This essay aims to examine the impacts of the Armed Forces leadership principles on military expertise, knowledge, and service competence. Leadership lays the foundation for professionalism in the military by underpinning the service values such as duty integrity, respect, and selfless service. Every military officer is a leader with a multitude of skill sets and courtesy values to achieve results in both training and combat. The principles of mission command have six fundamental principles: competence, mutual trust, shared understanding, commander’s intent, mission orders, and disciplined initiative. Direct, organizational, and strategic leadership are the levels of leadership in mission command. Principles of leadership in the army improve expertise, competence, and knowledge by enhancing the exploitation of human resources.
Competency is a leadership principle that is very vital to the army profession. Competency is founded on discipline and standard values soldiers should dedicate to performing their duties. The decisions and actions of military soldiers should faithfully demonstrate competency. Military leaders should lead others by example to create influence beyond the chain of command. Clear communication is a primary leadership quality to ensure the message, ideas, and intent are passed across to others (Pearce et al., 2021). As soldiers help each other and learn from one another, a positive culture and work environment are developed. Information on training, education, and experience gained through self-development and peer relationships foster competency. Moral courage influences command and obedience by motivating individuals to hold themselves accountable for their behaviors and mission results (Roberts, 2018). The means that soldiers should live by are enforced by leaders through communication and leading by example to achieve a positive working environment and results.
Relationships in the army are professionally influenced by mutual trust and understanding. Soldiers who hold power are leaders and use mutual trust and respect to design the command system. Highly ranked cadres automatically demand trust and respect from their subordinates. Therefore, commanders and subordinates share the confidence to mediate relationships and encourage work commitment (Pearce et al., 2021). Mutual trust is built through care, communication, honesty, and honoring commitments. Effective information sharing prevents misunderstanding and overlapping responsibilities. Mutual understanding enables different team players to coordinate their efforts toward clearly defined objectives (Roberts, 2018). According to Nazri & Rudi (2019), mutual trust and understanding allow the contribution of all soldiers to enhance approach reconfiguration and flexible thinking. Leadership in coalitional operations calls for mutual trust and shared understanding to execute defined obligations and intents.
The commander’s intent gives conditions for the force in clear and concise directions. Commander’s intent encompasses the purpose of the operation, primary tasks, and the scales to weigh the purposed results (Pearce et al., 2021). Allocating tasks to subordinate units and declaring the concepts of operation links the mission to the soldiers. Therefore, the commander’s intent is the single unifying focus of subordinate elements that summarizes the idea of the operation. Articulating a clear vision of what a successful mission will achieve and the results creates the purpose of the task. Ambitions are crucial in the army to guide critical decision-making with consequential risks. Together with integrity, ambition propels individuals to their ultimate potential. With a clearly outlined purpose, soldiers commit to the underlying rationale in a mission. The purpose influences the strategy by articulating the general objective of the mission to fulfill Title 10 duties (Nazri & Rudi, 2019). A feasible and actionable mission plan requires military members’ exclusive understanding of the target results and the course of action. Commander’s intent gives individual soldiers the purpose of the mission by linking the concepts and tasks.
The mission orders describe the course of action in achieving specific objectives. The direction and guidance on the activities of particular tasks enhance the professional knowledge of the soldiers. The operations, service support, movement, warning, and fragmentary orders are the five types of operation orders (Nazri & Rudi, 2019). Mission orders monitor the movement and location of units in a movement order. Commander’s intent and mission orders highlight the priorities and course of action to foster a disciplined initiative. Roberts (2018) describes disciplined initiatives as the skill to make the right decisions in the absence of orders or in the event of unpredicted threats. The disciplined initiative allows the subordinates to handle different situations and the commanders to take effective action to develop the condition. Disciplined initiative is a prerequisite of a command environment with clear mission orders and mutual trust and understanding.
Leadership in the army profession is acquired virtually for good military practice and to accomplish mission goals. Leadership skills in the army should motivate people in a chain of command to pursue action, thinking, and decision-making while upholding military values. Competence, mutual trust, shared understanding, commander’s intent, mission orders, and disciplined initiative are the leadership principles in mission command. Competence guarantees the efficiency of the soldiers’ ability to perform duties and make the right decisions. Mutual trust and understanding foster relationships among soldiers of different ranks to coordinate efforts toward achieving specific objectives. The commander’s intent and mission orders lay down the purpose of specific missions and the course of actions to be taken, respectively. The disciplined initiative guides decision-making in the absence of orders or in situations where the orders are non-conformable.
References
Nazri, M., & Rudi, M. (2019). Military leadership: A systematic literature review of current research. Int. J. Bus. Manage., 3(2), 1-15. Web.
Pearce, A. P., Naumann, D. N., & O’Reilly, D. (2021). Mission command: applying principles of military leadership to the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) crisis. BMJ Mil Health, 167(1), 3-4. Web.
Roberts, C. R. (2018). Twelve principles of modern military leadership. Twelve principles of Modern Military Leadership: Part 1: Part 1. Web.