REDSTONE ARSENAL, Ala. -- The Aviation and Missile Command Leader Investment for Tomorrow program serves as a training course for government employees to further advance their knowledge and capabilities in leadership roles.
The program is divided into three categories: Advanced LIFT for GS14 and 15 employees, Intermediate LIFT for GS-11, 12, and 13 employees and UpLIFT for GS-10 employees and below.
The 12th annual LIFT program concluded in Dec. 2017 with 53 members graduating. One of those members was Richard Deakins, a student of the ILIFT class. Deakins was a member of a group of five students who worked together on their capstone project and presentation.
The group identified an issue in leadership development: there is no existing holistic catalog that can be utilized for leadership development. The group's project, sponsored by Jeff Langhout, Systems Simulation, Software & Integration director, aimed to highlight the lack of resources and remedy the issue.
"Army and civilian readiness should directly correlate to leadership training," said Deakins.
The group hoped to provide AMRDEC with a roadmap of leadership training opportunities to make government civilians ready to lead at the appropriate time, with the tools and techniques needed to become successful in the role. This roadmap would be presented in the form of a comprehensive leadership development guide of classes and training opportunities based on the employees' current experience level. These opportunities would range from local and regional opportunities to the Army level.
"A lot of local Redstone and Garrison level trainings don't show up at the DA level," said Deakins.
The group's project was designed to benefit AMRDEC and its employees. The Center would experience a return on investment given that its employees are utilizing the tools and techniques made available through the development of the leadership development guide. To become a successful leader, one first needs to know where to begin. According to Army Field manual 6-22, Army Leadership, "fundamentally, leadership develops when the individual desires to improve and invests effort, when his or her superior supports development, and when the organizational climate values learning."
Deakins said that the project itself took around six months to develop from start to finish. The ILIFT program spanned nine months. Deakins resides in Colorado Springs, Co., and traveled often to Huntsville to work on the project with his teammate.
"My own leadership development has always been incredibly important to me. As much as functional training and other types of developmental opportunities. I view it as essential to being a well-rounded DA civilian. This project allowed me to take my own personal motivation and interest and apply it to the entire Redstone DA Civilian workforce with something that can potentially help them advance their leadership development," Deakins said.
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U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Research, Development and Engineering Center is part of the U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command, which has the mission to provide innovative research, development and engineering to produce capabilities that provide decisive overmatch to the Army against the complexities of the current and future operating environments in support of the joint warfighter and the nation. RDECOM is a major subordinate command of the U.S. Army Materiel Command.
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