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The foundation of leadership is character.
General Alexander M. Patch
Within a unit, leaders are responsible for the cohesion and disciplined proficiency that enable soldiers to effectively train for, fight and win the nation's wars. But more fundamentally, Army leaders at every level have a solemn duty to embrace values. As Heroclitus said millenia ago, "A man's character is his fate," and the destiny of the led is bound to the leader. Those soldiers whom sergeants train, captains maneuver and generals commit are first America's sons and daughters. Given the great responsibility leaders have to the nation and to its people, the Army is committed to values-based leadership that reaches for excellence every day.
This fall the Army will release the new Field Manual (FM) 22-lOO, Army Leadership. From a humble start as a 1948 pamphlet titled Leadership, the doctrine has evolved into a comprehensive electronic treatise published on the World Wide Web. The 1990 edition has served our Army well, but the 1998 manual takes a qualitative step forward by:
* Thoroughly discussing characterbased leadership.
* Clarifying values.
* Establishing attributes as part of character.
* Focusing on improving people and organizations for the long term.
* Outlining three levels of leadership-direct, organizational and stategic.
* Identifying four skill domains that apply at all levels.
* Specifying leadership actions for each level.
More than 60 vignettes and stories illustrate historical and contemporary examples of leaders who made a difference. The manual captures many of our shared experiences, ideas gleaned from combat, training, mentoring, scholarship and personal reflection. The Center for Army Leadership (CAL), US Army Command and General Staff College (CGSC), Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, recruited novelist and former infantryman Ed Ruggero to help turn this manual into a story about leadership. Ruggero's marching orders were direct-"I want this manual to read so that a young sergeant or lieutenant who gets to the bottom of page 10 is curious about what's on page 11," stated CAL Director Colonel John P. Lewis. Feedback from soldiers-sergeants through generals-has been resoundingly positive: "Inspirational;" "Lively, interesting;" "I thoroughly enjoyed reading this manual-which says a lot for a field manual."
The familiar concept "be, know, do" remains at the 1998 manual's heart. By comparison, the 1990 manual loosely connected principles,...