Combined Arms Center commander keen on development of leaders

By Ms. Maureen Rose (IMCOM)May 7, 2010

Lt. Gen. Robert Caslen
(Photo Credit: U.S. Army) VIEW ORIGINAL

Lt. Gen. Robert Caslen, the commander of the Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., visited Fort Knox last week. Although he's only been the CAC commander for about six weeks, he was on a mission to talk with captains-especially those attending the Maneuver Captains Career Course on post.

"I'm looking at all aspects of the Captains Career Course which is under the rubrick of leadership development which is my first priority as the CAC commander," said Caslen.

Caslen admited that while he is passionate about leader development, his boss, Gen. Martin Dempsey, commander of the Training and Doctrine Command, directed the priority which Dempsey had received, in turn, from Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey.

"The key to leadership is development of our next generation of company commanders, battalion and brigade staff officers," Caslen explained. "That primarily occurs at the institution level."

Two key factors will contribute to the development of leaders, according to Caslen.

First, the learning style of young Army leaders has shifted. Learning is no longer about professors standing in front of slides and lecturing their way through them.

"This generation is learning differently; they're learning faster, they're more adept at complex thinking, and they have a tremendous experience base that they bring to this level of thinking," he said. "Learning is the result of taking the operational environment and creating a simulation, bringing it to the student and discussing what is actually occurring in theater, analyzing it based on the principles that were taught, then working through some very complex scenarios to develop the ability to think critically."

Secondly, Caslen said that military technology is facilitating advanced learning. He's looking for ways to incorporate the experiences and technology to create new resources for leaders.

In addition to learning to think critically, captains must also remember the values that the Army inculcates.

"This war requires operations to be decentralized, and in decentralized operations you have junior leaders making decisions on pulling the trigger or not pulling the trigger. What guides them to do what is right' It's their values," Caslen explained.

"Those men and women live those values every day, so the values help define what is acceptable behavior and what is not acceptable behavior for those junior leaders in the most complex difficult situations. In the end, it brings honor and respect to them for how they perform in most cases."

When values are disregarded, Caslen said things like Abu Ghraib happen.

"When we have those Abu Ghraib lapses, they really set us back-not only with the American people, but with the enemy," he said.

More insurgents were created as a result of Abu Ghraib than any other single event, which Caslen said was documented by interviews with insurgents who talked about why they decided to join the jihad.

"So it's terribly important that we maintain our valued-based Army," he added.

Caslen did more than talk to captains-over lunch, he also listened to captains.

"One of the things we talked about was one of the investigations that the military has been doing with regard to combat operations that did not go well. It was an excellent conversation," he said.

The topics included things like command climate, risk mitigation, complacency, maintaining standards and balance as well as developing resilience and spending time with Families, which Caslen encourages at any residential educational course.

"One of the end stage benefits of the institutional education is that by coming here to the career course for 20 weeks-and in some cases longer, if they have a follow-on course-is that their Families know when their military spouse is coming home, they know when they're going to be in the field, when they're not going to the field," he said. "They know they'll be sleeping between the sheets, and in most cases, they'll be home at night to have dinner with their Families, tuck their kids in bed, read them a story, and kind of reconnect. They learn to be husbands and wives, fathers and mothers all over again. It's a great time to reconnect and recognize the importance of Family."

Caslen acknowledged that many marriages have suffered from multiple deployments, as the divorce rate climbs among the armed services.

"It's unfortunate that (divorces) are the consequence of the deployments, but it's a sign of the sacrifice," he said.

Leadership might also be able to help troubled marriages, Caslen said, but only if trust has been established between subordinates and leadership.

"It's important that the leaders of an organization recognize when one of our Soldiers is having relationship issues-and that's not easy," he explained. "Many relationship issues are hidden."

Once the problem is recognized, he said leadership can help connect Soldiers with the numerous programs offered to assist Army Families.

"The good thing about our Army and the Family covenant-the Army is committed to helping these men and women, Soldiers and their spouses," he said.

In addition to the educational focus, Caslen was impressed with Fort Knox.

"It's great to come to Fort Knox for a lot of reasons, one of which is the great transformation taking place here," he said. "I have been incredibly impressed with (Maj.) Gen. (James) Milano and (Maj.) Gen. (Mike) Ferriter's leadership to successfully unite these two branches creating the Maneuver Center of Excellence while-and this is very important-preserving the culture and uniqueness of what the Armor branch brings to the combined arms community," he said.

"We don't want to sacrifice any of that uniqueness ... each of these branches has some incredibly unique characteristics that they bring to the combined arms team. It's important that Armor retain all that as they move down to Fort Benning."