Military academies can teach lesson on
leadership, December 15, 2006, 2D.
Organizations of all types are in constant and desperate
need of leaders. Leaders are ones who can identify problems
and issues, marshal the resources needed to solve the
problems, and energize and mobilize others to address and
solve the problems. Too often, organizations breed and
train people to simply follow orders and to not question the
ways things are done. In so doing, organizations condition
their people to become dependent followers rather than
independent leaders. Unfortunately, when individuals from
such systems do promote into authority roles, the only role
models they have to emulate are those whom they have seen
and worked under—those who handed out orders to follow. To
fill their leadership needs, organizations must train people
to become active leaders and not simply givers and takers of
commands.
Our
country’s military academies require their graduates to be
leaders. The academies have developed systems where senior
students take command and assume responsibility for groups
of junior students. By assuming command, senior students
begin making the types of decisions and carrying the
responsibilities of those in the positions they are being
trained to assume. The role of the senior students is to
train and develop the junior students into leaders as well.
To fully do this, senior students must model appropriate and
required behaviors to their juniors—which they learned from
their seniors when they were junior students. Upon
graduation, students have practiced and are prepared to
assume the positions for which they have been trained. The
military’s system is a complete system of leadership
development.
To
create a system that allows senior students to assume
command and make decisions requires great amounts of trust.
Trainees should be given the freedom to experiment and
learn, but under the watchful and encouraging guidance of a
mentor. Learning about leadership, like learning about
anything else, comes about from practice, reflection,
correction, and more practice.
Knowing
that one serves as a role model to followers and serving as
a guide and teacher forces aspiring leaders to work harder
in their roles and spend more time “figuring out” how to
make things work better. The trust awarded to junior
leadership from senior leadership is often returned to the
seniors through such a system.
The
leadership development model employed by the military
academies can be used in all types of organizations—from
schools, to businesses, to sports teams, to churches and
non-profit organizations, and others. Unfortunately, too
many organizations are controlled by people who cling to the
outdated command and control management models that guided
organizations through the industrial revolution. In
today’s fast-paced and rapidly changing business
environment, organizations cannot afford to have people who
can only follow orders. Organizations need people who can
foresee issues and problems, feel comfortable and secure in
reporting their ideas to others, and possess the abilities
to work effectively through and with other people. These
characteristics arise when organizations create cultures
that value trust and that support true leadership
development.
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