Will writes:   

I must admit to being taken aback by the appearance of the 'Australian Army Leadership Levels' ('the Levels') as published in Army News Issue 1471 (‘Every cog counts in leadership machine’, p. 4-5), and linked to the nascent Australian Army Leadership Program.            

The precise contours of successful leadership change, and the scale and nature of complexity typically grows, with worn rank. I cannot be alone; however, in being uncomfortable with the suggestion that critical thinking and the 'provision of the unvarnished truth upwards' are apparently traits required at but not before the Lieutenant Colonel level. I was perhaps more surprised still with the suggestion that creativity in thinking became relevant once one joined the general officer ranks.

I can locate the source of my discomfort with these suggestions in three places. In the first instance, we invest a great deal of time and money in our people to develop critical thinking. Most of our junior officers are trained and educated through the Australian Defence Force Academy; a pathway which provides them with a three or four year tertiary qualification from a Group of Eight university. The expense of this investment is phenomenal and no other organisation in Australia engages in this level of investment in junior leaders at anything like similar scale. Even the 18 month, Royal Military College Duntroon-only pathway is substantially longer than that in many comparable armies, the British Army's direct entry course at Sandhurst being one example. The direct and early investment in university education for our people fosters critical thinking. The civilian faculty at the Academy are not particularly concerned for Defence's organisational objectives or our capacity to develop junior soldiers within a troop.

Second, the 'provision of the unvarnished truth upwards' cannot be anything other than a universal obligation upon leaders. We live and work in the shadow of various 'cultural scandals' involving our people. Any attempt to delineate graduated ethical requirements upon leaders must be rejected. Yes, troop-level leaders must create ethical behaviours within their teams. But it should be a baseline expectation that all of us do this, as well as grapple with the ethical complexities inherent in the profession of arms and then also speak truth to our superiors and subordinates alike. We do a great deal of talking to ourselves about moral courage. It is a problem if we have organisations unable to distinguish between disobedience and insubordination on the one hand, and robust professional discussion and plain speaking on another.

Third, we are and always will be a relatively small force, and one bound by perhaps inexorable pressures to operate in ever increasing dispersion, a dispersion that stretches hierarchy at the best of times. Autonomous systems are here with us already, but we will not succeed unless we foster anti-automatons in the human force. We should doubt that a quality like creative thinking is one that can emerge without regular exercise and stretching. If we spend the first decades of our military careers with little expectation that we engage in creative solutions to tactical and organisational problems, that we consider approaches well outside the bounds of what an inherently bureaucratic organisation expects of us, it would be miraculous if we developed the capacities to engage in such thinking at promotion to Colonel.

Presumably, some will respond that the Levels are a minor and summary piece of doctrine, or that they represent differences of emphasis rather than substance at different rank bands. This retort should in turn be rejected. How we think and what we write matters. The way forward cannot be the bureaucratised codification of behaviours and habits of thought which must be nurtured in all of us. We don't need more formal leadership lessons; we need to train to failure and encourage people to think beyond their station.

            Chris writes:

By conceptualising leadership in hierarchical terms, the Levels display a fundamental misunderstanding of leadership and its role in our Army. In doing so, they harm our ability to transform our culture and training, and our ability to fight and win on the battlefield. 

By separating leadership characteristics by rank, the Army Leadership Levels imply that Army sees leadership not as the duty of all soldiers and officers, but only of those that hold positions of command by virtue of their rank. All of the leadership proficiencies found within the Levels may be and are used by leaders at all levels to achieve the mission, whatever that may be.

A leader is a person who influences, inspires, and motivates action in others. The act of leadership itself can occur anywhere at any time, and often in the most unexpected of circumstances by the most unexpected of people. It should go without saying that leadership—or the lack thereof—can be displayed by soldiers and officers of any rank, whether they serve their team as a commander or not.

What the Army Leadership Levels should convey is that there are no leadership levels because wearing the rank doesn't make you a leader.

Leaders can grow or wither, they can be born or made. Leaders at any and all ranks may and should employ all of the proficiencies identified by the Levels. Good leaders make their teams stronger and use whatever they have at their disposal to get the job done.

The Levels should also make it clear to aspiring leaders that, when all is said and done, the only thing that matters is whether or not the team trusts you and is willing to support and follow you. A leader cannot lead in isolation.

Attributing particular characteristics to particular ranks is wrong because it belies an organisation which habitually centralises the imperatives of leadership in the hands of a few. An Army which does so will perish in battle. It will succumb because it will have failed to harness the skills, talents and ideas of the many. Its soldiers will feel unable to seize the initiative, innovate and exploit opportunities as they occur.

The German Army of the early 20th century understood the link between a military’s culture and its success on the battlefield. It was an organisation famed for its aggressive innovation at a tactical and operational level, and the high levels of initiative displayed by its junior leaders on the battlefield. Indeed, our own command philosophy was originally a German one.

We must not fall into the trap of lionising the German Army or its culture, which clearly failed the German people on a horrific scale. Nevertheless, much can be learned from how it was able to embed a culture of innovation in its teams whilst maintaining the highest standards of battle discipline and esprit de corps.

From the beginning, German officer cadets were taught that open minded military leadership was a duty and responsibility of their position. ‘Growing and developing leaders’ was not an imperative of field grade officers, as it is in the Levels, it was an imperative of all leaders, and any enlisted soldier who aspired to be one. It is unsurprising then that the highest levels of the German Army cultivated a culture of horizontal rather than hierarchical innovation.

Cultivating a culture of bottom-up innovation and de-centralised command is not only imperative to the development of our training, doctrine, and tactics, it is also crucial if we wish to retain some of our best people. Many soldiers and officers who care deeply about our Army leave because they feel unable to influence its direction, or worse, do not feel trusted to take responsibility for its development. When these people leave, often their followers do too.

We must do much more to ensure that we are harnessing the skills and enthusiasm of these soldiers and officers. Reappraising our flawed performance management system, which incentivises competition rather than teaming, might be a good place to start.

Luckily, Army still has an abundance of soldiers and officers who understand leadership. In my short career in the Australian Army I have had the privilege of working with some of the finest leaders in Australia.

These are the people who put into practice the behaviours and values articulated by Good Soldiering every day, and who work towards it each time they don their uniform. It is upsetting that the Army Leadership Levels could be formulated without any regard for the values and behaviours so clearly articulated in Good Soldiering (‘our people lead at every level’), which stress the importance of the team over the individual.

The worrying insinuations about truth telling and critical and creative thinking in the Levels are out of step with the kinds of people we need to recruit and the kind of soldiers and officers we need to foster at all levels. If my people don’t trust me enough to give me the unvarnished truth I am failing them as a leader. Equally, if I am unable to bring issues to my own boss in a respectful manner then I am failing him as a follower.

There is an abundance of good analysis that demonstrates how we can evolve as an Army. We can and must do better because we are all custodians of Army’s values, and together we share an equal commitment to lead the nation through crisis and war. Rank does not define us as soldiers: resolve, belief and passion for the Army, its mission, and our people does.