Abstract:

The current increasingly volatile security environment tends to be characterized by one apparently oxymoronic feature: its constant change. Everything seems to be evolving at a much higher pace and with totally different means than one hundred or even fifty years ago. The military leader has to possess, show and constantly prove, besides vision, stamina, and determination on top of courage, resilience and discipline, something which seems to become increasingly important, namely communication skills. One might think that the military relies extensively on standard operating procedures, clearly stipulated norms and rules to be followed “by the book”, people giving orders and other people following them. Actually, it is only by communicating that leaders can inspire, motivate, influence, persuade and determine their followers to do the best they can to accomplish their missions with maximal results and minimal loss.

The abundance of means used by military leaders to communicate within and outside the military system are the best they have ever been; yet, the significance of communication skills seem to be falling far behind the other skills required which involve analysis, planning, or decision-making. Unlike the civilian approach embraced by the current world of corporate organizations in which any top professional is backed up by solid communication training which makes him/her an equally skilled individual in relation to subordinates, peers, superiors or partners, the military higher education tends to overlook the necessity to actually teach future leaders how to use linguistic means to create and direct successful teams capable of achieving the desired results. More often than not, officers who are taking the Command Master Program within National Defense University in Romania are telling us that they rely exclusively on their intuition and experience to disseminate knowledge, to provide guidance, to support their opinions, mitigate disagreements, or settle disputes. They feel the need to “grow” as communicators and develop their communication skills in order to increase their leadership skills. Commanding people and accomplishing missions tend to be increasingly associated with commanding language and accomplishing communication goals.

Actually, the profile of the graduate established by the Romanian Defense Staff includes the communicator capacity of our students as general professional competence – to be able to use complex communication techniques in a professional manner to give orders and receive feedback, as specific professional competence – to be able to render mission command so as each member of the unit might fully understand it and be motivated to accomplish the unit’s goals, and as transversal competence – to be able to work in a multinational environment and possess complete communication interoperability with our allies and partners. Our research aims at exploring the ways and means of developing these competences by implementing a leadership module involving peer-teaching and cooperative learning, taught by both an officer-professor with expertise in military leadership and a civilian professor with expertise in communication theory and practice. The inter-disciplinary approach is largely based on our student-officers’ input which is highly likely to ensure the success of our innovative endeavor.

Keywords:

Leadership, military higher education, communication competences.