Military Review English Edition July-August 2015 | Page 14

In so doing, it enables growth and development across
a career of service. It also supports the Total Army
with increased educational opportunities for soldiers
in the U.S. Army Reserve and the National Guard.
Additionally, the credentialing opportunities generated
by The Army University will assist soldiers while they
are on active duty and when they transition as “Soldiers
for Life.”6
Through several Army leader exchange events—
from the Army Senior Leader Development Program
for general officers, to solarium-style listening sessions
for junior officers and NCOs, to town hall meetings
throughout the Army—the sergeant major of the
Army and I have heard the need to inculcate critical
thinking into all Army curricula. As the Army adopts
the philosophy of mission command, this kind of
learning will grow in importance. Mission command
empowers subordinates at every echelon, encouraging
them to think critically and creatively and seize the
initiative: to understand, visualize, describe, direct,
lead, and assess.7 Army leaders create the conditions
for the execution of mission command when they build
cultures of trust within their organizations and create
shared understanding through clearly articulated commander’s intent.
As part of our increased investment in education
that will encourage this kind of critical thinking, we
are expanding access and opportunities for advanced
civil schooling, training with industry, fellowships
with universities and think tanks, and interagency
assignments. We have tripled the number of post-war
college fellowships for colonels and have launched the
Advanced Strategic Planning and Policy Program,
which allows selected officers to pursue a PhD at our
country’s best universities.8 We are identifying and
developing strategic-minded leaders early in their careers by initiating junior leader broadening programs
for our company and field grade officers, NCOs, and
civilians. These programs provide the opportunity
to examine strategic issues and apply understanding
to current and future problem sets. At each of the
TRADOC centers of excellence, we are updating the
programs of instruction for our tactical-level leaders and are selecting the very best instructors. The
institutional domain is the foundation of our leader
development program, and we will continue to invest
in it despite budgetary challenges.
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The Operational Domain
In the operational domain, we are updating our
live, virtual, and constructive training to enable junior
leaders to achieve tactical and technical competence;
mid-grade leaders to hone their skills at commanding
units and organizations; and senior leaders to develop and implement strategic plans and policy. We are
developing adaptive leaders who can lead change by
empowering subordinates while managing risk, and by
encouraging mutual trust and shared understanding
throughout their formations.
We are not walking away from our experience of
the past fourteen years; rather, we are building upon
it. The operating force is seeing the implementation of
regionally aligned forces, which enables our leaders to
remain intellectually and internationally engaged with
allies and partners across the globe. We believe that the
future will be even more complex, and we are preparing for this future through a comprehensive total force
training and leader development strategy.
At the Joint Multinational Readiness Center at
Grafenwoehr and Hohenfels, Germany, we are investing in and adapting our training model to increase
multi-echelon joint and multinational exercises with
our allies and partners, which is especially important
at this time for NATO. Our combat training centers
in Germany, at Fort Irwin, and at Fort Polk replicate
highly complex decisive action environments featuring
hybrid threats reflective of the complexities that our
Nation faces, including guerrilla, insurgent, criminal,
and near-peer conventional forces woven into one dynamic environment. We are including multiple components in rotations to include Special Forces, interagency, multinational, and interservice in order to train our
total force to operate in today’s multidomain environment. Combat training centers, as a leadership crucible,
improve the leadership skills of our officers and NCOs
while assessing their performance and development.
By continually challenging them in training to plan for
the unknown and the unexpected, we build upon our
successes in the operational domain.

The Self-Development Domain
As our leaders grow through schooling (the institutional domain), and training and operations
(the operational domain), they must always strive to
develop themselves (the self-development domain)
July-August 2015  MILITARY REVIEW