9 as 1: Building Teams and Strength – Strengthening Soldier Resilience and Unit Performance

The last 10 years of war have reiterated the age-old adage that war is the most rigorous and demanding of all human endeavors. The greatest asset of the U. S. Army is the American Soldier. The Army’s, and subsequently our nation’s, success hinges on the ability of our leaders to build effective teams and on the resiliency of our Soldiers. The human dimension is critical as we strengthen our Army “because of the importance of the squad’s effectiveness to overall mission success and the thin margin for loss, careful consideration must be given to the human dimension. Trust and understanding among Soldiers and leaders, learning and adapting to the environment and physical and cognitive load-sharing are essential for successful performance in training and operations.”1 The operational tempo over the last 10 years, short dwell times and turbulent manning across units have combined to create a challenge for units to effectively build teams. Exacerbated by the combat losses units face in Afghanistan and Iraq, it is all the more important to make time to build the strength and foundation of the unit as a team prior to deploying. It is a false assumption that since we are part of the Army and a unit, there will be an effortless melding of a team before deployment. Although training together is part of the team-building process, research has shown there are benefits to using a team-building process to solidify a unit as a team, empower subordinates and truly get to mission command through team building. In an effort to emphasize team building and the need to enhance resilience, this article lays the groundwork for education and away to build your team and resilient Soldiers. Building and maintaining cohesive teams It is intuitive for most that focusing on building the team and cohesion leads to a more successful group dynamic. “We know that service members in deeply stressful situations can often make it through successfully, as long as they belong to socially cohesive groups and as long as those with authority over them (who are supposed to be “on their side”) do not betray them,” said Dr. Ian Coulter, CPT Paul Lester and LTC Jeffrey Yarvis in the August 2010 supplement to Military Medicine. Due to the high-risk nature of Army combat-unit missions, it is especially imperative that leaders focus on building strong foundations of trust, cohesion, empowerment and mission command. The highly decentralized nature of modern warfare, the modern fog of war and the inundation of information require an environment of highly trained and cohesive teams. Cohesion is a “dynamic process that is reflected in the tendency of a group to stick together and remain united in the pursuit of its instrumental objectives and/or for the satisfaction of member needs,” according to Carron, Brawley and Widmeyer. According to MacCoun, there are two distinguishable aspects of cohesion: social cohesion and task cohesion. “Social cohesion refers to the nature and quality of the emotional bonds of friendship, liking, caring and closeness among group members,” said Mac- 9 as 1: Building Teams and Strengthening Soldier Resilience and Unit Performance by MG Robert B. Brown “An army is a team. It lives, sleeps, eats and fights as a team.” – GEN George S. Patton Figure 1. The CSF-PREP skills of building confidence, goal setting, attention control, energy management and integrating imagery help give warriors the tools to achieve mental strength.

Second of a three-part series

Coun. “Task cohesion refers to the shared commitment among members to achieving a goal that requires the collective efforts of the group.”2 These are critical aspects for leaders to consider when building a military team. Simple concepts of mutual trust, a shared vision and a team identity are the foundations of a team. Coach Mike Krzyzewski amplifies this in his simple, but powerful, statement: “People want to be on a team. They want to be part of something bigger than themselves.”3 The team-building process assists units and groups to further develop and maintain cohesion, and to create an atmosphere that capitalizes on each member’s unique talents and abilities.4 According to Yukelson, there are seven characteristics of great teams: “shared vision and unity of purpose; pride in organization and team identity; meaningful and inspiring mission; complementary roles and synergistic teamwork; individual and mutual accountability; internal leadership and peer/social support; and open, honest and ongoing communication.”5 Fort Benning’s new Comprehensive Soldier Fitness-Performance Resiliency Enhancement Program offers a team-building exercise used throughout the Army and extensively in industry as a method for laying the groundwork for building teams. It is founded on the concept of creating a shared vision through a collaborative 360-degree process with input from across all levels of the organization. This process is achievable at any level from squad, platoon, company, battalion and brigade, etc. The team builder is known as the “Great Teams Exercise.”6 Regardless of level, the leaders need to pull subordinate leaders together for a half-day exercise. Involving the entire leadership allows the commander to establish immediate buy-in; it also allow a holistic development of the vision for the team and supports empowerment and mission command from the beginning, as opposed to dictating top-down vision. The task/purpose of the exercise, conducted in two phases, is to develop a team philosophy and purpose to enhance cohesion and organizational performance. Phase 1 consists of five steps: (1) Discuss each individual subordinate member’s “great team” story and the defining characteristic that made that team so special. (2) As a group, identify and vote on three to five traits from Step 1 that apply to your unit/team. (3) As small groups, identify several appropriate behavioral indicators and attitude/belief statements for each “great team” characteristic. (4) Build a team creed with picture and motto and present to the group for approval. (5) Establish each individual’s commitment within the group to the newly established organizational creed/vision. Phase 2 consists of the sixth and final step. Print the team-creed posters and personal copies for each section; distribute the posters and cards throughout the unit; and post them in dining facilities, motor pools, barracks, command posts and headquarters. Greet Soldiers throughout the unit’s deployment process into theater, throughout the movement to Kuwait and into country with the creed posted around for all to see and reinforced by the chain of command throughout the deployment. After building the team, maintain it through continued empowerment of junior leaders within the organization. This empowerment leads to buy-in from team members and fosters a climate of initiative. Leaders lead by example and maintain a positive “glass is half-full” attitude, which further enables Soldiers to truly enjoy their jobs and have fun. The entire team is accountable for their actions as individuals but also as teammates; all Soldiers can truly understand the second- and third-order effects of their actions on the team as a whole. The unit creed serves as a living document very much similar to the powerful effect of the Soldiers, Noncommissioned Officer or Ranger Creed. The team’s confidence grows, the unity within the team grows, and Soldiers become more agile and adaptive as they mature within the team. The unit is further empowered and able to manage the multiple transitions that happen repeatedly on the modern, contemporary battlefield. Cognitive-skills development through

Achieving overmatch will also require a paradigm shift in embracing key aspects within the human dimension focused on training squad members’ cognitive development, specifically leveraging capabilities to enhance psychological fitness. Psychological fitness, recently defined in Military Medicine, is the “integration and optimization of mental, emotional and behavioral abilities and capacities to optimize performance and strengthen the resilience of warfighters.”7 To advance the 9-as-1 concept, and to create squads into high-performing “Olympic-caliber teams” that can operate comfortably in a volatile and uncertain environment, may require leveraging the emerging and promising non-material capabilities of the CSF-PREP. In recent years, elite professionals, Olympic and professional sports teams and coaches have turned to, and sought after, an advantage in beating the odds of a “fair fight” on the playing fields through deliberate training efforts to achieve their team’s mental “edge.” These mental-edge programs have now become common protocols of practice in multiple professions and are permanent capabilities at Olympic training centers. Existing evidenced-based research on mental-skills training also confirms small, but significant, positive effects, which is congruent with the concept of gaining an edge. So too should our squads of “tactical athletes” be collectively trained to achieve this important X-factor, especially when the stakes are strategic and the consequences are often permanent. The fields of neuroscience, sports and performance psychology, and health psychology all show that psychological fitness underlies and significantly influences every facet of human performance – from the execution of simple motor tasks to complex decision-making skills. In addition, the critical attributes of leader development, which include confidence, composure, focus/attention control, resilience and, most importantly, the warrior ethos are similar psychological constructs that can also best describe a high-performing squad. CSF-PREP provides an explicit mental-strength education and training program that assists Soldiers and leaders in learning how to use their minds most effectively – e.g., “how to think” “The purpose of fighting is to win. There is no possible victory in defense. The sword is more important than the shield and skill is more important than either. The final weapon is the brain. … All else is supplemental.” – John Steinbeck “Chance favors a prepared mind.” – Louis Pasteur 27 vs. “what to think.” CSF-PREP mental-skills training helps close the leader-development gap of the “how” in accelerating and operationalizing these essential attributes, which are critical for a squad to collectively perform to its upper range of potential. Proof of principle: 198th Infantry Training Brigade case study The first-cycle mobile training team session, conducted in August 2010, was part of a MTT comprised of two performance-enhancement specialists/trainers who applied a train-the-trainer approach to mental-skills development. Over two days of training, company leadership and staff (primarily drill sergeants) were supplied in-depth training on the performance-enhancement model and the personal performance plan applied to OSUT tasks. The PREP trainers worked with staff to create seven mental-skill lessons for trainees and ways to reinforce and generalize mental skills across tasks and training in the field. The performance increases in qualification and the Army Physical Fitness Test were attributed to the unit’s mental-strength development, learning during lesson plans and drill sergeants’ continuous reinforcement. The unit considered the attrition-rate decrease to be a positive by-product of mental-toughness training that improved motivation and confidence, leading to a decrease in voluntary withdrawals (refusal to train). A highlight not reflected in the graph was the company’s breaking of the battalion record on number of 300s on the APFT (highest-point-value achievable), previously held at 17 and nearly doubled with 33. The second-cycle MTT in January 2011 provided more indepth training and focused on the same company as Cycle 1 to replicate data, but also added a second company to avoid generalization of the results. CSF-PREP trainers and the company commander adjusted the lessons and approach based on lessons-learned. For Company 1, drill sergeants took on most of the teaching and reinforcing, with support by leadership. Trainees and the teaching approach of drill sergeants, as one of mentorship and coaching, attributed these positive results to the personalization of mental skills. Company 1 duplicated their APFT record of 33 300s and slightly improved their average. They also improved their average in qualification and the attrition rate, showing not only a replication but also an improvement of their extraordinary results. Company 2 showed a substantial increase in APFT average and number of 300s, surpassing the old battalion record of 17, and a huge increase in qualification average and number of experts. Their retention rate was also a highlight and showed that continued by-product of CSF-PREP training. Conclusion Raising the bar of performance across the squad, while closing the gap in the performance differences between each squad member’s capabilities, will require a more collectively elite mindset than the thought that “the squad is only as good as our weakest Soldier.” Beyond the necessary requirements for team-building and resilience training, CSF-PREP offers an education, acquisition and application model of training using evidenced-based best practices in teaching mental skills for harnessing the warrior mindset. The training model includes a foundation of understanding the psychological aspects of elite performance, building confidence, attention control, energy 245 10 APFT average 33 33 257 262 26 Number of 300s 235 240 245 250 255 260 265 Historic OSUT company avg. 1st cycle with

(Co. 1) 2nd cycle with

(Co. 1) 2nd cycle with

(Co. 2)

256 30 20 Qualification average 38 46 32.1 33.2 77 Experts 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 Historic OSUT company avg. 1st cycle with

(Co. 1) 2nd cycle with

(Co. 1) 2nd cycle with

(Co. 2) Qualification 31.7 Figure 2. These graphs represent data from CSF-PREP implementation of mental-skills training in 198th Infantry Training Brigade, specifically 2-19 Infantry. The unit supplied historic One-Station Unit Training company averages (assuming a unit size of 200 Soldiers) and compared performance on tasks that were of focus for mental-skills training conducted. Important to note is that both companies represented in the graph performed at this historic OSUT company average before implementing

CSF-PREP.

Refusals to train 0 4 0 5 10 15 20 25 Historic OSUT company avg. 1st cycle with

(Co. 1) Attrition 2 2nd cycle with

(Co. 1) 2nd cycle with management, visualization/imagery and, most importantly, goal setting. With application, these mental-skill techniques, tactics and procedures are interrelated and designed to enhance Soldiers’ physical and cognitive performance, self-awareness and self-regulation, which are key ingredients for empowerment and initiative. Educating and training squads collectively in a tailored, relevant mental-skills package may have the synergistic effect of creating a more mature, elite and cohesive squad mindset – an essential combat enabler for achieving excellence and winning tip-of-the-spear, lethal and nonlethal actions of the 21st Century. MG Robert Brown commands the U. S. Army Maneuver Center of Excellence, Fort Benning, GA. Previous assignments include chief of staff, U. S. Army Europe and Seventh Army; deputy commanding general for support, 25th Infantry Division, Schofield Barracks, HI, and Operation Iraqi Freedom, Iraq; director, exercises and training, J-7, U. S. Pacific Command, Camp H. M. Smith, HI; Joint Ground Maneuver Program analyst in force structure, Resource and Assessment Directorate, J-8, Washington, DC; and G-3 (training) and chief of operations, 25th Infantry Division, Schofield Barracks and Operation Uphold Democracy in Haiti. His other command experience includes D Company, 1st Battalion, 10th Infantry Regiment, 4th Infantry Division, Fort Carson, CO; 2nd Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment (Mechanized), 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood, TX, and Operation Joint Forge, Bosnia-Herzegovina; and 1st Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division, Fort Lewis, WA, and Operation Iraqi Freedom, Iraq. MG Brown’s military education includes the Infantry Basic Course, Armor Advanced Course, Command and General Staff College and National War College. He holds a master’s degree in national security and strategic studies from National Defense University and a master’s degree in education from University of Virginia. Notes 1 AUSA Torchbearer, “The U. S. Army Squad: Foundation of the Decisive Force,” October 2011. 2 MacCoun, R. J.; Kier, E.; and Belkin, A., “Does social cohesion determine motivation in combat?” Armed Forces Sociology 2006, 32 (4): 646-654. 3 http://coachk.com/coach-k-media/quotes/, accessed July 27, 2011. 4 Tuckman, 1965; Carron, 2000; Yukelson, 1997; Oct. 31, 2011, from http://csfprep.army.mil/data/_uploaded/file/PREP%20Executive%20 Summary%20as%20of%2007MAR11.pdf, abstract from CSF-PREP executive-summary memorandum for record. 5 Yukelson, D. Accessed Oct. 31, 2011, from http://www.mascsa.psu. edu/dave/Group-Cohesion-and-Team-Building.pdf. 6 Zinsser, Nathaniel, unpublished manuscript, U. S. Military Academy, West Point, NY, 1992. Janssen, Jeff, Championship Team Building: What Every Coach Needs to Know to Build a Motivated, Committed & Cohesive Team, published by Winning The Mental Game, 1999. 7 “Total Force Fitness for the 21st Century – A New Paradigm,” Military Medicine, August 2010 supplement, Vol. 175, No 8. APFT – Army Physical Fitness Test CSF-PREP – Comprehensive Soldier Fitness-Performance Resiliency Enhancement Program OSUT – One-Station Unit Training MTT – mobile training team Acronym Quick-Scan “It profits an army nothing to build the body of a Soldier to a gladiatorial physique if he continues to think with the brain of a malingerer.” – Samuel Lyman Atwood Marshal