Army Leadership Essay Example

The purpose of this essay is to explain the foundations of Army leadership. Leadership is the process of influencing people by providing them with purpose, direction, and motivation while you are operating to accomplish a mission and improve the organization (US Army, 2012). The Army is one of the most complex organizations to run in the world. This complex of an organization requires strong and competent leadership. You learn to lead by adopting the Army Values, learning military skills, and practicing leadership actions. To become a strong Army leader, your foundation needs to build on a philosophy of Be, Know, Do. This philosophy describes the attributes of an Army leader, and the competencies of what an Army leader can do. The Be, Know, Do philosophy is the foundation of Army Leadership.

Army leadership begins with who a leader must BE. These are your defining qualities as a leader. You demonstrate your commitment to character and to a leadership role in the Army by adopting and living the seven Army Values and the leader attributes (US Army, 2012). By living the Army values, you teach your Soldiers by example and in turn teach them how to become strong Army leaders. You must be a leader of character and a leader of presence. Live your life with integrity and stick to your word. To influence Soldiers, you must be authentic. You must have personal accountability, so when you make a mistake, your Soldiers know that you will take responsibility for it. If you are honest and trustworthy, your Soldiers will follow you into battle. To BE a good leader, you need to lead by example, and never be a “do as I say, not as I do” type of leader. These leaders immediately lose respect and confidence from their Soldiers. Soldiers want a leader that sets the example, and lives by it.

The next step in Army leadership is to KNOW what you have mastered, and to KNOW what attributes you need to work on as a leader. To ask subordinates to perform to standard, you must first master the standard yourself (Introduction to Army Leadership, 2019). The five types of Army attributes that you must become an expert in are: mental agility, sound judgement, innovation, interpersonal tact, and domain knowledge. Mental agility is the ability to critically think and adapt to any situation. Sound judgement is being able to assess situations and make reasonable adjustments. Being innovative means that you formulate new ideas and try to implement them to streamline a process or procedure. Being able to competently interact with individuals and groups and manage unexpected situations that may arise is interpersonal tact. The last attribute is domain knowledge, which is having a technical and applicable knowledge of your Soldier’s jobs and tasks. After mastering these tasks, you must also KNOW the attributes that you need to work on. Soldiers can tell if you are pretending to know something about the job that they do and will lose respect for you. 

The last step in this philosophy is what a leader DOES. It requires a relentless focus on the right priorities—those that move you toward accomplishing the mission or fulfilling a bigger purpose (Gore, 2020). Doing, as a leader, is a culmination of your character and your knowledge. Leaders must act, providing purpose, direction, and motivation. You must be able to influence your soldiers by leading by example. A leader must be able to operate at his or her highest level, even when they do not want to or do not feel like it. Improvement of both themselves and their soldiers is an essential part of being a good leader. The actions you take as a leader can directly reflect the success of your soldiers, whether it is during drill, deployment, or civilian life. Nothing speaks more clearly to your subordinates about your commitment to excellence and improvement than your ongoing assessment of the unit’s performance and leading the way toward improvement (Introduction to Army Leadership, 2019).

The Be, Know, Do philosophy is a leadership model that the US Army follows as it attempts to shape successful leaders. This philosophy is used by the Army as a foundation for building its soldiers into leaders. The Army has constantly evolved since 1775 and will continue to evolve. Even with this constant evolution and the added complexity of the Army, the foundations of Army leadership, built on the Be, Know, Do philosophy, will be able to adapt and overcome any obstacle that may arise. The philosopher Aristotle once said “To live a fruitful, happy, and productive life you must first develop your character into a set of habits. Add to character the gaining of competence. Character and competence then will produce excellence in all that you do.” This quote, when adapted to Army leadership, translates to Be, Know, Do.