Leadership, Part 1

Vincent J. Curtis

12 Oct 22

The changes to dress regulation sparked a lot of discussion concerning leadership and change.  I’ve seen some of new-age philosophy and mysticism invoked to justify this or that opinion concerning leading change and leading the latest generation of young, and not-so-young, Canadians in the times ahead.

What is leadership?  Leadership is the art of influencing human behavior so as to accomplish the mission in the manner desired by the leader.  Leadership is distinct from management, in that management is a science (not an art) of the employment of men and material in the economical and effective accomplishment of the mission.

It seems worthwhile, and is often profitable, to review how we got to this pass.  What has the CAF said about leadership in the past so that it can be compared to what is said now?  So, pretend this is 1973, not 2023, and let’s take a trip down memory lane on the CAF’s historical view of leadership.

After Word War 2, the Canadian Army (as it then was, a separate service) set about to organize and systematize its approach to leadership development.  The work, which occurred in 1964-65, was undertaken by the Directorate of Training and the Directorate of Personnel Selection, and resulted in the CFP 131 series of publications.  Right out of the gate, these pams observe that theoretical instruction alone is insufficient to produce leaders; much learning had to be done by doing.  In practice, junior leaders had to be delegated real authority and accept responsibility on the job.

The work on CFP 131 went surprisingly deep.  It began with the recognition that the people receiving this instruction were raised in the traditions of western civilization.  It went into the philosophies of John Locke (1632-1704) and Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), Each philosophy was evaluated for its contributions to leadership theory.  Locke’s was praised for being common sensical, undogmatic, practical, that it assumed all men were equal at birth, of the importance of education, that it avoided emphasis on will and emotion, and that happiness was the chief end of man.  Locke’s influence on North American culture was strong, meaning a Lockean approach to problems resonated in the intellectual plane with the likely members of the army.

Kant’s philosophy was considered valid for the study of military leadership because it stressed the importance of will and emotion; that it aimed more at a heroic ‘ethic’ than happiness as the end of man.  It saw the volunteer as motivated by will and emotion and a heroic ethic.  Kant’s philosophy was regarded as important for its stress on a moral imperative, idealism, for its emphasis on the human intellect, for its belief in the importance of the individual, for its ethic of duty, striving, sacrifice, and the exertion of the will, but was criticized because it was rationalistic and dogmatic in its assertion of “truth.”

These two philosophical traditions could be combined harmoniously in a leader, who must not only give orders within a Lockean tradition, but encourage, persuade, and inspire in the Kantian tradition, with its emphasis on intellect, duty, striving, and sacrifice.

Out of these two philosophical approaches, the army study found that a leader was self-activated and dynamic, motivated by an ethic of duty, and had a high personal moral standard.  He identified objectives, initiated action, set things in motion, and accepted responsibility for the outcome.

(I can almost feel the hackles rising for my use of the word ‘man’ instead of a more general noun.  But this is 1973, remember?  In those days, when Centurions still roamed the plains, there wasn’t a single woman in an infantry battalion, save maybe in the BOR.)

With this as a philosophical understanding of the psychology of the individual, the study turned to the then modern works on leadership, and in particular to the works of Profession Ralph Stodgill of Ohio State University, who published a seminal book in 1948 on leadership.  Thus opened the Leader-Follower-Situation theory of leadership in the army.

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