Abstract:

The communication competency of military professionals, especially commanders, who are expected to be both good managers and leaders nowadays, has become the subject of deeper and more systematic study in connection with the solution of the project for the organization development entitled "The Development of Social Competencies of the Commander-Leader". The project has been implemented by the Department of Leadership of the Faculty of Military Leadership at the University of Defence in Brno. Primarily the communication competency of military professionals training for their profession at the tertiary level of education, secondarily the communication competency of the officer corps in non-accredited forms of education is in the centre of attention of the project investigators. One of the basic questions to be answered at the very beginning of the project solution, was: How and in which activities to identify the attained level of communication competency of an individual and at the same time to create learners´ interest and need to improve their communication skills necessary for a high-quality professional performance? The incentive to implement the elements of adventure education into accredited education aimed at the development of occupational social competencies of military professionals has proven to be one of the possible and effective ways to solve the problem. The aim of the article is to inform about the ways of using the adventure education approach in the defined concept of education and about the results of their evaluation by learners during the period of their use. The evaluation results confirm that in the case of developing soft skills, especially communication skills, the educational activities created on the basis of adventure education are also suitable for tertiary education. They enable students to approach the occupational situations they will have to cope with in practice later. The activities they have got through provide feedback on their communication potential to cope with common occupational communication situations and at the same time indicate the consequences of any failure in them. Since the educational activities are realized concurrently in the students of two faculties with a different focus of the study, the differences in the attained level of communication competency can also be traced in the approach to its development. The contribution may be inspiration not only for the military educational environment, which often views modern methods of education with distrust, but also for other educational environments, where the opinion prevails that the rationality is the only reliable level of learning.

Keywords:

Communication competency, adventure education, leadership, development of soft skills, evolution of education.