2014 Center for Army Leadership Annual Survey of Army Leadership (CASAL): Military Leader Findings

Abstract

CASAL is the Armys annual survey to assess the quality of leadership and leader development. 2014 findings are based on responses from 23,264 Army leaders, consisting of 16,795 sergeants through colonels in the Regular Army, US Army Reserve, and Army National Guard and 6,469 Army civilians. This tenth year of the survey has additional coverage on methods of influence and self-development. Among uniformed leaders, assessments of leader attributes and leadership competencies surpass a benchmark of 67% favorable by an additional 6-21% of the assessed leaders, except for developing others on which 62% of the uniformed leaders are rated effective or very effective. Operational experience has the largest percentage of active duty leaders rating it as an effective domain of leader development at 79%, followed by self-development at 73%, and institutional education at 62%. Favorable attitudes toward self-development increased by 10% since 2013 for active duty NCOs and 7% for reserve NCOs. While professional military education quality is rated favorably by 77% of recent graduates, only about half believe their course was relevant to their job duties or improved their leadership. Even in the face of not receiving developmental support from their superiors, many leaders are not proactive in seeking feedback or engaging in self-development. Aligning with the Armys preferred mission command philosophy, the use of commitment-building influence techniques are more frequent than compliance techniques. The climate in which leadership occurs has mixed indicators with high commitment to ones unit, but a decline in the proportion of leaders who report career satisfaction, an upturn in unit discipline problems, and an increase in workload stress. Recommended steps are offered to address the results.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Sep 22, 2015
Accession Number
AD1000497

Entities

People

  • Jon J. Fallesen
  • Josh Hatfield
  • Katie M. Gunther
  • Ryan P. Riley
  • Tyler E. Freeman

Organizations

  • ICF International

Tags

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Active Duty
  • Army Personnel
  • Business Administration
  • Distance Learning
  • Doctrine
  • Education
  • Job Training
  • Management Personnel
  • Mentoring
  • Military Education
  • National Guard
  • Personnel Management
  • Professional Development
  • Psychology
  • Students
  • Training
  • Workload

Readers

  • Military Leadership and Professional Education.