Field Grade Officers and Ethical Leadership in Army BCTs
This paper examines critical leadership failures within the 4th Armored Brigade Combat Team (ABCT) and proposes a comprehensive improvement plan from the perspective of a Brigade Commander. Drawing on the Center for Army Lessons Learned (CALL) report and a 360-degree leadership assessment, the paper identifies organizational leadership as the root cause of the brigade's problems, including poor communication, lack of alignment, and a dysfunctional culture. The proposed remedy follows Kotter's 8-stage model for organizational change and addresses three core areas: reforming leadership practices, developing personnel at all levels, and improving mission execution. The role of field grade officers in extending ethical leadership beyond the formal chain of command is emphasized throughout.
- Introduction: BCTs, field grade officers, and essay scope
- Critical Leadership Problem: Diagnosing 4th ABCT's organizational leadership failures
- Improvement Plan: Kotter's 8-stage change model as the framework
- Leadership Reform and Field Grade Officers: Replacing failing leaders and leading by example
- Personnel Development: Long-term individual and team development strategy
- Achieving Mission Objectives: Planning, execution, and assessment for consistent mission success
- Conclusion: Summary of diagnosis and organizational change proposal
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper grounds its argument in concrete evidence — the CALL report and a 360-degree assessment — giving its diagnosis of leadership failure credibility rather than relying solely on abstract theory.
- It maintains a clear first-person perspective throughout, which is appropriate for the case-study format and keeps the proposed remedies actionable and personal rather than vague.
- The structure logically moves from problem identification to solution design to implementation, mirroring the real-world planning cycle used in military command contexts.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper effectively bridges theoretical frameworks and practical application. It invokes Kotter's 8-stage model not merely as a label but maps its stages explicitly onto the brigade's specific circumstances — urgency of active deployment, cultural anchoring, coalition building — demonstrating how to operationalize an academic model in a professional context.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with context on Brigade Combat Teams and the field grade officer's role, then diagnoses the 4th ABCT's leadership failures using multiple assessment sources. An improvement plan follows, subdivided into leadership reform, personnel development, and mission execution. The conclusion synthesizes the diagnosis and proposed remedy. Each section builds on the last, making the argument cumulative and cohesive. Approximately 900 words at the undergraduate-to-graduate boundary.
Introduction
The building blocks of the American Army are Brigade Combat Teams (BCTs). They are large formations — blunt instruments of national military power — tasked with the responsibility of fighting and winning the nation's wars. To accomplish this duty, BCTs and their subordinate battalions must move on the same axis of progress, march to the same beat, and reach their objectives simultaneously in order to deliver the success required on the modern battlefield.1 Key to ensuring this success is the field grade officer, who is tasked with maintaining an accurate and enforced duty roster, ensuring the training schedule is followed, and seeing that regulatory tasks are completed.2 This essay discusses, from the perspective of a Brigade Commander, how field grade officers lead in the development of ethical organizations. It analyzes and responds to a provided case study through critical analysis and the application of relevant theories to the field grade officer's role.
Critical Leadership Problem
Even though the 4th Armored Brigade Combat Team (ABCT) has had significant success, serious problems face the team and are likely to soon manifest in diminished mission performance. Several battlefield deficiencies have had a significant negative effect on the team's overall effectiveness. In line with the Center for Army Lessons Learned (CALL) report for the 4th ABCT in Afghanistan, several problems emerged: a lack of a universal communication system that hampered command and control, insufficient personnel authorizations, over-delegation of tasks to the deputy brigade commander, training challenges stemming from the modular BCT structure, the alignment of two battalions with a Special Force Advisor Team (SFAT) that required rethinking of the combat organization, inadequate resources for the Afghanistan environment, incorrect mission-essential task training for the deployment, unique issues created by additional tasks, and potential problems arising from the organizational culture within the 4th ABCT.
Additional problems emerged from the 360-degree commander and staff assessment of the 4th ABCT conducted by the Center for Army Leadership Assessment and Feedback Program. These included a lack of trust and confidence among subordinate units toward the 4th ABCT staff, an unwillingness to include subordinates in decision-making, and a failure to develop, coach, and counsel subordinates. A survey of the ABCT headquarters revealed that many soldiers in the team are under significant stress. Furthermore, a review of the brigade's reset plan and timelines, along with personal conversations with team members, revealed major inconsistencies, challenges, incompetency, and widespread dissatisfaction.
The critical leadership problem facing the 4th ABCT is organizational leadership. There is a vacuum in bringing the ABCT to operate as a single unit executing missions harmoniously, cohesively, and with motivation. This inadequacy of organizational leadership has produced compounding failures: a breakdown in communication, a lack of alignment, the absence of a clear vision, poor execution of missions, and an incompatible organizational culture.
Improvement Plan
To address the issues facing the 4th ABCT, I propose an organizational change that will provide strong organizational leadership to the team, ensure the development of personnel, and support the successful implementation of missions.3 The change throughout the brigade will follow Kotter's 8-stage model for organizational change.4 Because the 4th ABCT is an active combat team of the U.S. Army, this change must be carried out with urgency. A guiding coalition will be created, and a clear vision and strategy for the change will be developed. The change vision will then be communicated to all parties involved, enabling empowered, broad-based action throughout the brigade. To sustain momentum, short-term wins will be established, gains will be consolidated to produce further change, and the new approaches will ultimately be anchored in the brigade's culture.
Conclusion
Although the 4th ABCT has experienced significant success in the past, the brigade now faces serious and compounding problems. The critical leadership issue at the root of these difficulties is inefficient organizational leadership — specifically, a vacuum in the capacity to bring the ABCT to operate as a unified, cohesive unit. To address these problems, I propose an organizational change plan aimed at providing strong organizational leadership to the team, ensuring meaningful personnel development at all levels, and supporting the successful implementation of missions. The change throughout the brigade will follow Kotter's 8-stage model, executed with the urgency appropriate to an active combat formation.
Bibliography
de Almeida Serapião, Flavio. "Leadership Effectiveness in the Army: A Perspective from the US Army War College." Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2020.
Hernandez, Daryle J. Building Strategic Leader Competencies into Army Officer Development and Career Progression. 2011.
Lee, Sam-Joo, and Sang-Hyuk Park. "The Effect of Modern Leadership Style on Organizational Effectiveness: Focusing on Army Commander's Leadership." The Journal of the Convergence on Culture Technology 6, no. 1 (2020): 201–207.
Lis, Andrzej. "The Manifestations of Positive Leadership Strategies in the Doctrinal Assumptions of the US Army Leadership Concept." Journal of Corporate Responsibility and Leadership 2, no. 1 (2015): 51–76.
McLean, Gregory W. Leadership Principles for the New ADP 6-22. 2012.
Miller, Billy, and Ken Turner. "Leading Organizational Change: A Leader's Role." Curriculum Reading, 2016.
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