A STUDY OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TACTICAL OFFICER LEADERSHIP BEHAVIORS AND CADET PERFORMANCE AT THE UNITED STATES MILITARY

Abstract

The purpose of this quantitative study is to investigate the effects of differing leadership behaviors displayed by Tactical Officers at the United States Military Academy (USMA) utilizing the Full Range Leadership Model (Bass & Riggio, 2006) compared to cadet performance in the academic, physical, and military pillars. The problem this researcher is trying to study is twofold. This first problem is to contribute to the larger body of literature on leader development at the USMA and the second problem is better preparing future Tactical Officers for their roles as leader developers. This study utilized the Multi-factor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) to survey 265 freshmen cadets from all 36 cadet companies across the USMA. The cadets assessed their Tactical Officer’s leadership behaviors based upon their own perceptions. Each Tactical Officer was then assigned a primary leadership behavior and the results were statistically compared to cadet’s performance in the academic, physical, and military pillars. In addition, 24 Tactical Officers completed a self-assessed MLQ survey and the results were compared to their cadet’s perceptions. The difference between the two assessments resulted in a “self-awareness score” which was correlated to cadet performance in the academic, physical, and military programs.

The findings of this study resulted in intellectual stimulation and individualized consideration behaviors approaching statistical significance for the academic program, and management by exception – passive approaching statistical significance for the physical program. In the military program, a statistically significant relationship was found between individualized consideration and cadet’s military GPA percentile rank. Finally, a statistically significant correlation was found between a Tactical Officer’s self-awareness score and the change in academic percentile rank. With these findings, this researcher can conclude that Tactical Officer leadership behaviors affect cadet performance. To help bolster these effective behaviors and cadet performance, this researcher recommends enabling future Tactical Officers to complete the Columbia Coaching Certification, espousing and personifying individualized consideration leadership behaviors, actively managing the cadet physical program requirements, and implementing company level command climate survey to increase self-awareness.