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The U.S. Army provides leadership doctrine for all its members in the form of a unified leadership theory familiar to virtually all their officers and non-commissioned officers. The foundation of this general leadership theory is the Army's "Be, Know, Do" (BKD) model of leader development (LD). While the BKD model has many elements in common with more well-known academic approaches to leadership and LD, the BKD model has some distinctive emphases that set it apart from these more conventional treatments. This article examines the BKD model, evaluating its strengths and limitations, and then suggests how organizations interested in leadership development might adapt the model to their own particular circumstances.
In choosing the most appropriate procedures for developing leaders, an organization must first determine what leadership precisely entails. For the U.S. Army, leadership is "influencing people-by providing purpose direction and motivation-while operating to accomplish the mission and improving the organization" (FM 22-100, 1999: 1-4). The broadness of this definition is noteworthy. It does not initially identify the primary sources of influence or distinguish between potentially different influence sources, and one could easily substitute "management" for "leadership" and still have a meaningful statement.
While such broadness downplays potential differences between leaders and managers in terms of motivation (Zalenick, 1977), operating perspectives (Bennis & Nanus, 1985) and emphasized processes (Kotier, 1987), there may be little practical value in separating leaders and managers when it comes to development (e.g., Bass, 1990; Yukl, 1994). For the Army, the implications of a broad approach to leader development are enormous. Leader development becomes synonymous with "whole person" development. Because individuals influence others by their character, by their competence, and by their actions (FM 22-100, 1999: viii), effective leader development must focus on the type of person an individual is ("Be"), the kinds of competencies he has ("Know"), and the kinds of decisions he makes ("Do"). Put slightly differently, "becoming a leader involves developing all aspects of yourself" (FM 22-100, 1999: 1-6).
For HRM practitioners, the BKD model warrants a great deal of attention, given its endorsement and large-scale use by a major, highly diverse organization whose mission requires the ongoing creation of new leaders. Shaped and modified by actual experience in developing officers and non-commissioned officers in the different branches of the...