the military is critical to its mission and objectives. Understanding and embracing leadership will foster an agile culture and facilitate attainment of strategic goals. People desire quality leadership to assist with achieving their goals, albeit personal or professional development. Having a clear vision and the motivation to perform at high-levels influences others to work synergistically together to achieve organizational goals. Insomuch, employees value being treated respectfully, fairly, and ethically. Leaders serve people best when they help them develop their own initiative and good judgment, enable them to grow, and help them become better contributors.

“We all have competencies. They are the sum of our experiences and the knowledge, skills, values, and attitudes we have acquired during our lifetime” (Pickett, 1998, p. 103). A successful organization will have a set of competencies defined. Having competencies identified outlines the framework of standards that a company and employees should follow. There is a tendency to list a large number of competencies when creating the standards for an organization. Companies should focus on five to seven key core competencies that are needed in order to be successful. The core competencies should encompass the growth of the company, staff, and public perception.

Despite all the adversities that you’ll face, the path of success is paved with gold. If you’re willing to do whatever it takes and really follow through on your dreams, you will make it happen. Being in the military for over 12 years, I firmly believe that there’s some requirements of a leader and if you this requirements, you will be able to do the things that you’ve always wanted to do at the highest level and dominate no matter what. The first tip is to have a strong health. No matter what others say, you always have to promote your health. You always have it in control, whether dieting or exercising you have to be intense top shape if you wat to be a superior leader. In most cases, a reliable leader should be able to lift up a box, touch

Likert scale was used for both questionnaires to measure quality and importance of subject matter.

If you are interviewing for the job you always wanted and you are asked to describe your best leadership competencies and to discuss two ways you have demonstrated these qualities at work, how would you respond?

What comes to mind when you hear the word leadership? Do you think of a person in the military? The President? Maybe your pastor comes to mind. The truth is everyone has a different picture of what leadership looks like. We will explore some of the various aspects here to bring clarity to this subject.

There are several attitudes that are involved in the overall concept of job satisfaction. This is an important facet of all businesses. Being in the military gives a unique perspective to these concepts. Not only that, being a member of Special Operations makes my perspective much more acute. All aspects of these attitudes can be applied here. However, I will focus on a select few that are the most obvious within my organization.

Currently, in my workplace, we are in search of a new manager for our department. Our previous manager was in the position for six months until he started experiencing health related issues that caused him to have a heart attack. Since the incident, he has been recovering great and had decided to step down from the position. He was offered and accepted a non-management position that would reduce the stress that he was encountering during time he was our manager. Even though he may have had the skills needed to perform the job, he lacked in the area of adaptability. In the process of selecting the new candidates to fill the position, particular competencies need to be stressed and enforced in order to hire the best candidate that will emphasize the behaviors and skills needed by the department directors. Competency models describe the behaviors and skills managers need to exhibit if an organization is to be successful (Hughes, 2015). Below is my example of a leadership competency model for the leadership position currently open in my workplace.

In her article, "The Most Important Leadership Competencies, According to Leaders Around the World", Sunnie Giles, certified executive coach and President of Quantum Leadership Group, discusses 5 of 10 leadership competencies that her research identified.

Five-point Likert scale was used to in the design of the questionnaire, anchored from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (5). The plain language statement was provided in the front page of the questionnaire so that participant could understand the purpose of survey. It also gave them a quick idea of what the questionnaire is about.

The response scales used are close ended with multiple choice and Likert scale questions on a scale of one to ten being used. Due to the large amount of data and the variety of information asked, this report will restrict itself to testing a few hypotheses, which will be targeted towards specific areas, and which can be proved or disproved through use of cross tabulation analysis based on data obtained in the survey.

a) According to “The Law of the Lid,” an individual’s leadership skills puts a cap on how effective that person will be throughout life. In other words, potential success surpass the level of leadership a person expresses. Organizations can also be impacted by “The Law of the Lid;” the strength of the leader(s) limits the amount of success the whole organization will have. This law was put into play in my National Honors Society in high school. During my first year, the leaders were not the best quality. The members on the board were all involved in other sports or clubs and tended to focus more on those versus NHS. They had a low leadership level, and in turn, our club had a low effectiveness and success rate. In my senior year, the leaders all changed and were more involved in NHS. We had all talked about bettering the program and progressing the organization’s reputation again. Our leaders stepped up to the plate and increased the amount of activities we did for our community. These leaders had better qualities and therefore, our National Honor Society thrived. Leadership and effectiveness go hand in hand as “The Law of the Lid” expresses. b) Intuition is the ability to understand something immediately and comes naturally to a person. This is an important quality to have as a leader. John Maxwell addresses this in “The Law of Intuition,” which says that it is the natural strength of someone to be able to look at a situation and know exactly how to handle it

A competency model of leadership is a simple concept, “it describes the behaviors and skill managers need to exhibit if an organization is to be successful” (Hughes, Ginnett & Curohy, 2015, p. 251). Within organizations there is an importance for the development of leaders in today’s society to meet the needs for their organization. While the leader needs to display unique leadership for their organizations, there are certain attributes and quality which are needed for a specific position. Everyone has competencies, these can be described as an individuals, skills, knowledge and abilities to able to perform their work on a daily basis. Within an organization, there a positions which require certain knowledge, skills and abilities, and for this reason a leadership competency model can be a useful tool. The competency model enables one to organize competencies for a specific position that is needed to successfully complete the task. The model can be used as a development tool for the individual for the specific task. This paper will provide an overview of the competency model for a college president, the paper will list three to five specific skills, abilities, behaviors, attitudes, and/or knowledge areas for the position with examples, illustrate in perception how to evaluate leaders in a specific leadership position using the model and lastly how the model of leadership assists in the development of leaders.

3. An Exposition of the Measured Variables Looking at the questionnaire, it is divided into 3 Sections: