Military Review English Edition January-February 2017 | Page 105

CADET COMMAND

an apparent institutional emphasis on valuing shortterm gain over longer-term learning.
Though changing the accessions OML model
might not necessarily address the underlying issues
related to preparing adaptive leaders, it would realign
assessments to the desired outcomes. This is the direction that Cadet Command is moving.

emphasizes results over process and procedures.17
Vandergriff stresses that it is not domain-specific
knowledge that wins the day for a leader, but rather
a broad experiential base, contextual knowledge, and
decisiveness.18
The work of social scientist Mark Moyer appears
to corroborate these attributes through his analysis

New Attributes and New Ways

Retired Maj. Gen. Burn Loeffke instructs Army ROTC cadets
in advanced Spanish language training and medical translation
7 May 2013 at Fort Knox, Kentucky. The training was in preparation
for a humanitarian aid mission to Panama in December 2013. (Photo
courtesy of U.S. Army ROTC)

Aligning the Cadet Command leader development and assessment model to what the AOC
demands involves a reorientation of the enterprise. It
is a change that would move away from rote learning
of the familiar toward development of a challenging
course that promotes effective problem orientation,
critical thinking, and decision making. Using Bloom’s
educational objectives taxonomy as a reference, cadet
education-and-development programs must move
beyond just exercises in remembering, understanding, and applying predetermined drills and school
solutions toward analyzing, evaluating, and creating
in the face of information gaps and uncertainty characteristic of the new security environment.16
To achieve this orientation, noted leader-development educator Donald Vandergriff stresses an
outcomes-based training-and-education model that
MILITARY REVIEW  January-February 2017

of effective leaders on modern battlefields. In his research involving leaders from Iraq and Afghanistan,
he notes ten attributes are recurring themes among
successful small-unit leaders. These attributes are
initiative, flexibility, creativeness, judgment, empathy,
charisma, sociability, dedication, integrity, and organization.19 The application of these leadership principles used in applying doctrine or domain knowledge
made small units effective.
The two sets of mutually supporting theoretical
observations by Vandergriff and Moyer come together in the Asymmetric Warfare Group’s (AWG’s)
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