Leadership

Leadership Concepts

Leadership for Organizations 380

Army Leadership

Introduction

Army leaders have to be prepared for the various people they are charged with along with accomplishing challenging missions. While the Army defines leadership as getting someone to accomplish a mission by providing purpose, motivation, and direction-it definitely is more to leadership than that. In order to be effective, Army leaders must understand that there are a number of leadership concepts in addition to purpose, motivation, and direction that must be learned.

Personality Theory

It has always been sad that it’s what’s on the inside that matters. This can also be said for leaders in the Army. A leader’s personality is what resonates with subordinates more than any other trait. An Army leader can be in outstanding physical shape and can master warfare but is ineffective if they aren’t able to relate to subordinates. An effective Army leader should have all or a large portion of the Big Five Personality Dimensions which include:

• Extraversion

• Agreeableness

• Conscientiousness

• Neuroticism

• Openness

Army leaders often find themselves having to communicate with more than just the soldiers they lead. They often have to communicate to family members during Family Support Group (FRG) meeting or with community leaders during town hall meetings. This is where extraversion plays a large role in leadership because when it comes to family members and the community leaders must appear sociable, assertive, and emotionally expressive. For example, the most important FRG meeting leaders face is when informing family members that their love ones will being deploying to a hostile area. It is imperative that leaders are able to appear sociable rather than aggressive when relating this type of news. Agreeableness most comes into play during the relationship between commissioned and noncommissioned officers....