Military Review English Edition March-April 2014 | Page 66

domain because of mission requirements. However,
unlike the institutional domain, correcting this is
not an easy fix. Because leader development in the
operational domain has been minimized, there are
majors, chief warrant officers, sergeants first class,
and below who joined the ranks after 9/11 and have
not been developed properly. They in turn, may not
understand the need to develop their subordinates, or
they may not know how. Likewise, those who served
before 9/11 with knowledge of how to develop others
are starting to leave the ranks and retire.
Army leaders need to take prompt action to ensure
leader development occurs within their organizations
and to ensure their subordinate leaders are developing others, especially in the operational domain.
As the Army Leader Development Strategy 2013
states, “Senior leaders must hold subordinate leaders
accountable for leader development and reward those
who take this to heart.”6 Moreover, leader development is not complicated. ADRP 6-22, Army Leadership, states, “Leaders have three principal ways of
developing others. They can provide knowledge and
feedback through counseling, coaching, and mentoring.”7 In other words, leaders pass their knowledge

to others—to individuals—so that individual soldiers
and Army civilians become even better leaders.
It is true that some leader development in the
operational domain occurs through activities such
as real-world missions and training exercises, but
unless individual leaders provide individualized
counseling, coaching, and mentoring, leader development is not what it could and should be. One can
only learn so much without receiving personal and
specific feedback. For example, I originally wrote
this article to the best of my ability, until I could no
longer improve it. When others, more experienced
and capable than I, took the time to review my
work a