Identifying Leader Behaviors Important for Unit Resilience
Abstract
The U.S. Army Research Institute (ARI) sought to identify a set of leader behaviors Soldiers perceived as important for resilience at the squad-level to support the Army's commitment of improving the resilience of Soldiers. Army active duty enlisted personnel (n equals 367) used a 5-point Likert scale (1 equals Not at all important to 5 equals Extremely important) to rate the importance of 74 leader behaviors to unit resilience of their squad. Soldiers indicated that all behaviors were at least moderately (means of 3.2 to 4.4) important to unit resilience. Exploratory factor analysis identified the following three factors: 1) Leaders foster a positive environment (Cronbach's alpha equals 0.98; 30.2 percent variance explained), 2) Leaders promote Army performance standards (Cronbach's alpha equals 0.93; 19.6 percent variance explained), and 3) Leaders support culture sensitivity (Cronbach's alpha was not calculated because only one item loaded on this factor; 6.9 variance explained). This effort highlighted the important role of leader behaviors for unit resilience in the Army. Additional validation research of these foundational findings can help inform and recommend Army policy (e.g., the assignment of Soldiers for leadership positions, and the design of leader development training) to improve the health, readiness, and resilience of Army units.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Nov 01, 2022
- Accession Number
- AD1184983
Entities
People
- Bridget E. Boyle
- Calanda R. Cato
- Darin L. Galyer
- Frederick P. Morgeson
- Jessica D. Markey
- Katelyn M. Mccoy
- Kevin C. Loo
- Mitchell N. Pontikes
- Shala N. Blue