The Leader as a Conflict Manager
Values and Values Based Leadership in the ADF
The Centre for Defence and Leadership Studies undertakes a range of research into education, training and leadership development in the Australian Defence Force.
Current research topics:
The Leader as a Conflict Manager
This research was completed by LEUT Linley Cornish, RANR working on a part time basis as a Visiting Fellow for the Centre. The broad aim of this project is to identify the specific training leaders in Defence require in order to be effective conflict managers and meet their 'people responsibilities'.
The specific aims were to:
- Provide a conceptual analysis of the qualities of a leader as a conflict manager. This will include clarifying what is entailed in the duties of a conflict manager, how this fits within a leader's role and what are the skills or qualities that the leader must achieve competence in to be considered an effective conflict manager
- Research organisational conflict management practises. This will include the processes within similar organisations and the role that a leader plays in these processes
- Assess if conflict management practises are consistent with Defence, specifically ADF, needs of a leader
- Provide a detailed analysis of the leadership training currently provided within Defence and the ADF which may be considered consistent with conflict management skills
- Determine the leadership training required to provide a leader within the Defence/ADF environment with conflict management skills
- Determine if a training 'gap' exists between current Defence/ADF training and what is required to be an effective conflict manager.
- Develop a training continuum to support the development of the Defence/ADF leader as a conflict manager.
Values and Values Based Leadership in the ADF
This paper by CMDR Tony Mullan had the broad aim of determining how successfully organisational values are being integrated into the ADF, and how they are being used by leaders.
The specific aims were to:
- Provide a practical 'best practice' framework for introducing, integrating and managing values in an organisation
- Assess the values programs used by various areas within the ADF against the framework, to determine if a gap exists between current programs and 'best practice'
- Assess if the introduction of organisational values within various areas of the ADF has occurred successfully, especially with respect to the development of values based leadership, and whether existing values programs are achieving the aims stated by senior Defence leaders
The Chiefs
This research is being undertaken by Dr Nick Jans, Jamie Cullens and Dr Stephen Mugford and was sponsored by ACM Angus Houston when he was CDF.
The objectives of the project are to:
- Analyse the process of top-level strategic leadership in the Australian Defence Community.
- Provide material for ADF leadership doctrine and for mid- and senior-level leadership development
The rationale for the project is:
- Leadership at the four-star/three-star/Chief of Service level is considerably more challenging than leadership even one level below, and
- In the Australian context, such leadership principally involves strategic leadership and management in the defence bureaucracy, rather than senior operational command, but
- We know very little about Chief-level leadership, beyond the reflections of Chiefs of Service at ADC presentations. While the shelves of Defence libraries groan with books on senior operational high/command, there have been no scholarly studies of leadership at the senior levels of military bureaucracies apart from the published Centre research paper, 'Once Were Warriors?'.
The reseach will be based on interviews with present and past Chiefs of Service, present and past senior public servants, present and past politicians, and academics and is due to be completed in June 2012. The results will then form the basis of a discussion paper and a 'strategic leadership primer' for senior leaders.
Careers in Conflict
This research was undertaken by Dr Nick Jans and builds on the first Careers in Conflict study conducted nearly a quarter of a century ago. The modern ADF faces a significantly different strategic and operational context, operational tempo and deployment levels are high, Australian society has changed, and a new generation of officers is bringing a subtly different approach to the military career.
The aim of the Careers in Conflict 2007 reprise is much the same as it was in 1984: to understand what is happening to members and why this is happening, and thereby to enhance understanding of the institution and its collective psyche.
In-depth interviews have been conducted with 45 mid-career officers at Weston Creek and Puckapunyal. (It is likely that further interviews will be conducted in 2008, including possibly with officers' partners.) As the study develops, it has become evident that many major issues that have emerged within the Australian military profession can be explained by reference to six major internal factors that, separately and interactively, have been reshaping the profession over the past decade or more.
