Critical Skills of Marine Corps Infantry Small Unit Leaders

Abstract

Emerging Marine Corps infantry concepts such as enhanced company operations (ECO) and distributed operations (DO) place increasing decision-making responsibilities on small unit leaders. In the future, it will become increasingly important to identify individuals with the required skill sets to perform these jobs. A comprehensive job-task analysis was performed to identify the most important skills, abilities, and other characteristics (SAOs) required for successful job performance of a representative small unit leadership position, the Fire Support Team (FiST) leader. Ratings were obtained from Marine Corps FiST instructors and expert job analysts. Agreement within and between ratings sources was high. SAOs involving adaptive planning, problem solving, and decision making were rated among the most critically important leader characteristics. Other SAOs related to stress tolerance, performance under stress, leadership, and teamwork also were identified as important.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Nov 17, 2008
Accession Number
ADA499859

Entities

People

  • Jeffrey B. Phillips
  • Joshua A. Isaacson
  • Phillip M. Mangos
  • Richard D. Arnold

Organizations

  • Naval Aerospace Medical Research Laboratory

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical
  • Human Systems

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Applied Psychology
  • Biomedical Research
  • Classification
  • Fire Support
  • Governments
  • Job Analysis
  • Management Personnel
  • Marine Corps
  • Mechanical Equipment
  • Military Research
  • Navigation
  • Organizational Structure
  • Orientation (Direction)
  • Psychology
  • Reasoning
  • Standards
  • United States Government

Readers

  • Instructional Design and Training Evaluation.
  • Maritime Combat Support and Expeditionary Logistics.
  • Military Science