Adaptive Leaders Course (ALC)

Old Dogs Teaching New Tricks

 

Part 1 of 2

 

 

By

 

 

 

Donald E. Vandergriff, U.S. Army retired

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Submitted as a manuscript for consideration for AUSA

 

August 2007

 

 

 

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of SYColeman, the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

Biographical Sketch

 

Mr. Donald E. Vandergriff, U.S. Army retired. He served for 24 years of active duty as an enlisted Marine and Army officer. He has served in numerous troop, staff and education assignments in the United States and overseas. He has authored over 50 articles, numerous briefings and three books. His most recent book is an analysis Army leader development Raising the Bar: Creating and Nurturing Adaptive Leaders to Deal with the Changing Face of War (December 2006).

 

 

As COL George Reed (ret.) and I pointed out in our article “Old Dogs and New Tricks: Setting the Tone for Adaptability,” Army August 2007, an effective, relatively inexpensive solution to spur Army cultural evolution is for it to establish and implement the Adaptive Leader Course (ALC) leader development model. And the good news is that the ALC is already being accepted by cadre at the Army’s Basic Officer Leader Course II at Forts Sill, OK and Benning, GA, as well as smaller leader-centric programs located within Cadet Command and throughout the Army. So finally, due to the large number of emails in response to our article, many of which asked for more detailed descriptions of ALC, I decided to write a two part article about ALC.

Discussed in part 1 of this two part article is the major elements of how to develop adaptive leaders for the future. They include: (1) the Adaptive Leaders Course; (2) the ALC Program of Instruction (POI); and, (3) the Leader Evaluation System, or LES. Part 2 of this article will go more into the centerpiece of ALC, which concerns Teachers of Adaptability (TA), through a certification process and implementation of tools they can employ to develop adaptability. Taken together, they form the beginning of the new leader development revolution.

The ALC should be applied horizontally at any level of the officer education system (OES), as well as to NCO and Army civilian education systems. Such a model provides guidelines that include: how students are taught and evaluated (metrics), how senior-level leaders are created and taught to think about strategy and running large organizations and, its most important feature, how individuals are selected and certified to teach. The ALC is the Army’s answer to instituting a process that moves beyond its vision to a tangible method to instruct its leaders “how to think” rather than “what to think.”

Army leader-centric institutions or operational units should introduce the ALC as they evolve their organizational environments into learning organizations. This is important because it does no good to have a great teacher of adaptability if the command environment and the overarching Army culture remains stuck in the Industrial Age, playing the role of enforcer rather than supporter.

Institutions or units can apply ALC with no additional resources and without lengthening the time given to today’s leader-centric courses. The ALC takes advantage of the insights and experiences of the Army’s pool of combat veterans. ALC is a cultural change rather than a specific set list of exercises.  ALC develops adaptability through the Rapid Decision Marking (RDM) process using the experiential learning model.  Additionally, ALC parallels the latest findings of the academic world in leader and cognitive development.  The ALC program of instruction (POI) employs techniques that are “desirable difficulties” as pointed out by Dr. Robert Bjork in his keynote presentation at the Science of Learning Workshop 1 August 2006 sponsored by Army TRADOC.

 It also requires their continued initiative and desire to train and help grow future leaders. The ALC is a cultural change, and not a prescribed list of tests and exercises, or stringent lesson plans and schedules. The ALC builds on the Army’s core principles and values referred to as “warrior ethos” developed in 2003. Warrior ethos is defined as:

 

• the foundation for the American soldier’s total commitment to victory in peace and in war; exemplifying Army values

 

• putting the mission first, refusing to accept defeat, never quitting

 

• never leaving a fallen comrade behind; and absolute faith in oneself and one’s team.

 

The purpose of the ALC is creating leaders who understand and practice adaptability, while encouraging Army senior leaders to nurture this trait in their subordinates. A student that emerges from any leader-centric course that employs the ALC is adaptive and can demonstrate the ability to:

• rapidly distinguish between information that is useful in making decisions and that which is not pertinent

 

• avoid the natural temptation to delay their decisions until more information makes the situation clearer, at the risk of losing the initiative

 

• avoid the pitfall of thinking that once the mission is underway, more information will clarify the tactical picture;

 

• feel the battlefield tempo, discern patterns among the chaos, and make critically important decisions in seconds

 

The ALC also develops the following traits:

 

• strength of character

 

• experience and intuition through repetitive skills training

 

• an understanding of the value of self-study

 

• proper understanding of a command climate that promotes adaptability, accepts change and encourages innovation

 

The ALC is comprised of three elements that will enable a leader-centric development institution to achieve the goal of producing leaders that are adaptive. These consist of: (1) an Army culture of learning, which includes a chain of command and offices that oversee leader-centric institutions and operational units; (2) a curriculum significantly broad to provide the necessary cognitive and creative development to nurture adaptability; and (3) highly qualified teachers (part 2 of this article). All three must exist in concert in order to effectively enable adaptability in students attending the course.

First, establishing an ALC primarily requires creating a “learning organization” with a climate that frees its instructors to focus on what is important: teaching, facilitating, mentoring and evaluating a student’s grasp of adaptability.  As Brig. Gen. David A. Fastabend and Robert Simpson relate, “the learning organization overcomes the impediment of centralized responsibility by instilling within the organization’s members a thirst for creativity and hunger for a challenge.”

ALC requires a thorough understanding of education and training, as well as what defines learning, or the acquiring of knowledge. The ALC, occurring within a “learning organization,” will allow students to:

 

• experience the emotional trauma of failing within a safe, face-saving environment

 

• find answers for themselves and build intuition – a necessary trait of adaptive leaders.

 

The learning environment also supports and understands that the ACM is where students become members of the course when they are:

• left to do as much as possible, from planning training to making and executing recommendations to improve the course

 

• allowed to fail, as long as they show signs of learning, and do not repeat mistakes (those who made a mistake in the act of doing something will attempt to explain why they made their error)

 

• pushed to seek answers, and to produce adaptive leaders familiar with tasks that may comprise their solutions to tactical and non-tactical problems. They understand how to employ tasks together to solve problems

 

The Army as a learning organization supports the ALC by creating avenues for the teacher of adaptability to access, share and assimilate information. In fact, the Army has alluded to the need to streamline its information flow:

To that end, the Army will continue to refocus institutional learning, shifting Center for Army Lessons Learned collection assets from the CTCs to deployed units. Similarly, recognizing that a learning organization cannot afford a culture of information ownership, the Army must streamline the flow of combat information to assure broader and faster dissemination of actionable intelligence.

 

The Army can use its distributed learning information systems to free the ALC from many mandatory requirements usually conducted during the initial phases of courses, or that take people away from training in an operational unit. This is where the first test of adaptability – ethical conduct – can occur, especially for students of leader-centric courses. Students can use the Internet to conduct most processes – download, read, then sign and return – as well as knock out many mandatory briefings that are required by law, regulation or policy, which traditionally could only be done in a lecture format. This course of action returns responsibility back on the shoulders of the student, while providing a more efficient use of time and resources for conducting scenario-based education, which will be discussed in forthcoming pages.

Using the Internet to execute many administrative tasks and mandatory events also frees up the TA’s time. In a “learning organization,” the TA’s focus must be on cognitive development in order to better teach critical and reflective thinking among students. This will replace the now almost total emphasis on the “what to think” content that permeates competency-based education environments.

Developing leaders with a deeper understanding of decision-making will conflict with those who continue to advocate the approach of mastering and revisiting the basics in creating tacticians and managers. A major change in the leader development paradigm takes place by introducing cognitive development through the experiential learning process in the beginning of an aspiring leader’s professional development. The challenge is achieving a balance between cognitive development and task proficiency, but it can be done when they are viewed in concert and not as separate approaches to leader development. The use of decision-making exercises and the placing of responsibility on the shoulders of the student occur as early as a cadet’s freshmen year in college, or as a junior non-commissioned officer attending their first NCO course, or as a civilian beginning their first management course.

Accomplishing this change will stand in contrast to established beliefs regarding “teaching the basics” through rote memorization of the technical aspect of the profession also known as “task-training.” The new leader development paradigm starts with developing the leader – the hard part – first, and then the technician later, once the leader knows how to think.

 

ALC Program of Instruction (POI)

 

The POI deals with war as it really is – a complex and open environment – wherein teaching is a process of continuous adaptation. The goal is to put the student through a course of continuous adaptation to changing situations of growing complexity. Development of leaders today must parallel real-world operations that do not proceed with clockwork mechanics as “operations,” but are instead “evolutions” along the “edge of chaos.”

The POI evolved from an educational approach developed by a Swiss educator named Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi. He developed his theories on education in the late 1700s, based on the concept that students would learn faster on their own if they were allowed to “experience the thing before they tried to give it a name.” More specifically, the POI uses Pestalozzi’s methods to let students have an experience that identifies a problem, and then lets the student deal with that problem without “wasting time working their way to finding a solution,” according to Dr. Bruce I. Gudmundsson, author of several prominent military history books dealing with military effectiveness and an consultant to the United States Marine Corps. The POI does not operate from the top of the institution toward the bottom.

The POI, curriculum and lesson development deals with complexity as an adaptive process. Top-down guidance should only be used to encourage a few core principles like adaptability, intuition, self-awareness, critical thinking, creative thinking, and strength of character.

            The POI uses experiential learning to build student experience using the “recognition primed” decision-making process. The POI consists of four primary curriculum pillars, revolving around Scenario Enabling Adaptability packets (SEA)(also known today as Training Support Packets) that use the experiential learning model that enables adaptability in a continual learning feedback loop, including the use of: (1) a case study learning method; (2) tactical decision games; (3) free play force-on-force exercises; and (4) feedback through the leader evaluation system (LES).

A wide variety of educational methods chosen by teachers support the curriculum pillars of the POI, and they allow students to gain a greater benefit from their educational experience than without the POI. The academic methods employed in support of the pillars include: small group lectures, small group training exercises, exercise simulations, staff rides, and private study (encouraging access to information). These aspects of the curriculum mutually reinforce one another by providing a holistic outlook toward problem solving while building the student’s character.

A final, yet important aspect of the POI is the use of the continual learning feedback loop through use of the leader evaluation system, which emphasizes After Action Reviews (AAR, or peer and subordinate evaluations) and continual observations by certified TAs, with the emphasis on allowing students to discover the answers to various scenarios for themselves. Through each pillar and method, the TA facilitates the student’s quest for learning through the art of asking questions, much like the Socratic teaching method. The TA can use this method in conjunction with any tool that is used to deliver a scenario. Webster’s dictionary defines the Socratic method as the “systematic doubt and questioning of another to elicit a clear expression of something supposed to be implicitly known by all rational beings.”

The TA uses the Socratic method to pick at a student’s thought process in order to get the student to explain their rationale in solving a particular problem. The TA can do this during the team AAR, but it is preferable to use this method during the conduct of a tactical decision game (TDG) or during individual counseling.  From the beginning to the end of the ALC, students rotate in leadership as well as followership role, while working in a team of two or larger, with an assigned mission, guided by a commander’s intent two levels up. Throughout an ACM, a student should be observed having to make decisions in several scenarios in order to see if they understand and demonstrate adaptability.

Another aspect of the POI is that it introduces theory after experiential learning.

The Pestozzoli learning method, which exposes students to problems “above one’s pay grade,” and similar teaching methods, pushes students to discover and experiment. Students’ first test their own problem solving methods in different scenarios, and then at some point afterwards teachers should introduce specific theories to them. Most of the time, students will respond, “Wow, that is what it is called!”

The POI unifies the approaches above in accomplishing ACM learning objectives, which include:

·        improving one’s ability to make decisions quickly and effectively

 

·        making sense of new situations, seeing patterns, and spotting opportunities and options that were not visible before

 

·        becoming more comfortable in a variety of situations; developing more advanced and ambitious tactics

 

·        becoming more familiar with weapons capabilities, employment techniques, and other technical details

 

The POI uses training as the reinforcement of the education that has occurred during the four aspects of the curriculum. As cognitive abilities are established, task training is brought in to reinforce and provide multiple tools to assist leaders in their decision-making. Education is intellectually intense, while training is resource intensive. Put another way, training for most military tasks calls for resources such as ranges or training areas, and equipment such as weapons or vehicles. Planners can amass limited resources in a centralized location, such as an Army post, to efficiently support task training to allow for effective execution.

Education, on the other hand, can require little more than a classroom. At the core of cognitive education is perhaps the most limited resource – a good teacher who can teach and facilitate learning. A teacher must possess the skills to mentor each student to do better, while also evaluating his or her ability to adapt. A teacher must also have the moral courage, combined with knowledge and experience, to tell a student – and the appropriate chain of command – that he or she will likely not succeed in combat leadership.

The remaining key factor in creating adaptive leaders through the POI is learning. Potential adaptive leaders must be able to assimilate the education with their training and apply both through their personal actions. Learning is a measurement of whether the adaptive leader is ready to practice in the real environment what has been preached in the classroom.

At the individual level, finally, there is no substitute for experiential learning, and today’s Army is the most operationally experienced Army in U.S. history. There are tremendous opportunities to leverage experience through the Army’s well-developed training doctrine of AARs, lessons learned, the great experience of the serving officers and NCOs, and the links from joint and Army operational analyses to formal learning – distributed and in the classroom.

At the same time, some of the best battlefield lessons result from tragic but honest mistakes. The Army cannot allow a zero-defects mentality to write-off those who make such mistakes. And we should review our leader evaluation systems to ensure they are leader development tools and not merely management sorting tools.

The POI begins the development of adaptability through exposure to scenario-based problems as early as possible. The POI should put students in tactical and non-tactical situations that are “above their pay-grade” in order to challenge them. Evolution toward adaptability starts at the very beginning of an individual’s quest to enter the profession of arms. The POI examines scenarios based on historical examples through case study learning. Tactical decision games, or TDGs, for instance, consisting of both tactical and non-tactical situations, and free play force-on-force exercises, are tools that sharpen decision-making skills and provide a basis for evaluating students on strength of character. A reoccurring principle involves mentorship through either AARs or one-on-one mentorship. As discussed below, students should be evaluated based on howthey went about solving a given problem, not the solution itself.

An ALC training calendar and supporting weekly schedule should not consist merely of blocks of training crammed into every hour of the day. The ability of students to attain adaptability traits should determine when learning ends. Since being adaptive is dealing with the unknown, a calendar and weekly schedule will provide little illustration to the student on how to prepare for the unpredictable. Teachers could instead use a calendar deceptively to help encourage adaptability by changing events listed. Schedules are mainly used by TAs to determine the length of time – preparation, conduct and feedback – a scenario may take using different delivery tools.

The ALC calendar resembles a stream with branches running horizontally across the pages of the calendar with each representing milestones. Teachers use them to guide their preparation periods, which include a great deal of detail, and it helps estimate the amount of time teachers may spend with students. Achieving the learning objectives of the scenario drives such activities, and those who have successfully taught adaptability say that every hour conducting scenarios with student demands three hours of preparation and “close out time.” Close out time includes updating student records with the latest observation cards, any unplanned individual counseling, and reviewing the conduct of the scenario in order to improve the experience in the future.

Weekly schedules also list key events where teachers must come together to pool their resources, rehearse and conduct leader reconnaissance to make the educational experience for the students as rich as possible, such as the conduct of free play force-on-force training. Weekly schedules may also provide “aiming points” showing when students should attain a certain level of understanding of adaptability. These should be accompanied by formal counseling sessions.

One of the major concerns by people that have been briefed on the ALC is achieving a balance between the experiential approach of the ALC and other, more tangible “requirements” that currently dominate today’s leader-centric courses. The tangible requisites include proficiency with one’s weapon, the Army Physical Fitness Test, and other “graduation requirements” set by a commanding officer, regulation or law such as equal opportunity and sexual harassment briefs. As mentioned earlier, these duties can be fulfilled by employing the Internet. Many individuals believe that you can only accomplish one or the other, but this is not true. The ALC merges these requirements with the principles of the ALC without diminishing the standards or requirements to meet them.

Teaching adaptability requires that resources previously used to enable adaptability remain as simple as possible, and continue to support the use of scenarios. The systems supporting it, from the LES tools, such as the observation cards used by cadre to capture their observations of student performance during scenarios, to the planning for training so logistics won’t take time away from the conduct of scenarios, should also remain simplified. Teachers must be free to focus on the development of adaptability over time or “evolutionary adaptability” based on numerous observations of students involved in several different scenarios under various conditions.

As an illustration, if an TA plans to use real M4 rifles with blanks and a multiple integrated laser engagement system (know as MILES, or a laser simulation of real bullets), without taking into account the time it takes to sign for, pick up, travel, issue and zero, then little or no adaptability will be enabled. There is value in using this equipment, especially in a free play force-on-force scenario, but an instructor should balance their use with the development of adaptability. Principles outlined in the ALC also mix with traditional “requirements” or graduation standards.

The planning, preparation and execution of the M4 rifle range is a good example of a training event that is task-centric. We all agree it is essential for “warrior leaders” to be proficient with their small arms. The students like to shoot. Teaching and evaluating marksmanship and range conduct, however, limits adaptability. Or, does it? This task does not have to be cadre-centric.  There is room to enable adaptability, but it will take planning and an open mind to find that balance.

Some have wondered whether in the process of encouraging adaptability, cadre overseeing the POI would allow accountability and responsibility to suffer. A colonel recently lamented it would be “students running wild under no one’s control.”  This is perhaps one of the greatest challenges faced by a TA, balancing the need for adaptability while holding the students accountable for their decisions and actions. First of all, ethical conduct must be maintained. The POI emphasizes that inflicting stress through a variety of methods will expose weaker students’ unethical conduct. It will be one of the first breaking points among students. If students respond to questions with inaccurate situation reports, TAs should not tolerate those who lie, cheat or steal.

Students should be held to high standards in maintaining their physical well-being and equipment. This aspect holds true with unit- and leader-centric institutions that deal with junior leader development. Discipline serves as the baseline to create conditions to practice adaptability. Students must realize that it takes discipline to retain them as the course progresses into and through stressful field problems.

For example, students were tasked during a ROTC brigade field training exercise to maintain sanitary conditions of their dining facility while they were in garrison (staying in barracks). The cadre explained the reasons for the task and how it would relate in war. When their students failed to organize and plan to maintain the cleanliness of their facility, the use of the facility was taken away from them. The students were forced to eat meals ready to eat (MREs, which evolved from c-rations) outdoors until they came up with a plan to meet the requirement.

The students realized that if they could not keep the dining facility clean under peacetime conditions, then what would happen in the field? They learned that their lack of discipline and teamwork would bring in rodents and insects causing disease and degrading their ability to accomplish their missions.

During another mission, student leaders were tasked to move to a military operation in urban terrain (MOUT) site to conduct free play force-on-force platoon level exercises. Student leaders had been given their operations order 12 hours prior to a move time of 7:00 a.m. the next morning. While there was a lot of work to be done to get 220 students reading, moving, properly led and planned, and supervised while tasks were accomplished, it was possible in a 12-hour period. In the excitement of wanting to do the force-on-force training, the student leaders dismissed or forgot crucial personal and equipment checks (to ensure they had everything they needed or might need).

Prior to the student company loading on trucks to move out, TAs stepped in to ask the student leaders whether these checks – referred to as pre-combat checks – had been conducted. All but one of the students in key company and platoon positions indicated they had not; it had been left to the individuals to make sure they each had what was spelled out in the unit SOP. (The one student, who filed a false report, in the role of platoon leader, was relieved and counseled regarding his unethical conduct.) At this point, the TAs of the student leaders questioned them on what actions they should take so they could be ready to go to the training, if they were not already prepared. When the students responded with the right answers, the TAs adjusted the schedule to allow the students to do the right thing.

The POI encourages the Army to consider preparing leaders for war in more innovative terms, which in turn points to a different overall approach to Army education. It is an approach that does not pursue certainty or exercise precise control. However, it will create leaders who are able to function in uncertainty and disorder. If there is a single unifying thread to this discussion, it is the importance of building and developing leaders around adaptation, with lots of preparation and a focus on the selection and preparation of people with the passion, traits and attributes to teach as part of an ACM.

 

 

 

Leader Evaluation System (LES)

 

The ALC curriculum and Leader Evaluation System (LES) will use two criteria to judge whether students did well: the timelessness of their decisions, and their own justification for it. The first criterion will impress on the student the need to act quickly, while the second requires the student to reflect on their actions and gain insights into their own thought process. Since the student has to justify their decision in their own mind before implementing it, imprudent decisions and rash actions will be less likely.

During their coursework, what the student decides to do will be relatively unimportant. The emphasis will be on the effect of the students’ actions overall, not on the method they may have chosen. The ALC will create a learning environment where there will be no formulas, or processes to achieve optimum solutions. This environment will solicit creative solutions.

The LES is based on the idea that undue criticism, after the fact, of a soldier on the scene – who will be in a confused, dangerous, and pressured situation and who has the best command of immediate information – is unwarranted. Anything beyond a constructive critique will only destroy the student leader’s willingness to act and might even lead them to withhold adverse information or provide falsely optimistic reports simply to avoid a less than perfect evaluation report. An ALC will recognize there is little in adaptability that is systematic and will make allowance for it.

The heart and soul of adaptability – a theme throughout an ALC – will be the desired result, not the way the result is achieved. Teachers of Adaptability should reject any attempt to control the type of action initiated during a mission because it is counter-productive. The ALC should instead concentrate on instilling in students the will to act, as they deem appropriate in their situations to attain a desired result.

The LES should be a “double loop” system defined as “the knowledge of several different perspectives that forces the organization to clarify differences in assumptions across frameworks, rather than implicitly assuming a given set.”

Whether on an exam employing Tactical Decision Games, or during field training, teachers should use multiple tools to give students continual and detailed evaluations that will allow the student to evolve, improve, and prepare for the graded field evaluations. During these tests, students will be evaluated on their ability to lead, demonstrate adaptability and make intuitive decisions under varied conditions.

Evaluation criteria should consider the following questions:

• First and foremost, did the student make a decision?
• If so, did the student effectively communicate it to subordinates?
• Was the decision made in support of the commander’s intent (long-term contract), and mission (short-term contract)?

 

• If not, was the student’s solution based on changing conditions that made it a viable decision, even if it violated the original mission order, but nevertheless supported the commander’s intent?

 

“Guiding actions” intertwine with the Army’s core values when evaluating a student’s leadership performance and potential. The stakes are high, as retired Lt. Gen. Walt Ulmer described it: “The Army needs to broaden its understanding of successful leadership from one that focuses almost entirely upon mission accomplishment; to one that includes long-term organizational health of the unit and its personnel alongside of mission accomplishment.”

In other words, the Army’s current culture evaluates successful performance by determining whether a leader accomplished a specific mission. The focus is on the “bottom line.” However, this method is shortsighted, and in the current leader paradigm, it can produce “performers” rather than leaders. Measuring a student’s potential, on the other hand, allows for an assessment that incorporates a student’s ability to develop teams as well as subordinates, even in a classroom setting. This method can also include measurements of a student’s loyalty, initiative and risk-taking.

To create problems that will properly demonstrate a student’s potential, scenarios must be used that encourage students in subordinate roles to take risks in accomplishing their mission. In the AAR, the student commander should praise good performance of his peers (in the subordinate role), while accepting responsibility for their failure. The idea is that students will eventually emulate this behavior over time, and begin to realize their potential.

Assessments should involve more than just cadre and student observations of a student’s level of adaptability. Performance evaluations also occur in the classroom.  However, this does not imply that the use of traditional, Industrial Age testing techniques should be continued, because those techniques only reinforce rote memorization. These negative techniques include “true or false” questioning, “fill-in the blank” or “multiple-choice” examinations. However, cadre saves time by using these linear evaluation techniques. They also provide quick feedback to the tested student, the cadre, and the chain of command when utilized for reports and Power Point slides. But these teaching techniques cheat the student because they focus on short-term results.

Since “knowledge” and “social judgment” are also part of the traits of adaptability, continual observations and evaluations of how a leader chooses to communicate decisions to subordinates or to inform the chain of command must occur. If leaders do not communicate decisions effectively to their subordinates or units, it makes no difference whether they are decisive or timely. Thus, teachers should use essay-based evaluations in the classroom. The use of essays will require that teachers have a firm grasp on the English language, grammar and style, and essays will also take more time to evaluate, but in the end they will provide a much deeper sense of the students’ educational progress.

What should teachers look for in evaluating student leaders? A teacher should look for leadership failures that suggest weak character. For instance, if a student changes his original decision in order to go along with the instructor-recommended solution, or if the student stays with a poor or out-of-date decision from higher authority simply because that is what “higher” told him to do, teachers should mark these traits as a failure. The worst thing a student could do is to make no decision at all.

Evaluations can be used to award and highlight superior performance. They are also used to serve as a record on which TAs might evaluate an individual’s ability to become a leader. An effective organization should further reward students when they exceed the standards, while enforcing the standards themselves. Failure in timely enforcement of standards, that all students are required to follow, degrades the effectiveness of the organization. In warfare, it undermines trust and endangers soldiers’ lives.

As stated above, inability to make any decision is a failure in a scenario using any tool. Another sign of failure on a scenario would be if a student changes his or her decision simply because the instructor challenged the student’s choice during the course of briefing. If that occurs, the student is demonstrating a common failing – the wish to go along with the instructor. Even if the instructor believes that the student’s decision is a sound one, he may challenge or test the student’s character in the face of adversity to see how much the student truly believes in him or herself.

 

The Evolution Begins

In the end, scenario-based learning provides an educational approach for building a student’s strength of character. Past curricula that dealt with leader development used process and task training to dictate to potential officers “what to think.” Today, the Army is beginning to realize that the foundation of an effective future officer corps must begin early, and that to create leaders that are adaptable, they need to know “how to think” in order to develop intuition.

The ALC will hold to the first idea that every moment and event offers an opportunity to develop adaptability. Every action taken by a student in the classroom or in the field is important to the process of inculcating a preference for solutions. If a student errs while acting in good faith, they should not suffer anything more than corrective mentoring. Constructive critiques of solutions are the norm in an ALC, but more important in this model are the results of a student’s action, and the reasons for taking that action. This will spread throughout the Army culture, once implemented by the ALC.

The role of mentoring and 360-degree assessments should be used to teach the student that their future actions will make a positive contribution to their unit’s success, no matter what the mission.  ALC TAs will also place an emphasis on ensuring that students gain and then maintain an instinctive willingness to act. During numerous AAR and mentoring sessions – occurring during and after numerous scenarios under varied conditions – the teacher should analyze why the student acted as he or she did and the effect the student’s action has on the overall operation.

Beyond decision-making in war, the use of the ALC model also has applications to the corporate world as well as any organization that needs leaders who are decisive and adaptable. Establishing a blend of instructional technologies is critical to promoting growth in cognitive and emotional skills, and consequently knowledge development.

Current Army instructional approaches lack opportunities for experiencing the emotional trauma of failing within a safe environment – something that is needed to promote maturity. The ALC permits building richer and deeper understandings of the self and alternative world views, an understanding of which will enrich one’s own self-understanding. The Army’s highly technical environment and its mission to fight uncertain and complex foes in the 21^st century demands that the emphasis from the outset be on growing by “learning to learn,” and not learning information alone.