DOES THE ARMY PROMOTE COMPETENCE IN ITS OFFICERS?

By Maj. Melanie S. Kirchhoff

Does your heart swell with pride when you hear the words profession of arms, or do you find yourself scoffing at its inherent idealism? Presentations on the subject may make us feel proud of our profession, but we might not be meeting the levels of professionalism and esprit de corps that our profession demands. We must have faith in ourselves as professionals to manage our own field of expertise as well as give the community reasons to have that same faith in us.

The profession of arms calls for three Cs: character, competence and commitment. We are professing our expertise and professionalism without adequately measuring our current status in these areas. If true character, competence and commitment do not measure up to the profession of arms’ message, we stand to lose the faith and trust of the community as well as the interest and enthusiasm of our soldiers and leaders.

A quick search on the profession of arms will bring up a great deal of fascinating investigations and writings on Army ethics relating to character. These studies point to the importance of good moral character in Army officers for a multitude of reasons. There is not as much written in current literature, how-ever, about competence and very little about our current levels of competence (competence being defined as an underlying characteristic related to effective or superior performance).

Why talk about competence? As the Army continues to pursue higher levels of professionalism and performance, it is critical to ensure that officer competence is understood in the context of Army culture and that it is effectively identified, recruited, trained, retained, rewarded and promoted. That is a vast and complex task, but the Army does it well on many fronts.

We need to ask ourselves two fundamental questions: 1) Does the Army, as an institution, value competence in its officers? 2) Does the Army, as an institution, promote competence in its officers? Only from there can we begin to assess the Army’s success at fostering and developing the competence necessary to call itself a profession.

We can narrow down the aforementioned questions even further: 1) Do established leadership development processes provide accurate tools for identifying competence and incompetence? 2) Are these tools being used to promote competence? 3) Does the Army reward competence in individual officers? 4) Is officer incompetence tolerated in the Army? If so, why? Is Army culture a factor?

Interviews and surveys with a number of field-grade and senior officers indicate that the Army does, in fact, promote competence in its officers. Not only do senior officers and Command and General Staff College students agree that overall, the Army promotes competence, but the list of Army practices virtually mirrors the Fortune 500 companies’ best practices for developing leaders. The evidence identifies certain areas for improvement, however, as well as some outright failures in the system.

Survey Results

The first question—do established leadership development processes provide accurate tools for identifying competence and incompetence?—addresses only the tools the Army has provided the officer corps to identify basic competence (or lack thereof). According to the survey results, the officers generally agreed that the Army does have quality tools that can identify competence and incompetence. For example, professional military education courses provide well-developed curricula and standard university grading protocols of 70 percent for passing most courses and 80 percent for grad-uate-level work. In addition, experienced promotion board judges find that the Officer Evaluation Report (OER) accurately identifies high, me-dium and poor performers in spite of being inflated and using a “code language” to express the differences. More-over, regular counseling can be effective in informing subordinates of their competence levels when used appropriately.

The second question—are these tools being used to promote competence?—gave us insight into some areas for improvement, namely in the areas of grading standards, sufficient repetitions for skill mastery, and the experience levels of the staff and faculty. Promotion boards easily identify top and bottom performers, but middle performers are harder to rank. Most importantly, the Army’s counseling, coaching and mentoring systems are failing. The counseling system is underutilized, lacks candid evaluations and is providing little guidance or follow-through on improvement programs. Coaching and mentoring are practically nonexistent.

As for the question about individual competence being rewarded, the study found that, generally, the answer is “yes.” Considering the low confidence field-grade officers have in the OER system, however, that begs the question: What level of competence is rewarded and do the rewards match the effort? Specifically, officers are concerned that their competence is not rewarded with career commitment from the Army due to the “up or out” system of promotions. Superior performance is definitely rewarded as it is more easily identified on OERs, and there are sufficient positions available for superior performers to continue to promote. More average competence, however, is not necessarily rewarded with continued employment.

The last question is: Is officer incompetence tolerated in the Army? If so, why? The answer to the first part is a resounding “yes,” and the reason was related to three factors. The lack of candid, regular counseling from superiors and lack of higher command knowledge or support for actions taken against an incompetent officer comprise the first key factor. Also noted was the difficulty in defining, measuring and prioritizing interpersonal skills and related attributes as parts of officer competence. One general officer pointed out: “Only when we evaluate and promote based on those more nebulous qualities will officers begin to value them.” The third factor is related to the confusion officers have with the crossover of ethical behavior and moral character into the measurement of competence.

As for the relationship of culture, underlying cultural values such as risk adversity and short-term results orientation are influencing the way senior leaders handle counseling and higher commands’ involvement in action against incompetence. More than one senior leader mentioned that some leaders are afraid to counsel candidly for fear of counteraccusations from subordinates. In addition, if the mission can still be accomplished in spite of an incompetent subordinate, then the hard work and risk of negatively counseling that subordinate are not worth the trouble. Also, results show that interpersonal skills and ethical behavior are highly espoused as values, but underlying values of hard-driving competitiveness and being results-oriented contribute to the acceptability of toxic leadership and other failings in those areas.

Taking Steps to Effect Change

Senior Army leaders need to take immediate action to correct the major deficiencies in the areas of coaching, counseling and mentoring. There needs to be a command emphasis—from the Army Chief of Staff down—on using the counseling system the Army already has in a consistent and candid fashion. Army officers need more training on what right looks like to mitigate “checking the block” without providing effective development. The organizational inspection program should make counseling packets an inspected item. Lastly, senior raters should receive summaries and updates to maintain basic awareness of individual performance two levels down.

Coaching and mentoring require more time and resources to implement change, but there are two programs already available to the Army for immediate improvements in those areas. The Multi-Source Assessment and Feedback (MSAF) 360 program offers coaching. At least one MSAF360 coaching session after each feedback survey should be mandatory in order to ensure the officer takes the time to review the results in a thoughtful manner.

In addition, the Army G-1 website offers a little-known “Army Mentorship Program,” but none of the links to the page were working at the time of this writing. The program should be reinstated, and lieutenants and captains in the Basic Officer Leader Course and Captains Career Courses should be encouraged to enroll if they do not already have an established mentorship relationship. Further development of the MSAF-360 coaching and Army Mentorship Program or other similar programs should be investigated promptly. The failure of this critical developmental system is detrimental to our performance.

This investigation was able to pinpoint a few areas for improvement and make some recommendations based on the thoughts of a group of experienced and well-educated officers. The Army needs dramatic improvement in its counseling, coaching and mentoring systems. There is also a need to re-evaluate the underlying values of Army culture in relationship to interpersonal skills and ethical behavior in order to better understand and promote those qualities and skills in competent officers. As a profession of arms, competence is one of two pillars that uphold the status of “professional” for our soldiers and officers in their own eyes and the eyes of the public. Therefore, it is a professional imperative that the Army promote competence in its members to the full extent possible in each of the established developmental systems as well as through strong organizational culture.

Melanie S. Kirchhoff is a Psychological Operations officer. She received her commission in the Missouri National Guard in 1995. Kirchhoff holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Kansas State University and a master’s degree in military arts and sciences from the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College.

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