The Importance of Leadership Competency

There are many types of Leaders all through-out the military and the civilian sector as well, however, the ARMY has designed a process in order to develop the most competent of Leaders. The Leadership Competencies are to Lead Soldiers, Develop others and ourselves, and to Achieve their organizations goals (ADP 6-22, 2019). Throughout our careers we will have many good competent Leaders. However, along the way we may encounter a few Leaders that still need to develop in some of these areas.

The intent of this essay is to provide us as ARMY Leaders with a clear understanding of what it means to be a Competent Leader in the greatest fighting force in the world. As competent Leaders it is important to ensure that we remain competent Leaders by sticking to the ARMY’s Leadership Module.

The ability to lead others is the first Leadership Competency in the Leadership Module. Leads is not only referring to leading them in battle, but it is broken down further than that.

Get quality help now

WriterBelle

Verified writer

Proficient in: Education

4.7 (657)

“ Really polite, and a great writer! Task done as described and better, responded to all my questions promptly too! ”

+84 relevant experts are online

Hire writer

It means you are able to effectively consider the needs of your Soldiers with the requirements of the mission. The mission is our main priority as Soldiers; the Leaders job is to make sure that their Soldiers are physically and mentally ready for any mission that they receive. We as Leaders must also provide our Soldiers with purpose to our Soldiers so that they will know why it is important to get the mission accomplished in the way that the Commander wants it done.

It is also our job to provide our subordinates with motivation. In order to provide our Soldiers with motivation it is important to know our Soldiers in order to find out what gets our Soldiers motivated. We also must provide them with direction on how to get the job done all while still allowing our Soldiers the ability to give in their own in-put on how to get a job done. One of the hardest parts of being an ARMY Leader is when we must allow our Soldiers to take initiative and let them accomplish a tasking all on their own. This is difficult because as Leaders we sometimes have a hard time letting our Soldiers go off and show their skills with-out us there to guide them. However, this is necessary in order to start to develop the ARMY’s future Leaders.

The ability to Develop is not only referring to our Soldiers, but ourselves as well. We as Leaders sometimes get so caught up in developing our Soldiers in their military profession that we forget about developing them on a personal level. We as Leaders must ensure that we do not let a busy training schedule get in the way of allowing our Soldiers the opportunity to pursue other educational opportunities. As Leaders it is easy to get caught up in the training and making sure that our Soldiers are taken care of that we sometimes ignore our own needs. We need to ensure that along with developing our Soldiers that we continue to improve ourselves. Us as Leaders need to be putting in more work on ourselves so that we can stay on the same level as our peers if not surpass them.

Developing Soldiers and ourselves is not strictly about our knowledge it also includes our physical abilities. We develop our physical abilities in our Soldiers as well as ourselves by continuously challenging our Soldiers and ourselves with complex and dynamic training events. We as Leaders also develop our Soldiers by taking a group of individuals that may not know each other very well and we get those individuals to work together as a team and accomplish our organizations goals. One of the easiest ways to develop our Soldiers along with ourselves is to set goals. However, these goals need to be realistic and obtainable. We as Leaders need to be able to access our Soldiers capabilities and identify if their goals are realistic and achievable. We must also be able to come up with a plan in order for our Soldiers to accomplish their goals.

The ability of ARMY Leaders to achieve the mission in a complex, dynamic, and unstable environment is a staple of what all Competent Leaders must do (ADP 6-22, 2019). The main goal of the achieve Leadership competency is for us as Leaders to get results. We achieve this by accomplishing tasks and our missions in a timely manner and to the standard. Getting results requires us as Leaders to effectively assign roles to our Soldiers that we know they can accomplish. This allows us Leaders to focus on the entire task as a whole while providing our subordinates the opportunity to demonstrate their ability to accomplish tasks on their own. In order to do this efficiently and accurately requires ARMY Leaders to know our Soldiers own abilities and not to give them a portion of the tasking that is out of their known abilities. We as Leaders also must be able to resource in order to ensure that we have all necessary equipment for the mission. We also need to be able to understand the Commander’s intent in order to prioritize what portions of a task need to happen and what order they need to be done to efficiently accomplish the mission. Another key to getting results is to get feedback when the mission is complete by conducting After Action Reviews (AAR).

This is beneficial because it helps to determine what works effectively and what could have been done either to save time or to improve the overall outcome. This also applies to our goals along with our subordinates goals. If we set goals for our Soldiers but never allow time for them to accomplish them we are not bettering them and setting them up for success. We also must ensure that we develop a detailed and accomplishable plan for our Soldiers and ourselves to follow in order to successfully complete our goals. This is important because if you have a goal but you do not have a plan with an accurate timeline you are more likely to keep pushing you goal to the right and never achieving your goals. One of our priorities as Leaders is to constantly be improving our Soldiers and ourselves which in turn will improve our organization as a whole.

In conclusion we as competent Leaders must ensure that we continue to follow the modules that the ARMY has provided us in order to remain the most competent fighting force that the world has ever seen. We must continue to lead our Soldiers on and off of the battlefield, continue to develop them in both military and civilian knowledge, and ensure that we maintain the ability to achieve the mission and our personal goals.

References

• Headquarters, Department of the Army (2019). Army Leadership and the Profession ADP 6-22. Washington, D.C.