Assessing Self-Development

Abstract

PUZZLING OVER your commander's remark that your communication skills need improvement, you went to friend to ask for advice. I could have told you that. There are quite few times when you don't listen to anyone. Well, why didn't you tell me? You never asked. Well, what else haven't you mentioned? Well, now that you ask.... The US Army has long recognized that its quality in performance of mission is dependent upon quality of its soldiers and leaders. To continuously improve soldier and leader quality requires comprehensive means to provide both developmental and performance assessment and feedback on how well we do our jobs. Accordingly, leader development is best defined as the preparation of military and civilian leaders, through progressive and sequential system of institutional training, operational assignments and selfdevelopment, to assume leader positions and exploit full potential of present and future doctrine.1 US Army leaders have historically relied on assessments from their superiors, not only as primary gauge of job success and mission accomplishment, but also as means to identify developmental needs. If boss was happy, all must be right with world. Today, in time of growing interest in Total Quality Management, both public and private sectors are moving toward other sources of feedback to measure success and to assess and develop leaders. Recent initiatives have pushed Army to examine itself more closely with intention of developing better leaders. One method of improving leadership is concept of multirater assessment.2 As Army considers multirater assessment potential, it is examining tools that may significantly enhance our personal development. Multirater assessments provide means to construct developmental plans to improve our own leadership skills, given direct feedback from our peers, subordinates and superiors. The Self-Development Process * Army leader development is founded on two principles: * All development, such as institutional training, operational assignments and self-development, must be properly sequenced. * The Army must maintain life-cycle models which describe critical tasks and responsibilities-for all leaders in their respective areas. Department of Army doctrinal literature maintains that is planned, competency-based, progressive and sequential process individual leaders use to enhance previously acquired skills, knowledge, behaviors and experience, and to enhance readiness and potential for progressively more complex and higher-level assignments. Selfdevelopment focuses on maximizing leader strengths, minimizing weaknesses and achieving individual leader development goals.4 Two imperatives are tied to self-development pillar: * Stress individual responsibility for leader development. * Identify, specify and refine self-development requirements.5 Further, self-development involves a continuous process that takes place during institutional training, education and operational assignments.6 In other words, self-development occurs wherever soldier is, no matter what soldier is doing. The selfdevelopment program should stretch and broaden individual beyond [current] job or training.7 Self-development generally occurs in series of phases and begins with an accurate self-assessment that identifies individual's developmental needs.8 This assessment is followed by discussion with trusted others to identify causes of identified strengths and weaknesses. Then an action plan is developed to highlight and prioritize specific actions that should be taken by individual to achieve his/her self-developmental goals. Commanders are responsible for providing advice, assistance and support as individual leaders prepare and execute their developmental plans. …

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 5 citations exist upstream.