Overview: Why A Battlefield Experience

Battlefield Leadership offers a variety of onsite, battle-based experiential leadership training programs, all of which showcase vivid and profoundly impressive leadership lessons from history. Our battlefield-based leadership training sessions vary from two to four days in length and use great battles from military history as intensive case studies as a basis for examining and learning about contemporary business leadership practices. Programs are conducted on location, on the actual terrain of the historic battles, and feature lodging and meeting venues which are as period-authentic as possible.

The indisputable fact is that battle is the ultimate test of leadership. Battle inherently brings chaos, de facto lack of clarity, ambiguity, unpredictability, a pressing need for split-second decisions and often creates an environment where “true” information is lacking or not readily available -- all leading to decision-making opportunities with life or death consequences.

Leadership, whether on a battlefield or in a corporate arena, is not an event or an orderly process. Rather, leadership is exercised and experienced through a sequence of opportunities presented moment to moment. And it is in these moments of opportunity, in their recognition or lack thereof, and in the actions taken or not taken as a result, that the real distinction between effective and ineffective leadership is realized. It is in the absolute clarity of the historical record and the humanity expressed through masterfully told stories that battlefield leadership lessons from history take such vivid and visceral form.

With this as our philosophy, our battlefield-based leadership training experiences are designed to focus on leadership practices in the contemporary workplace by examining the decisions and actions of military commanders. Our programs are designed to help corporate executives and managers reflect on leadership issues using the battlefield as a metaphor for many of the challenges faced in today’s competitive marketplace.

Methodology and Delivery: The Staff Ride Format

Our experiential executive training programs are based on the long-standing military “staff ride” format for learning. After an initial briefing and strategic overview of the battle, participants visit the key sites, walk in the footsteps and stand in the very positions of the military leaders in those long-ago encounters. By knowing what they knew and seeing what they saw, the experience “comes to life” in the present, and the emphasis in learning is focused on the how and why behind the events and actions in the battle, rather than on the tactics themselves.

When using the staff ride format, we are mindful that:

• History is important and we want to “get it right,” but history is only a vehicle for discussion of contemporary concerns
• The staff ride format is a seminar in which people change physical positions often and openly share views on a broad range of issues
• The team building which inevitably results from this kind of shared experience may be as important as its substantive content
• We see leaders of many types in trying situations, and we have the luxury of information and leisure necessary to analyze their performance in a way that is objective and blameless

Leadership Elements Explored and Discussed

A thorough analysis and dissection of each battle – the context, the circumstances, the variables, the players, the psyches, and the tactics – provides a powerful platform from which to explore virtually every dimension of leadership. And, though each battle has its unique characteristics and considerations, and although an experience on a battlefield can be customized to focus on or highlight particular aspects or practices of leadership, generally a battlefield experience can be expected to provide insight and learning concerning the following:

• Operating with speed and precision in rapidly evolving and unpredictable environments  
• Balancing a tactical or operational focus with a clear understanding of the strategic intent
• Formulating plans and allocating resources to achieve specific objectives while conditioning the performance climate for improvisation and initiative
• Communicating in a manner that stimualtes inclusion and fosters trust
• Improving the effectiveness of data and knowledge management
• Accelerating the speed of gathering and disseminating information
• Enabling con-centric leadership while decentralizing decision-making
• Enrolling resistant colleagues and Inspiring and motivating performance
• Situational awareness and adaptive leadership
• The seemingly random operation of “chance” or “luck” in human affairs

Leading Change -- Our battlefield-based leadership training programs also provide insight into the concept of progress and growth, typically perceived as forms of “change.” Whether in terms of technology, organization or doctrine, we will discuss the challenges associated with shedding the “old way” and how leaders must adapt, embrace and/or stimulate change to be successful. In organizational terms, we will examine how two competing armies in battle arrayed the intellectual and material resources available to them. In terms of doctrine, often the most fertile area for contemporary leadership learning, we will explore how these two large forces (organizations) determined how they should use their resources to accomplish their individual objectives.

The Benefits

The focus of our battlefield experiences is to enable individual particpants, and leadership teams, to define and articulate specific and concrete strategies for their improvement in effectiveness in dealing with very real, and current, leadership challenges they face. 

Some of the additional benefits attendant to our battlefield programs include:

• Greater Team Cohesion -- Even with an emphasis toward individual and character-based leadership, we have repeatedly found that our staff ride format creates an added by-product: greater team cohesion and an enhanced esprit de corps among group participants. When intact work teams participate together, the positive effect is compounded through the benefits of leadership improvement at an individual and organizational (leadership team) level. When individuals are taking away leadership principles and ideas specifically for themselves, but are able to share a common leadership experience among their team, the result is highly impactful.
• Cost-Effective Classroom Programs -- In addition to our on-site battlefield leadership experiential programs, we also offer one- and two-day formats for experiential classroom programs to help leaders extend their learning and transmit key messages to their organizations. Presented in a framework consistent with the delivery of our battlefield programs, the classroom format can be a cost-effective way to introduce or cascade leadership training programs to a larger group of leaders and managers, and can be conducted on-site at a client’s location of their choosing.
• Tailored Customization -- An important benefit to participants and organizations alike is when we customize the content of a program and/or place emphasis on a leadership aspect that has been deemed critical to the participating organization. By gathering information from pre-session interviews or teleconferences with program sponsors and/or HR leaders, we can focus in on specific events, characters and dynamics of the battle and its leaders to make the program highly relevant and situational to all participants and the needs of that organization.

Additionally, our battlefield programs can be modified to use and integrate a company’s respective core competencies and leadership models. Further, program agendas can be adjusted to meet specific time constraints and desires of the participant companies.

Who Should Attend

The character-based leadership training principles presented through our battlefield programs can be tailored to meet the needs of the highest level senior leaders to  less-experienced, rising leaders within an organization.  While each program is unique and can be highly customized, our battlefield programs highlight universal and timeless leadership practices and precepts which underly the effectiveness of leaders in all situations at all popints in their careers.