Strategic Leadership Competencies

Abstract

The strategic leadership literature in both the academic and military contexts is replete with long lists of the knowledge, skills, and abilities needed by strategic leaders of the future. Unfortunately, long comprehensive lists are problematic. At the individual level, it is difficult to assess one s leadership ability when the lists suggest that a strategic leader must Be, Know, and Do just about everything. At the institutional level, the long lists make it difficult to focus an institution s attention and resources on leader development when the desired endstate is so broad. Hence, the task of identifying the competencies of future strategic leaders becomes one of reducing the lists to a few metacompetencies that will prove useful in: a) directing leader development efforts in the process of producing leaders with strategic leader capability, and b) facilitating self-assessment by officers of their strategic leader capability. Looking across the existing literature on strategic leadership, the current lists of Army strategic leader competencies, and the future environment of the Objective Force, six metacompetencies can be derived: identity, mental agility, cross-cultural savvy, interpersonal maturity, world-class warrior, and professional astuteness. These metacompetencies describe the strategic leadership necessary for the future Army.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Sep 01, 2003
Accession Number
ADA631451

Entities

People

  • Leonard Wong
  • Richard Swengros
  • Robert Pricone
  • Stephen Gerras
  • William Kidd

Organizations

  • United States Army War College

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Energy and Power Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Army Training
  • Doctrine
  • Education
  • Government (Foreign)
  • International Relations
  • Leadership
  • Military History
  • National Security
  • Organizational Structure
  • Psychology
  • Schools
  • Security
  • Social Sciences
  • Standards
  • Students
  • Training
  • War Colleges

Readers

  • Library and Information Science
  • Military History / Militaries and War Studies
  • Organizational Process Management (OPM).