Paper 4 Leadership in the Profession of Arms

15085 Words61 Pages
Leadership in the Profession of Arms 1 Leadership in the Profession of Arms Sean T. Hannah Director, Center for the Army Profession and Ethic Training and Doctrine Command, Combined Arms Center, West Point - United States Military Academy 646 Swift Road West Point, NY 10996 (845) 496-8747 Sean.hannah@usma.edu Hannah, S. T. (in press). Leadership in the profession of arms. In M. Rumsey (Ed.), Oxford Handbook of Leadership. Oxford University Press: New York. Leadership in the Profession of Arms 2 Abstract I outline the unique causations and contingencies influencing leadership in military contexts. After defining what constitutes a Profession of Arms (internal context) and the combat operating environment (external context), I offer a working definition of leadership in military professions as well as define a professional military leader. Based on these definitions and facets of the internal and external contexts, I discuss unique phenomenon influencing leadership at the individual level of analysis, such as ethos, emotions, sensemaking, cognition and judgment, identity and self-complexity, individual differences, and motivation. Next, I apply the military context to the dyad and collective levels, and discuss effects on leader-follower relationships, leader prototypes, unit composition types, group processes and goals, shared leadership, and collective influences on ethical behavior. I close with future directions to extend this work by studying more macro organizational effects of the military context as well as the routinization of extreme contexts. Keywords: Military, leadership, extreme, ethos, profession of arms, combat Leadership in the Profession of Arms 3 The term military leadership is vague and open to numerous definitions. The term has often been used by writers when discussing commanders‘ employment of military strategy or tactics,
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