Lead with the best version of yourself.

Leader Development

Book Review: Phil Jackson’s Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success

The Preferred Style Assessment: A Relationship Building Tool for Leaders

by Joey Williams 

Relationships are vital to developing the mutual trust demanded by the Army’s mission command philosophy. To build mutual trust leaders must understand themselves and others around them. The Army has introduced personality assessments for professional development, recognizing its importance. The Center for Army Leadership’s Athena provides survey fact sheets, self-help frameworks, videos, and articles. 

However, many leaders do not have low-stakes tools to quickly assess themselves in the context of their relationships. This article introduces the Preferred Style Assessment (PSA) tool to enable leaders to better understand themselves and presents a way to foster mutual trust.

The Preferred Style Assessment enables people to assess how they prefer to interact with people, ideas, decisions, and their environments. The tool does not assign labels, but rather allows leaders to recognize and communicate their preferences, saving subordinates weeks, even months, of relationship trial and error or personality recon-by-fire. It is unique from other types of assessments in that it is a free and simple one page questionnaire that can be completed during a morning coffee. 

How Aristotle Challenged Me to ‘Embrace the Suck’

by Scotty Fargo

Aristotle was all for the embodiment of excellence, characterized well by his quote, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” This article serves as a reflection of what I have learned as a cadet at West Point about the importance of deliberately embracing the suck in the pursuit of excellence. I define ‘the suck’ as an obstacle that presents the opportunity to challenge oneself.  

The idea of embracing the suck has become somewhat of a platitude in the military and as such it has lost its deeper meaning. Embracing brings forth the notion of committing oneself to something completely. It is much deeper than simply attempting or accepting, but rather, it is enthusiastically pursuing something. That activity needs to be challenging. West Point, like many other training environments in the military, facilitates an environment where students can leverage many opportunities to embrace the suck. It creates a space dedicated to the pursuit of excellence through challenging experiences. West Point defines this as the Leader Growth Model, which is “the continuous cycle of gaining new knowledge and capacities by engaging in challenging experiences.” 

I would have grown more by actively participating in my development and deliberately embracing opportunities to challenge myself. I offer the perspective of someone who did not get it right. I spent too much time going through the motions of trying to “get through” the suck, instead of deliberately embracing the opportunity. This is not a call to do anything differently, but rather to think differently about what we do. 

FM-VOICE – A Framework for Improving Communications in Your Organization

By R.T. Rotte

You’re a company commander, and your platoons aren’t doing what you want them to. One platoon is always a little behind on tasks or unresponsive to key information. Another platoon is executing the tasks and preparing for training, but missing your overall intent. You feel like you’re putting out the same information to all of your soldiers, but are somehow having varying levels of success, everywhere from training execution to daily administrative tasks.

I’ve been there. I too was once a company commander, and found myself searching for answers to these issues. The simple answer to why each platoon was operating at such different levels was that each platoon had different leaders of varying strengths. The more difficult answer was that I was not communicating effectively with those struggling platoons. Communicating information effectively is a nuanced process. It not only involves the communication skills of the person who is trying to transmit information, but also of those receiving it and interpreting it. Whether in your own version of this story you have been the company commander, the struggling platoon, or the successful platoon, at some point, we’ve all witnessed the struggles and failures of communication in an organization. 

I want to offer you a framework to help solve that problem. You may have heard the phrase, “When you think you’re overcommunicating, you’re probably just starting to communicate enough.” As a junior officer, I did not grasp the truth in that statement–and I paid for it. I struggled to communicate with my troop commander, but neither of us made any noticeable attempts to adjust our tactics. Young lieutenant Rotte did not take many lessons from this struggle, just frustrations.

The Army Profession: Reconnecting with our Sense of Duty

by Daniel Blackmon

In early December, I was fortunate enough to sit in on a presentation on the profession of arms, given by General (ret.) David Perkins. He asked: “The Army Profession…do we actually have a profession or do we have a bureaucracy?” 

While there is no doubt some bureaucracy in our military system, Perkins noted that there is a difference between having bureaucracy and being a bureaucracy. He defined bureaucracies as how to do things. He noted that typically, bureaucracies are built around organizations where people do jobs, have tasks, and are motivated by pay, their boss, time off, or certain benefits. We can all imagine why that would not work well in the military. Employees with jobs are motivated by metrics. Instead, professionals are motivated out of duty.

If we take motivation as the differentiator between a bureaucracy and a profession, the question should then become—where, as an Army, are we now? 

Pluralistic Ignorance: A Danger to Organizational Culture and Leader Selection

by Shane Hughes

“A toxic leader devastates the esprit de corps, discipline, initiative, drive, and willing service of subordinates and the units they comprise.” (Christopher Doty, 2013)

The U.S. military prides itself on developing leaders. We continuously update leadership training and spend millions of dollars each year to send officers to leadership training events and formal schooling. Unfortunately, in many organizations like the U.S. military, a psychological phenomenon called pluralistic ignorance enables bad leaders to rise through the ranks despite their character flaws and poor leadership skills. Military culture is uniquely vulnerable to this phenomenon, and service members must diligently work to prevent it.

Pluralistic ignorance refers to a situation in which virtually every member of a group privately disagrees with what each believes are the prevailing attitudes and beliefs of the group as a whole. A classic example is when someone in a group of friends steals from a store, other members of the group may remain silent because each person thinks the majority of the group condones the behavior. Another example of pluralistic ignorance in a military context is the prevailing attitude toward mental health. Several members of a unit may be struggling with their mental health, but each of them believes that they are the only ones feeling this way. Service members may think their peers are coping just fine, so they choose not to speak up for fear of appearing weak or unfit for duty. 

The U.S. military is an organization uniquely prone to pluralistic ignorance, where strong group norms and a high value placed on conformity create an environment where pluralistic ignorance thrives. This leaves the military vulnerable to toxic leaders who manipulate the promotion system to advantage themselves and rise to the highest ranks while their subordinates muzzle themselves because of pluralistic ignorance. Understanding and deliberately combating the negative effects of pluralistic ignorance is vital for maintaining the U.S. military’s competitive edge. To combat pluralistic ignorance, U.S. military professionals must understand why their own service culture is uniquely vulnerable to it.

Affinity Over Alikeness: How to Mentor Soldiers Different Than You

by Emma Abusch 

“The delicate balance of mentoring someone is not creating them in your own image, but giving them the opportunity to create themselves.” -Steven Spielberg 

It’s 0200 and I’m flying to my first no-notice deployment. I look up and see my new commander calling me over. I move to the empty seat next to him and receive a brief verbal initial counseling. Afterwards, as I stare out the plane window at the black water below, I reflect on the meeting. It had gone well. However, instead of fixating on the mission or tasks at hand, my immediate and inescapable thought is these leaders are nothing like me. 

For many minority groups in the Army, this is a common experience. According to the 2021 Army Demographics Report, out of the over 1.3 million active duty service members, 82.7% are men. 68.9% self-identified as White, while 31.1% self-identified with a racial minority.  

Yet, no matter what background you bring to the Army, being able to mentor those unlike you is crucial. The Army’s diversity is increasing. According to recent scientific studies, when leaders reach across racial and/or gender differences and embrace underrepresented minority groups through mentorship, individuals are more likely to stay and succeed in the workplace. 

So, below are a couple of concepts to frame how you mentor those who are unlike yourself. 

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Leaders Make Meaning: The So-What Beyond Purpose, Direction, and Motivation

by Tom Montano

“Wow, so are you guys actually Soldiers?!” The crowds at Mount Vernon asked me this over a dozen times that winter Saturday after our colonial battlefield tactical demonstration. I was wearing my Revolutionary War era blue jacket and cotton pants, espontoon in hand, while taking pictures with fans. Then while boarding the bus to Fort Myer to enjoy the rest of our President’s Day weekend, several of my Soldiers reported that they had been asked the same question. As I looked around the bus, seeing groups of tricorn hats and white wigs stand in stark contrast to the typical soldier garb of camouflage patterns and patrol caps, it was fairly obvious why people were so surprised.

For just over 12 months, I served as a Platoon Leader in The Old Guard: Company A, 3d. United States Infantry Regiment, also known as the historic Commander in Chief’s Guard (CinC). Tracing its lineage back to George Washington’s company of personal guards, the Commander-in-Chief’s Guard is a company of active-duty infantry Soldiers that embody the heritage and lineage of the 3d U.S. Infantry and the Army’s historic past. In practice, that means CinC Soldiers don colonial uniforms, wigs, and tricorn hats, we march with Brown Bess muskets, and we conduct ceremonies and tactical demonstrations according to the blue book developed by Baron von Stueben in the late 18th century.

Thinking of Yourself as Phil Jackson: Team Building Reflections from Command

by Oren Rosen

Building your team is important work. And managing that team once assembled is what determines if the team will perform at championship caliber. As a commander, you inherit most of your team—but that does not mean the roster is solidified for the rest of the season. You are going to look for key pieces in the off-season, attempt to claim some hidden gems off waivers, and take a chance on some rookies. 

My first Battery Executive Officer once told me that as the Battery Commander (and a die-hard Lakers fan) I was like NBA coaching legend Phil Jackson. I had a Kobe Bryant, a Shaquille O’Neil, and even a Kwame Brown or two in my battery. However, despite the natural talents of my star players, the roster still had some holes. During my time in command, I worked to fill in those gaps, in order to enable my team to play at the championship level. Below is my codified playbook followed by some notes from my team’s playoff run in the sands of Kuwait.

Thinking in Pixels: Developing Leadership Skills from Video Games

by Jakob Hutter

Since the early days of ‘Pong’ and ‘Space Invaders’, the realm of pixels has more than just provided entertainment. Where every action has consequences and challenges lurk at every corner, a journey to explore and conquer provides powerful tools for developing critical skills – one that goes beyond the virtual universe. Video games can be a goldmine for training leadership skills that resonate in both the gaming universe and the real world, and can make us more effective, adaptable, and resilient leaders in our organization. 

Integrating video games into leadership training has proven effective for leadership learning by providing an interactive learning experience. These digital environments like the post-apocalyptic worlds of ‘Fallout’ and ‘Borderlands’, puzzle- platformers like ‘Tetris’ and ‘Portal’, action games like ‘World of Warcraft’ and ‘Call of Duty’, and strategy games like ‘Civilization’ and ‘Warhammer’ immerse players in stories and environments where skills must be developed and learned. While this is no replacement for leadership development in-person, especially in military exercises and operations,video games can still serve as a valuable component that complements real-world training.

Just as the Army emphasizes communication, strategic planning, adaptability, team building, and sound decision-making as skills necessary for successful leaders, complex video games require gamers to exhibit these skills for success in their games. Cultivating these skills in video games has great potential for Army leadership training.

Pay It Forward: Mid-Career Moolah for Continued Service

by Sara Roger

Picture this: it’s the summer of 2025, and you just finished company command. As you pack up your office, you reflect on the last 18 months: the late-night calls and emails, the last-minute taskings, the oversaturation of training “requirements”, and you wonder if the Army is worth it all. You’re torn between your love of Soldiers and that nagging feeling that the grass might be greener on the other side. Seemingly out of nowhere, the Army offers to pay you tens of thousands of dollars to continue serving for an additional four years. 

Would you consider this opportunity? Did you know this offer was even on the table?

When I heard about this offer, I enthusiastically sold my soul to the Army for a whopping $20, 637 (after taxes). I requested this continuation pay this summer, and exactly 5 business days later, the Army deposited the moolah in my bank account for an additional 4 years of my motivated service. 

So, what is continuation pay, and how do you get this “free” money? Through my personal anecdote, I hope to inform two groups of service members: