What makes a good leader? Most importantly for our business, can we make them? Imagine a world where every ‘out-of-the-box’ officer would be that fully developed, open-minded and ethical individual always on the look for the “right thing to do”. That Lieutenant with strong character but authentic empathy. Some tact to work with his platoon sergeant and confident enough in his own decisions. Motivated, self-controlled and optimist; the real deal. Sounds appealing, right? Two of those “dream” soldiers will probably start an interesting debate, all of them will put the Army to a stop.
The Army defined leadership as “the process of influencing people by providing purpose, direction, and motivation while operating to accomplish the mission and improve the organization” (FM 6-22). Very inclusive, it left the door open for interpretation. Looking back at our class discussion, every group also defined emotional intelligence a different way. On the top of that, the article provided some valuable input and I found it interesting how the author used some variant of the scientific method to define something as abstract and immaterial as leadership and emotional intelligence.
However, the Army loves standards and procedures so it couldn’t help itself but creating boxes to help quantify and qualify leadership: Training, Education, and Experience. Three sacrosanct pillars supposed to carry all the “Capstone Concept” of what makes a leader. While checking one, two or all three boxes sure looks good on paper for statistics it doesn’t guarantee good leadership, what we wish for our organization, right? Each domain, operational, institutional or self-development will add up to the game and ultimately if you manage to get all of that in writing in the big meat-grinder called the Officer Evaluation Report you should be set for success. Sadly, promotion can be the reflection of a dangerous negative correlation, hence our eternal dilemma with toxic leadership. While one would guess that the Army tries to define its leaders as holistically as possible, the choice not to account for emotional intelligence in the Leadership Requirement Model, or at least not directly, isn’t as innocent as it seems.
Emotional intelligence drives decisions, and builds on ethics to balance the right from the wrong. Who could disagree that we need a more ethical army with right-minded soldiers? An organization where all service members would live by the Just War Theory, constantly balancing Jus in Belo, humanitarian law and the Law of Armed Conflicts. No more scandals, but no more Army neither. Remember our perfect officer described above? Would you want to deal with every NCO and Officer questioning every single decision from an ethical perspective? The Army needs leaders, but only one type: its own. Be careful, I am of course not implying that rules of war prevent us from “fighting and winning our nation’s wars”. Rather, I simply hope to point out how delicate one parameter could lead to ask questions some aren’t ready to hear the answers, yet.