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Military Professionals One of the most important aspects of being a military professional is the ability to apply critical thinking when making decisions and solving problems. Today’s current military is facing complex and diverse problems at all level, such as shirking budgets, force reduction, force restructuring, increased criticisms and the list goes on. To address these problems the military has developed new programs to help commander and staff officers understand the issues.
These programs create unique educational opportunities for military professionals. The Army has developed programs to give commanders a full spectrum of critical thinking in an operational environment. Army leaders are looking to their leadership development schools, universities and colleges to see how they can better incorporate critical thinking concepts. The Army knows that the most valuable lessons a student and future leaders can learn while attending a military professional higher education institution is how to apply critical thought into their decision making process.
In today’s military leaders are asked to perform tasks and missions outside the normal scope of current doctrine. Leaders need to eave the tools to create plans and evaluate those plans using critical thinking. “Even the most talented group of planners and critical thinkers cannot identify their own oversights, and are sometimes unable to see the overall big picture” (A. Steven Dietz, Eric A. Schroeder, 2012). Discussion of the Literature Critical thinking is one of the most important skills for a military professional.
The military professional has to know the concepts of critical thinking when making decisions and solving problems. The military teaches their leader how to master the challenges of a strategic environment through critical hinging. Leaders have to use the skills they learn to think and judge challenging situation and make decisions that will affect the outcome of unpredictable and uncommon situations. Secretary of Defense Rumbled called for “leaders who were proactive, more like venture capitalists, and deal with uncertainty?those unknown, unknowns.
Critical thinking is required to address this kind of challenge. ” (Guilt, 2004, p. 1) The military is looking at ways to bring more critical thinking skills into their many universities and colleges. From West Point to the National Defense University, the military is cooking at how they can change the way future officers learn and think. In the Rainy War College, officers are taught creative way to bring critical thinking concepts into their decision-making process. West Point students are learning critical thinking tools that will help them deal with complex issue in a global environment.
A 2nd Lieutenant fresh out of school will deploy to a country with different culture and believes and will have to make decision that will affect the outcome of an mission that may ultimately change the operational environment. If he or she fails to apply critical thinking concepts hen making decision the outcome may be unfavorable. The U. S. Army in particular has developed the use of Decision Support Red Teams to help bring another perspective to the critical thinking concept.
The Red Teams, as they are also known, are made up of member from outside of the organization and provide commanders with an outside, unbiased look at their plans and operations. The Red Teams use critical thinking to challenge the policies and procedures of the command to find weaknesses and flaws that would not be easily identified by a commander who implemented them using their bias judgment. This can be challenging to the teams because the military has established doctrine for all aspects and faucets of military operations. (Schroeder, Dietz, 2012, p. 0) Critical thinking outside of doctrine is sometimes difficult and may actually discourage the development of new concepts and ideas. The concept of having a team not bounded by the regulations and doctrine will develop freethinking and new ways to solve problems implement policy. The Army Intermediate Level Education (LIE) is also reevaluating how they teach their curriculum. The Army agrees that they need to teach students how to think and “how to learn” (Williams, 201 3) and to just how to research information and come up with existing solutions or hypothesis.
The curriculum for LIE is currently focused on “active learning” which means that the majority of the classroom activates practical exercises, case studies, writing assignments and group discussions. This type of curriculum shows students how to search for existing information and organize it in a way that can be graded predominately on how the information is structured. This type of teaching does not develop critical thinking. To change LIE curriculum to focus more on critical thinking the Army must implement new ways of teaching.
Deanna Kuhn, author and psychologist, states, “Good thinking comes from the discourse people engage in to advance their individual or shared goals. ” (Williams, 2013) Dialogue and debate between group members with different ideas is the best way to solve problems and come up with creative solutions. Many times argument between group members may seem as unprofessional or not good teamwork. However, argument is not the same as bickering. (Williams, 2013) Argument in the form of debate helps group members come up with solutions based on facts and not opinions.
Many time a group member may argue a point based on an opinion because he or she may not know the facts and a debate that bring up evidence and detailed data may open their mind to a new way of seeing or thinking about an issue. This will help develop leaders that can confront many different ideas and make them participate in skilled arguments that will ultimately help them make more intelligent, fact based decisions and think outside the box. Conclusion Critical thinking is not a new concept to the military. The military has been teaching leaders how to involve critical thinking concepts into their decision asking for years.
The military is trying to find new ways to explore the development on critical thinking in their many universities and colleges, as well as develop new innovative concept to applying critical thinking into their operational environment. From the development Red Teams to assist commanders in evaluating their plans and operations using outside, unbiased critical analyzes to the implementation of new critical thinking concepts into the curriculum of their colleges and universities, the military is looking into the future with critical thinking and adult education.