Operation - Leadership

To Be a Leader, Demonstrate Leadership

Downing oversaw the realignment of SOF's senior ranks during his tenure as head of the organization. Now Schoomaker spends his time perfecting SOF's selection methods and upgrading its training capabilities. "Assessment and selection are important because we're a relatively small force, and the investment that we make in our people is massive," he says. "By the time a Green Beret is qualified to join a team at the apprentice level, he'll have had two years of training. That's why we do our best to take our attrition up front."

SOF's selection process is as rigorous as its approach to conducting missions. "Leadership is all about dealing with change," says Schoomaker. "That might mean changing the way an entire organization works. Or it might mean getting somebody out of a foxhole and getting that person to face machine-gun fire. Leadership means getting people to do something that they otherwise wouldn't do -- and getting them to do it willingly. How you do that varies with every situation. So we don't have a cookie-cutter profile of what we're looking for. Instead, we try to see whether people display the behavioral, psychological, and intellectual attributes that we've found to be successful.

"To make that assessment, we put people through a series of experiences in which they have to demonstrate whether they are capable of providing leadership, whether they can solve complex problems -- both alone and in group situations -- and how they handle moral dilemmas. We put them in situations that mirror what they'll face in real missions, and we put them in group exercises to see how they handle tough assignments. For example, we'll ask a group of men to move a jeep eight miles in a short period of time -- and the jeep will have only three wheels! We give them some boards and rope, but no instructions on how to use those things. The whole time, a team of experienced people is watching to see how the men think, how they interact, and whether they take initiative.

"To see how a candidate handles dilemmas, we'll put him in a situation that suddenly calls for him to deal with noncombatants: The life of one of his team members hangs in the balance with the lives of two noncombatants. There's no right answer, but we find out what people's gut reactions are -- how they think, what they factor into their decisions. Do they understand that murder is murder in all circumstances? For some people, this isn't a dilemma at all. It's a black-and-white matter, and out of a sense of 'loyalty,' they'll kill the two noncombatants just like that. Those aren't the kind of people we want in our force.

"Now, all of this situational evaluation is done under conditions of immense physical and emotional stress. Candidates are often deprived of food and sleep, and all the while, they're being watched and evaluated by experienced SOF members and by professional psychologists. At the end of this process, a board of successful SOF members, led by a senior leader, decides who's in and who's not. The ultimate question that board members ask is 'Do I want to serve and fight with this person at my side?' We do all of this before the real training even begins. All of this is just to see which people we want to invest our training resources in."

Teach People How to Think, not What to Think

We need people who can operate in an increasingly complicated, subtle, and sophisticated world," Schoomaker says. "You can't pull out a checklist that tells you, 'If this happens, you do that, and if that happens, you do this.' In our business, you quickly get beyond things that can be solved through linear processes, and you encounter situations in which you have to rely on internalized skills. For that reason, we focus on teaching our people not just what to think but also how to think."

To create leaders with problem-solving skills, SOF constantly invests in its people's development. Each soldier may have a different set of experiences, but the goals and the methods of the training are the same in every case. The training process starts with existing SOF leaders explaining to new SOF members the importance of developing critical-thinking skills -- and why staying in the force depends on learning to apply those skills.

"We don't issue that many orders from the top," says Schoomaker. "We are very clear that the overall objective of the force is to support U.S. interests around the world, and we are absolutely clear about our ethical standards. When we have a mission, we talk to our people about the mission's specific strategic objectives, and then it's up to them to make sure that their tactical moves support those objectives, as well as those ethical standards.

"For example, when we went into Haiti, in 1994, the strategic objective was to secure the country quickly -- but we had to do so in the midst of civilians and with TV cameras everywhere. A captain might be charged with neutralizing a guardhouse that backs up against a slum. He'd know he couldn't blast his way in there, because every shack in that slum has a gallon of gasoline in it for cooking -- and if you go in shooting, you're likely to set off an explosion. But the captain and his team would have to figure out on their own how to neutralize that guardhouse. Then they would brief the chain of command about their operational plans. That approach to decision making is much faster than the traditional military model. It also creates an expectation among all the people in our force: We give them an outline of the problem -- and it's their job to find a solution that fits that outline."