Introduction
A friend recently asked me if I knew the acronym LDRSHIP?
Loyalty
Duty
Respect
Selfless Service
Honor
Integrity
Personal Courage In-action
He then gave me a copy of U.S. Army Field Manual FM 6-22, titled Developing Leaders. It is the core material referenced for this article and what I want to use as a guide, later this summer, to facilitate transformation tables on how to re-establish a leadership development program for any government agency or unit of government.
Participants in a Change Your World transformation program may not be in the profession of arms, but there are valuable content in FM 6-22 that we can apply to any leadership development program.
Why now? Government employees are hungry for transformation in their agencies and for professional development. The most in-demand topic is leadership development.
I understand why we need leadership development, but I had not learned much about how to formally develop leaders.
“This manual tells the reader how an Army leader looks and acts. Mastery of this doctrine is a wise investment in a professional Soldier’s time.”
Theodore D. Martin
Lieutenant General, United States Army
Commanding
Does This Sound Like Your Agency?
Pasted below is the first paragraph in FM 6-22. Replace Army with your organization’s name and see if this applies to you:
Army leaders are the competitive advantage the Army possesses that neither technology nor advanced weaponry and platforms can replace. Developing leaders is a complex and complicated undertaking because it is primarily a human endeavor—requiring constant involvement, assessment, and refinement. Today’s Army demands trained and ready units with agile, proficient leaders. Developing our leaders and ourselves is integral to our institutional success today and tomorrow. It is an important investment for the Army’s future because it builds trust in relationships and units, prepares leaders for future uncertainty, and is critical to readiness and our Army’s success. Leader development programs must recognize, produce, and reward leaders who are inquisitive, creative, adaptable, and able to exercise mission command. Leaders exhibit commitment to developing subordinates through executing their professional responsibility to teach, counsel, coach, and mentor subordinates. Successful programs that develop leaders incorporate accountability, engagement, and commitment; create agile and competent leaders; produce stronger teams and organizations; and increase expertise.
Does that paragraph reflect what your agency / unit of government wants or needs?
Leadership Development Fundamentals
Setting the Conditions
One of my favorite parts is “planning, prioritizing, and engaging in development even when resources are limited.” Resources are not just money. Resources are people, time, … Examine use of the word prioritize here. Over the past 3 years, I learned how easy it is to de-prioritize leadership development in my work, as I re-prioritized to focus on pandemic management. Maintaining leadership development as a priority may be a good topic to discuss at transformation tables.
Providing Feedback
This is my biggest weakness and I have gotten worse at it, not better, over the past 5 years. The word ‘feedback’ is used over 400 times in FM 6-22. I am in the business of performance management. Feedback is how to discuss performance compared to established standards.
Interesting how ‘feedback’ is used in the area of humility regarding standards for framing character in the Army.
Humility as a standard: “Demonstrates confidence, competence, and a willingness to seek out feedback from others. Willing learner who demonstrates accurate self-awareness.”
Humility as a strength: “Understands they are part of a larger organization and works toward something more important than themselves.”
In transformation tables I think we can spend time talking about the 400 references to feedback.
Enhancing Learning
Mentoring is described in detail in this section. FM 6-22 reads, “In leader development surveys, leaders ranked leading a unit, personal examples, and mentoring as the three most effective ways to develop their leadership skills. Experience is a powerful tool; however, learning from experience is not guaranteed.”
Mentorship is a voluntary developmental relationship that exists between a person of greater experience and a person of lesser experience that is characterized by mutual trust and respect. The Army describes age or seniority are not prerequisites for mentoring. And that mentor-mentee connections are best when they occur outside the chain of command.
“Supervisors should refrain from appointing mentors or formally matching individuals with mentors. Participant self-selection leads to the most effective mentoring relationship. This is contrary to a leader’s responsibilities to develop subordinates. It differentiates the mentor and leader roles to develop, counsel, teach, and instruct subordinates.” I would love to bring in people, like my friend Caden Fabbi at MENTOR International, to a transformation table on this topic.
Creating Opportunities
This section of FM 6-22 includes leader selection, leader succession, and career development and management. Clearly each of these topics will be part of transformation tables. Let us examine leader succession here. “Succession planning serves individual leaders by looking beyond the organization’s replacement interests. It helps develop leaders with the potential to succeed in future positions beyond their current unit…”
In John C. Maxwell’s book, the 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership there is a section on ‘Training Leaders to Replace You’. Maxwell uses an example from the National Football League where at the time he wrote it close to half the head coaches in the NFL had previously been assistants under Tom Landry or Bill Walsh. Our transformation tables can include leadership succession planning beyond a current agency or unit of government.
Learning and Development Activities
There is one more thing I want to add to wrap up this article… A list of all the learning and development activities listed in FM 6-22. Notice I did not refer to these as principles or values. These are ACTIVITIES. Meaning there are actions we can take to achieve them:
Values, Empathy, Service Ethos, Discipline, Humility, Professional Bearing, Fitness, Confidence, Resilience, Mental Agility, Sound Judgment, Innovation, Interpersonal Tact, Expertise, Leads Others, Builds Trust, Extends Influence Beyond the Chain of Command, Leads by Example, Communicates, Prepares Self, Creates a Positive Environment / Fosters Esprit de Corps, Develops Others, Stewards the Profession, and Gets Results.
Action Items
These are all things I am interested in learning and developing in myself. That is why I say transformation tables are going to be personal.
Over the next couple months, as I work on how to facilitate a transformation table to re-establish leadership development programs in an agency / unit of government, I encourage dialogue with colleagues from across industry. My goal is to be able to deliver enough how-to that we can start or improve a leadership development program. And then work with the right trainers to implement it.
Contact Information
Mike Morello
Management Consultant
Founder, QC
