Free Leadership Training the Army Way

I went to school at a "land grant" university that happened to be a Federal Depository Library. One whole floor of the library had just about every scrap of paper you could imagine that the Federal Government had printed (well, some of it was on microfilm, but still). Being something of a book junkie, I spent a good bit of time in the library and I spent some time exploring the repository. As you might expect, a lot of the material there is from the military, including the Army and other military branches. For example, one day I learned how to make spaghetti for 400 people in an Army cookbook.

Some freely available government documents are more practical. The Government Publishing Office makes many documents available for free or at a low cost. The Foreign Service Institute (part of the State Department) has useful language training classes. The Army provides a wealth of training to soldiers and much of that is available to the general public. For example, TM 5-693 explains uninterruptible power supplies and how to employ them which might be useful if you are building a data center.

If there is one thing the Army knows it is people, and perhaps more importantly that hard-to-define skill known as leadership. Most of us probably see leadership the way Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart saw pornography ("I know it when I see it..."). However, the Army has put many man years into understanding, defining, and teaching leadership.

So how does the Army define leadership? FM-22-100 says: "Leadership is influencing people-by providing purpose, direction, and motivation-while operating to accomplish the mission and improving the organization." By that definition, who doesn't want to be a leader? Leadership skills are useful to everyone, not just soldiers!

But a definition is only part of the puzzle. You can influence people in many ways, and not all of them are positive! How many people can you think of in your life that you actively seek not to be like? But FM-22-100 goes on to summarize the Army's leadership strategy as "BE-KNOW-DO." Which means: