Author Description

Americans tend to regard military leaders, especially military officers, as role models. More than a half century ago, Samuel P. Huntington wrote in The Soldier and the State, “Yet today America can learn more from West Point than West Point from America.” For the sixth year in a row, the Center for Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School, in its National Leadership Index 2010, showed that “military leadership continues to inspire the most confidence out of all 13 sectors [of leadership in society surveyed].” Yet great military leaders are an enigmatic combination of nature and nurture.The United States Air Force fully recognizes the critical role it must play in creating military leaders, and it devotes significant time and resources to recruiting and developing its future leaders based upon the premise that the personal leadership skills of any Air Force member can be improved through training, education, and experience. Air Force officers receive intensive leadership training and education in precommissioning sources as well as in the three levels of professional military education. But the leadership development programs in place today will not suffice to produce the senior leaders we need to succeed in the challenging, chaotic, resource-constrained future environment. To answer this need, the Air Force Leadership Study team provides recommendations to enhance the development of senior leaders for the next-generation Air Force.After describing the type of visionary senior officers needed to lead the Air Force of the future, the study team recommends the identification of “high potential” officers upon selection for field-grade rank. This special designation allows the Air Force to focus education and assignment opportunities on those officers most likely to attain flag rank and senior joint billets. Subsequent recommendations are designed to provide additional leadership development opportunities for officers after they attain flag rank. These initiative