Senior Leader Mentoring: Its Role in Leader Development Doctrine

Abstract

This study addresses the role of senior leaders as mentors in the Army's leader development process. Principally, this study investigated the proper role of senior leader mentoring as a viable component of the Army's leader development doctrine. It examines civilian and military studies on mentoring to determine the components of mentoring and its benefits as well as detractors for organizations, mentors, and subordinates. The results of an exploratory survey of eleven retired and active duty, active component Army General officers is analyzed and compared to previous studies on the phenomenon of mentoring. This comparison provides the basis for suggesting the proper role of senior leader mentoring in the Army. Senior leader mentoring's applicability to the unit assignment, institutional training, and self development pillars of the Army's leader development process is analyzed to determine its doctrinal feasibility. This study suggests that senior leader mentoring is a valuable method to use to help develop Army officers. It demonstrates that teaching, coaching, counseling, advising, and sponsoring are valid mentoring activities and as such should be included in the Army's leader development doctrine and become expected behavior by senior leaders to enhance subordinate leader development. Mentoring, Leader development, Leader development doctrine, Coaching, Teaching, Counseling, Advising, Guiding, Sponsoring.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jun 03, 1994
Accession Number
ADA284464

Entities

People

  • Mark L. Ritter

Organizations

  • United States Army Command and General Staff College

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Human Systems

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Air Force
  • Data Analysis
  • Doctrine
  • Education
  • Employment
  • General Officers
  • Instructors
  • Military Operations
  • Military Personnel
  • Military Research
  • Military Science
  • Organizational Structure
  • Personnel Management
  • Students
  • Test And Evaluation
  • Training
  • War Colleges

Readers

  • Military Leadership and Professional Education.
  • Systems Analysis and Design