LEADERSHIP TRAINING AND EDUCATION:
DEVELOPMENTS IN THE RNLA

Col René W. Jacobs, MA
Commandant 
Training Centre for Didactics
and Military Leadership
Velp, The Netherlands

Ladies and gentlemen,

To present a paper on military leadership for an audience of civilians can be rather easy: if there are any comments you can just say: that is the military way ! that is the way  we do it.  But as most of you are in the military I can get into some serious trouble.  So if you see me getting nervous, be nice to me, just as I will be nice to you for my presentation won't take more than 29 minutes. And as you know: nice people make short presentations.  

What can you expect in the next thirty minutes?  I will first make a few remarks on the history of the training and education of our new leaders. Then how it is practised today with emphasis on personality development in relation to "stress" this will be followed by leadership and ethical decisions and I will end with leadership in a changing army!
But . . . . I will start with a question:

                    S H E E T  I

Which of you would not like to be the leader of this group of young man, good looking and well-shaped and ready to fight?

Well, let us have a second look.

                    S H E E T   II

Which of you would like to be the leader of this group of young man?

I wonder what will be behind the difference in enthousiasm I saw in your reactions?
I think it has to do a lot with your interpretations and expectations about leaders and followers.
And these are important but I am sure it needs more to become a good leader than interpretation and expectation.
And that is what I am going to talk about and the motto is:

                   S H E E T  3

     The best thing that can happen to an army is good  leadership.

In the fifties the most striking characteristic of leadership was authoritative behavior.
The behavior of the "followers" was most of the time directed by the following:
     y o u    d o n ' t   n e e d   t o   t h i n k,
     t h a t    i s   w h a t   I   a m   p a i d   f o r. 
It changed..... also in the RNLA, but I think our hearts were not really in it!

By the way: in my opinion there is too little attention for the role of followers in theories on leadership ! and if there is only one leader there has to be at least one follower.  
And as we all know there are much more followers than leaders.             
And I would like to say something about it:

     t h e   b e s t   f o l l o w e r s   a r e   t h o s e  w h o   k n o w   s o m e t h i n g   a b o u t   
     l e a d e r s h i p.
     I n    o t h e r   w o r d s:   e v e r y b o d y 
     n e e d s   s o m e   u n d e r s t a n d i n g   
     a b o u t   w h a t   h i s   b o s s   d o e s   a s
     a   l e a d e r.

And as you will all realize that makes a wonderful market for training centres and so on !

In the seventies there came a change in army leadership: In a policy document on Individual Training it was stated that a leader should be

     S e l f - r e l i a n t,   A c t i v e,   C r e a t i v e
     a n d   h a v e   a   s e n s e   o f   R e s p o n s i b i l i t y (SACR).
    
and also good motivated and willing to perform well.

Well, that has not even changed a bit. These personality traits are still desirable for leaders.
A few years later a report is published by a Steering Group that states that the style of leadership is very much related to the situation. And the theory behind it will be well known to most of you.  Self-realization becomes an important item at that time.   

Now I would like to make a small tour outside this historical remarks.
Marc Bersier, a young Swiss colleague has together with some other army psychologists done research among a platoon of the Swiss army in 1993. They followed the platoon 24 hours a day during a week and came to the conclusion that situational leadership goes even further than the theory states.

During the course of the manoeuvres leadership was taken over by someone else continuously depending on the demands of the situation. The conclusion was that a leader should know him self and his own limits as he has to know these of his followers and should delegate leadership to the most adequate member of his team best fitted for that specific situation but keep the super-vision.

This would be a sophisticated form of situational leadership.

Back to the main road.
Slowly it became clear that you had to train and educate your   personnel very well on all these aspects (SACR).
But that meant that you should pay much attention to the education of the trainers of the new leaders.
So we developed a special course for trainers how they should educate new leaders.
And you need to do that in a way so that every new leader learns it in the same way.
So we introduced a uniform model in which 5 Basic Skills  were taught to the students.
(Planning, Implementation, Evaluation, Communication and Social Competence.)
And they form necessary tools for every new leader.

Those 5 Basic Techniques were subdivided in 30 skills which can be translated in concrete behavior.
An example: - Planning means among other things: make a time  schedule;
            - means: appoint tasks to your people.

Upto this level it is all very well to follow and you can 
find it back in the behavior of the students.
Or in other words you can teach them the rules and have them execute the skills.
All this is done in so called leadershiptraining in our army officers and NCO schools.
But an other important thing is education and with that I mean the development of desired personality traits.

It will be obvious that the training of the leadership skills also has influence on the processes between your ears but that is not sufficient. For a good leader it is not only important what he does, but also what kind of person he is.

And now I can see the psychologists straigthen their backs for at last something comes up they know everything about :
personality traits.

How can you develop desired personality traits in new young leaders.
Well,first you have to decide upon which traits are desirable in your leaders.
We discussed this in a number of workshops and here are some of the results:
     self-reliance;
     loyalty;
     creativity;
     honesty;
     empathy;
     achievement-orientedness.

Next step is to find a way to determine wether someone possesses these traits. And also how you can develop them.
Well, first of all we were lucky, for most of these traits are part of the candidate selection procedures. And that means that we may presume that most of the candidates do posses the traits at least in potency.
Nevertheless you have to find out whether a candidate does something with these traits in his daily behavioror not. 
In training situations there is hardly any time to do psychological testing on these matters, not counting the trouble it will take to measure growth.

So we had to find some rather simple but very practical solution.
The following showed itself to be of use:

      w h a t   a c t s   i n   s o m e o n e s   c o n c r e t e   b e h a v i o r   a r e   i n d i c a -
      t i o n s   f o r   t h e   f a c t   t h a t   h e  m a y   p o s s e s   a   d e s i r a b l e   t r a i t.

The research we did on this brought us a lot of answers and I will give you a few examples:
     
      honesty shows itself in the behavior of a person who
      - doesnot tell lies;
      - dares to acknowledge that he makes mistakes;
      - treats his soldiers equally;
      and so on,

      or
      loyalty shows itself in the behavior of a person who
      - supports his soldiers;
      - doesnot snap at his soldiers in public;
      - fullfills his promises to others.
      and so on.

In this way we searched for concrete behavior that could be an  indication for all the desirable traits. And the more indications you find in a persons behavior the higher the chance that it was really representative for the traits.

The way we have chosen to develop these traits goes by intro-
ducing in the training experiences that do have a big impact on the students.
For instance:
      - they have to perform heavy physical tasks;
      - they will suffer from hardships (lack of sleep, food,  shelter);
      - they will experience fears;
      - they will meet disappointments;
      - and last but not least: the behavior of older colleagues has to serve as a model.
 
And I think that you all will already see the common factor in these practices
      STRESS.

These training situations put you under stress, physical and psychological. And the aim is to shape or to develop certain personality traits which should be found in the behavior of the students.
I will give you some examples :
   the performance of heavy physical tasks will develop your
      - self-confidence;
      - perseverance;
      - motivation;
   lack of sleep will also develop your
      - perseverance;
      - motivation;
      - adaptation;
   as disappointments will develop you
      - capacity of relativation;
      - loyalty;    

It is clear that it is difficult to determine which experience develops which trait ecactly and also that there is no one-to-one relationship between training-situation and trait.
And all this will only be successful when training situations are carefully planned and guided. One of the conditions e.g. is that the training situations are very well evaluated with the students. 
A second one is that the situation is practicable, you should be able to reach the goals.
If the conditions are filled in then there is a good possibi-lity that the development will take place.
A second aim of the training is that our candidates learn to recognize their own behavior and physical and psychological reactions and find a way to cope with them.

Also they will realize that as they have these reactions their soldiers will have them too and that one of the duties of a leader is to teach his followers how to cope with these 
reactions.
As a mean of support to be able to do so lessons on stress are given and instruction cards on the reactions are distributed among all personnel.
These lessons on stress are part off the initial or basic training off all military personnel.
Leaders also get an instruction card which functions as a kind of directive on stress. A combat drill on (combat) stress.
(What to do if ...).
And in order to be able to give some kind of first aid they learn how to evaluate more or less taumatic events with their soldiers in a so called debriefing.
One of my colleagues, ltc Martens , who will be here tomorrow will give you more details on this stress prevention program in his presentation on psychological support in military operations.

I will now change to leadership and ethical decision making.
The policy document on leadership also states that leaders should act on basis of ethical principles and accepted values
and prevailing standards in our society.
And there we have a seriously difficult topic which has been the subject of many scholars for centuries.
The US-Army and the IDF have been wrestling with the topic too. Americans speak about: loyalty, duty, selfless service and integrity. And I like that.
Problem is that the meaning of these items will change over times and locations.
For that reason we looked for another approach.
We want our leaders to think about ethics, about values and standards.
We favor a responsibility approach.
That is also in line with the already mentioned policy document on leadership that speaks of SACR and of mutual trust and freedom to act (within the limits of the assignment). 
Summarized this responsibility approach of ethical questions places the responsibility with every individual within the limits of his scope or within the limits of what he can overlook from his position. So you can talk to him or tackle him on his conduct in that particular situation.
But then we also have to give him some tools to learn to handle ethical questions.
And that is done by teaching him to use some questions as a drill.

     These questions are:     
     - what are the facts
     - who are concerned
     - are all interests looked after and weigthed
     - what kind of solutions can be found
     - what are the consequences of these solutions
     and then
     - are the solutions legal;
     - can it pass your standards.      
This method doesnot give the answer to what is just or not and how to act. It teaches you to think about your doing/acting and it makes you aware of problems around your decisions.
And in my opinion this urging upon thinking about the moral consequences of your behavior is the core of the science of ethics.  And from the viewpoint of a scientist you can put a lot of questions upon our drill, but it is a start.

The next item I would like to say something about is leadership in a changing environment.
A very important skill for such situations is the capability to handle resistance. Resistance that finds its roots in differences in interpretation of the need to change, or in a lack of communication about the change, or in not involving the right people.
Of great importance is the setting of goals and the lay out of the routing.
And with these steps there is a firm link with the policy document on leadership that states that there should be freedom to act and mutual trust, So . . .
     - don't prescribe, but let people try out;
     - don't come up with solutions but . . .  
     - bring the problem under discussion;
     - take the risks of not doing it yourself.
If we start to train our candidates in this way we have to take notice of the following:
     - we are their model;
     - we must teach them to discuss with facts and arguments  that does not mean that they have to stop their opponents mouths with those arguments;
     - on the contrary we must teach them to have respect for  the opinion of other people;
     - and a leader should take care that everyone takes part in the decisionmaking.
These are the common social and communicative skills that are also part of the model with the 5 Basic Techniques.
A very excellent instrument that is used in changing situa-tions to facilitate effective and efficient cooperation is Teambuilding which we practise in workshops.
We bring the company commander and his sub commanders together for about 3 to 5 days in a workshop in which they are trained as a team . They will be guided by some experts but the company commander is still in charge of everything.

The last minutes I will pay attention to the fact that our armies, more than ever before will have to cooperate with armies from other countries. E.g. The Dutch 1st Corps has started a new multinational corps with the Germans.
What does this mean for our leaders, what can be the conse-
quences of sharing your office, or your shelter during manoeuvres or during operations with colleagues who come from an other country with an other language and with different  
habits ?

A German and a Dutch student of the Higher War Academy in Holland have made investigations on this subject and they made the following recommendations:
more than before we have to teach our leaders
     - languages
     - foreign history and culture
     - rules of engagement in international cooperations
     - how to cope with all kinds of stress
     - ethics, also in foreign countries

And we should start these teaching programs very early in the training and education of our new leaders so that it becomes part of their personality.
And since about a year  we have a sociologist working full time for our 1st Corps and one of his assignments is to carry out a support-program to enhance the cooperation in the 1st (GE/NL) Corps.

To conclude:
If I look back what I have told you than I see the following

     - a short overview of leadership history with aspects of training skills, education or shaping of desired  personality traits and something about ethics.
       Training with the 5 basic techniques and 30 skills that can be found back in concrete behavior.
       And I stated that these are also of great importance for leadership in a changing environment.
       I ended with some remarks on the future in which combined actions will become more and more frequent.
To those of you who have become somewhat sceptical about the chances to be succesful in all these areas I have a reassuring expression made by a very well known female behavioral scientist: 

CREATIVE MINDS HAVE ALWAYS BEEN KNOWN TO SURVIVE ANY KIND OF BAD TRAINING.