ADP 6-22: What if the United States Army wrote the handbook in leadership that we all should read?

The military has a manual for everything. A running joke well known among insiders is that if the military wants to promote thinking outside the box, they would write a manual on how to do so.

Standardization helps build homogenic actions in large organizations. It also makes it possible to give a large amount of autonomy within established frameworks that should enable quicker response time because everyone has a shared understanding of what they are supposed to do. The United States Army has a manual for leadership, and it seems to be very much on point. 

On Tuesday the 30th of January 2024, LTC Wei C. Chou, Assistant U.S. Army Attache to the Republic of Korea, gave an inspiring talk about military leadership for the professional network the Gallery Seoul.

Military leadership is a concept that is unfamiliar to most of us yet likely rouses our curiosity. We have seen it in movies and on the news, and most of us have our own idea of what military leadership is, perhaps even with certain characteristics in mind. So, what can a room filled with civil sector leaders learn from a Lieutenant Colonel from the U.S. Army? A LOT, it turns out. In the following article we will share our analysis of the core principles presented to us and how they translate to the civil sector.

Myth I: Military leadership is easy because you just tell people what to do

Even though the military culture emphasizes top-down direction and giving orders, most of the presentation was about finding and giving purpose and motivation. This could be a surprise to many, so this is a good place to start myth-busting…

In a military scenario, it is absolutely plausible to tell someone who is not up for the task to

• “Suck it up”

• “Quit being weak”

• “Just get the job done”

In civilian sectors, these responses would likely elicit unwanted attention from the Human Resources Department. Also, motivational language in a military scenario could be more coarse language than your average motivational speech. 

But, in fact (of course) reality isn’t quite that simple in the military. You can as a leader in the military punish your subordinates if they do not follow orders, but with potentially adverse consequences for morale, which is crucial for ensuring consistent performance in high pressure environments such as combat situations. Punishment of subordinates is a rarity in the civil sector. However, organizations in civilian sectors generally do have the option to dismiss employees for a variety of performance-related reasons or for misconduct, often with minimal resistance in most countries. This option is comparatively less available in military structures. Therefore, military leadership is to a large extent about motivation.

Myth II: Knowing that you could actually die is all the motivation you need!

It is part of human nature that in a life-or-death situation staying alive and protecting the person next to you is a big motivation to perform certain tasks. Our survival instinct is more complicated than this though. An article in Harvard Business Review asserts that creating motivation and purpose in life-or-death crises is actually even more difficult: 

“When serving in crisis conditions where leadership influences the physical well being or survival of both the leader and the led—in extremis contexts—transactional sources of motivation (e.g. pay, rewards, or threat of punishment) become insufficient. Why should a person be motivated by rewards when he might not live to enjoy them? Why would a person fear administrative punishment when compliance might lead to injury or death?”

Therefore, the Army leadership handbook presents us with a framework consisting of 3 core elements:

1. Direction

2. Motivation

3. Purpose
   

Giving direction

Giving direction is a matter of “providing objectives in such a way that a good follower should be able to comply, and this entails giving people sectors - they need to know their left and right limits.” This can be understood very literally, but thinking about it, this is in fact precisely what good leadership is about: Provide your team with an objective in a way they are actually able to comply with. If the objective is unclear, it points back to you as a leader and your competency in conveying the message. 

To do this, you need to know your team because your employees are not created identical nor should they be. The ability to assess and categorize the abilities and communication needs of the members of your team is crucial to determining how to give effective direction. In the military, a classification framework based loosely on weapons systems seems a natural and memorable fit, however you could use any framework that speaks to you: flowers, food, animals, iPhone-models. For this article we stick with the military jargon: 

The purpose of this classification quickly becomes apparent: if you give an objective to a AT4 in the way you would to a Hellfire missile, that employee will likely fail because more prescriptive guidance is needed to get the message across. And if you instruct your Hellfire missiles like the AT4 they will be annoyed, feel patronized and not have an opportunity to shine. Hellfire’s are exeptional in that they can strike multiple targets with minial guidance.

Giving effective direction is essential for success. However, effective direction for multi-person teams is hardly ever uniform and must take into account the abilities of respective team members. 

Get, (and keep) them motivated

Giving directions spurs your team to start moving. Then, it is equally important that your team feels motivated to get the job done to sustain momentum towards the ultimate goal. Elevating the interests and incentives for each team member to collective interests of the team creates motivation for the group. 

As discussed, in the military there is always the option of top-down direction and negative reinforcement. However, pulling rank can result in a loss of motivation, trust, and morale, which will erode effective leadership in the long run.  

The competency of the leader, or lack thereof, have a big impact on a leader’s ability to earn trust, boost morale, and motivate the team. If your team trusts that you know what you are doing, they will follow you. If you are talented enough, they will follow - even though they might not like you. This is not the same as you having to be the best in every function, you can and should trust your team's competence as well. This works when your team knows that you will not run them off a cliff, which could be quite literal in the military context. In a civilian context, the fear that an ineffective leader could send a team off a figurative cliff can similarly sink morale.

The ADP-22 handbook offers several insights on how to build motivation through leadership competency: A) set a personal example B) share the hardship. The underlying message is very simple: if you slack, your team will slack. Unfortunately, the inverse is not necessarily true, something that most leaders surely can attest to. But, you can trust that if you slack, they will too. So, walking the talk is essential. 

Likewise, sharing hardship can also lend credibility to leadership competency.  All team projects will undoubtedly have less attractive assignments or there can be periods of peak pressure that demand overtime. Sometimes you need to get into the trenches with your team and lead by example. You may think the joy of being promoted to leader was to avoid these particular situations, but if you never show up for the shitty part you will lose the group's respect and eat into their ability to stay motivated. 

Of course, this is a balance because being a leader also means doing different tasks than your team. You cannot both do your new job as a leader and still be doing all of your old work. Therefore, you need to know where it matters. Consider the following:

• Where does it hurt? In the military they would do a “Command Climate Survey” but the equivalent of this exists in all organizations and/or you could also just have a systematic cup of coffee with everyone in your team. The point is no matter to understand why they are dissatisfied. Once you know you can create a response plan

• What are your strengths? Good leaders have done some soul searching and are to a certain extent aware of their own strengths and weaknesses. Your response plan should build on your strengths and offset your weaknesses. 

With this knowledge, you can more efficiently plan your work, presence, and strategy as a leader.

Give them a purpose

Having a purpose is the most important part. In fact, in the military it is mandatory that every order should contain a why. That is good advice for all leaders, but something that requires practice and precision. The instructions should not be too cumbersome. Imagine if you were able to actually convey why all tasks were important to serve the higher purpose. You can accept a lot if you understand why you have to do it. 

Here, Wei shared an interesting example of the need - and opportunity - to sometimes create purpose in hindsight. For people coming home from the military and seeing that the overall mission or state of the world did not go as intended can fundamentally question: “what was it all for? What was the purpose?” So, even though they might have found purpose in the situation they lost that understanding at a later stage. Then it is crucial to invest in restoring an understanding of purpose and restoring confidence.

Team driven modules and transferable trust

The military is built in modules that can be put together in many different constructions and solve different tasks. As a result, the overall organization maintains agility. Creating a module-based organization is possible because ranks and badges make it possible to transfer trust and the manuals support a homogeneity in expectations. When things are standardized, you know instantly what it stands for and to a large extent the capabilities of that person. Like an organizational McDonalds, everywhere you go in the world you know what to expect when you order a Big Mac. It might not be directly transferable to all sectors, but the idea might still be interesting to explore. 

However, the individual platoon (team) is rarely broken up. Because, knowing and trusting each other is everything. It is exactly this trust and loyalty that creates motivation, because if it is not me who takes upon myself a difficult task, it will be one of my friends who has to. It encourages team spirit and taking responsibility. 

In another Harvard Business Review article, this concept of familiarity and trust is highlighted. The in-depth knowledge of each other within a team and the many also informal interactions is the magic of how it works. Because combined with standards it makes these teams scalable (which would otherwise be considered a challenge for example for a start-up wanting to grow, how to scale the tacit knowledge, and the immaterial assets): The more powerful those informal interactions are, where all it takes is one glance between one person and another, that’s how you go from command and control to organic movements.

Of course even the military can have platoons or teams that do not function well, which brings us back to the principles of trust-building and purpose-driven leadership. Assess the situation on the ground and listen to people before you act (remember the command climate survey?). A good leader leads with a big portion of humility. If you go in, thinking you know exactly what should be done, you will fail. 

If you have a manual for everything, is there room for  creativity?

Now you might think that this is all well and done for the military because this is a homogenous job and a homogeneous group of people, but that is not the case. The military (especially the American) is a massive organization and solves a range of tasks - imagine the difference between logistics deploying people and equipment all over the world, infantry on the ground, and cyber war who work online. Meaning the leadership model has to work across sectors also for the military. And within a platoon (team), diversity seems to be a growing trend (also) within the military. Recognizing that you need different types to be successful. Both the fast moving, bold and brave as well as the meticulous and reflective person. You need someone who asks a lot of questions and some who do not, etc. Having this gets the job done and allows you to respond effectively within the given left and right limits. A successful mission-driven approach to leadership enables the next person to know what to do and is encouraged to make his own decisions within his mandate. 

In fact, our first referenced article from Harvard Business review states that precisely adaptive capacity, innovation, and flexibility are demanded by dangerous contexts. Meaning, not only is adaptivity doable, it is needed. This is elaborated why very precisely:

"The longer we did it, the more I realized the value of rehearsal was not in trying to get this perfectly choreographed kabuki that would unfold as planned. The value of rehearsal was to familiarize everybody with all the things that could happen, what the relationships are, and how you communicate. What you’re really doing is building up the flexibility to adapt. I’ve never been on an operation that went as planned."

Summing up the ADP 6-22 provides a simple recipe for good leadership working within a structure that promotes what may seem basic leadership virtues. But, in fact giving directions, motivation, and purpose should be the core of leadership and might be forgotten in the busy daily life of leaders.. Of course, it still comes down to the individual's ability to implement in practice. For now, imagine if you started to include a ‘why’ in every order you give?