Summarizes discussions with over 450 Army officers (lieutenants through colonels) about leader development in Army units. These discussions revealed that the type and extent of leader development activities vary greatly across units, but that they are generally informal and most heavily influenced by the unit commander. The authors conclude with suggestions on how the Army school system can improve leader development.

"Developing leaders is critical for the Army; given the amount of time officers spend in units, that experience should be important to their development. Yet few studies indicate whether Army units even have leader development programs, and, if they do, what the programs consist of and how well they are executed. To gain insight into these issues, Arroyo Center researchers met with over 450 officers (lieutenants through colonels) to discuss leader development within Army units. The discussions revealed that no set of activities exists that could be characterized as a standard unit-level leader development program. Instead, leader development tends to be informal, personality-driven, and dependent on the abilities, experience, and inclinations of the unit commander. The researchers do not recommend that the Army impose more formal programs or requirements on commanders, but instead that the Army's school system demonstrate the proper way to do counseling; introduce Army leaders to an array of leader development tools that could be adapted to a unit's needs in different situations; and, most importantly, foster the expectation that leader development will take place, according to Army standards, in operational units. The authors note that the Center for Army Leadership can support these efforts by fostering the sharing of leader development tools and ideas, possibly online, and exercising continuing quality control over the ideas being shared, based at least in part on user feedback." -- publisher's website.

This document reports recent efforts by RAND's Arroyo Center and the U.S. Army Noncommissioned Officer corps to examine ways of strengthening NCO professional development.

This research entailed developing and testing a detailed program of instruction to help Army leaders improve their social awareness and influence skills. Based on input from Soldier subject matter experts and the behavioral sciences literature, two training programs were developed: a six-hour classroom course and a parallel web-based course. Additionally, four assessments were created: a Social Awareness and Influence Skills Self-assessment to assess self-perceptions of skills, a knowledge test to assess learning in the course, a situational judgment test (SJT) to assess the students? ability to apply social insight and judgment to interpersonal situations, and a web-based role-play to assess the students? ability to apply influence tactics. These courses and assessments were then subsequently tested in two pilot samples. Results of the participant reactions questionnaire indicated that the training programs in both the classroom and web-based formats were well received by the target audience and that participants gained new knowledge as a result of the course. Results also indicated promise for the measures piloted in this project. The outcomes of this effort include a fully developed classroom-based POI and a companion prototype web-based POI that are suitable for first-line Army leaders (E4 to E6 and O1 to O3).