Overview:  The Classroom Experience

Battlefield Leadership’s classroom programs are highly impactful and cost-effective formats for delivering the same leadership concepts and principles examined through our onsite battlefield programs.  Because our battle-based classroom programs replicate all but the physical experience of being on location where these historic events occurred, participants in these classroom programs emerge with the same kind of focused strategies for leadership development and improvement in effectiveness as they do from our corresponding battlefield experiences.

Overview:  Why Gettysburg
The Gettysburg Leadership Experience uses the July, 1863 Battle of Gettysburg as a leadership case study to focus on the challenges faced by leaders of large and complex organizations engaged in actions which shaped our nation’s history.  The Battle of Gettysburg is an excellent metaphor from which to discuss and explore leadership principles and characters because it was a:

• Well Documented Battle That Brings The Event to Life -- The Gettysburg battlefield is especially attractive for our purposes because the battle is well-documented and its well-preserved battlefield vividly conveys the drama of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, at the height of his power, fighting to achieve decisive victory for the Confederacy through offensive operations into the enemy territory of Pennsylvania. The larger Union army, abruptly put under the command of General George G. Meade three days previously, had never come close to defeating Lee and was fighting its first battle under Meade’s direction. On both sides, leadership at every level contributed to the outcome.
• Dynamic Battle That Enables Rich Leadership Exploration -- What’s more, Gettysburg is especially useful because each of the three days of battle was markedly different. On the first day, both armies became engaged in what can be called an “encounter battle” – there was no specific plan to engage at the location, and the Confederate army was even under orders to avoid an engagement – and each side fed forces into the fight as they became available. On the second day, General Lee had a plan for attacking the Union flanks simultaneously, but wholly unexpected changes in the Union dispositions forced last-minute changes in Confederate execution. On the third day, General Lee focused his main effort on the Union center, using several supporting efforts to improve the chances for success, but the Union was able to blunt each of these efforts. Leaders at every level adroitly adjusted their tactics to fit unexpected circumstances every day, and this gives us enormous opportunity under differing scenarios to explore that dynamic for learning about leadership.

Methodology and Delivery
Combining pre-reading with the use of highly effective technology and mixed media such as Powerpoint slides, video clips, and case studies, our battlefield classroom programs can be delivered in traditional corporate conference venues to groups as small as 20 participants or as large as 1,400 participants all at one time. 

Our programs are designed in a modular fashion so sessions of differing lengths and depth can be developed to meet an organization’s objectives and needs.  Working in advance to create a highly customized session, we can highlight selected combinations of case studies and battle events in order to emphasize certain lessons or messages.  Or, the programs can be intermittently delivered in an interstitial mode to fit differing agenda needs, or as featured parts of broader agendas for corporate meeting or conference plans.

The standard classroom program length is eight hours, but can be expanded to 12 hours if needed.  A minimum length of four hours is required, which allows time for the necessary context and overview of the battle and for an in-depth examination of two leadership case studies, along with concluding exercises and comments. Each added case study requires two additional hours of program time.

Leadership Elements Explored and Discussed
Through our exploration of the battle, participants of the Gettysburg Leadership Training Experience will take away a number of benefits.  Rich in character-based leadership, this leadership lesson from history provides participants further insights into:

• A leader’s role in creating conditions for success
• Building and effectively sustaining both leadership teams and teams of leaders
• How leaders create order in the chaos of a rapidly changing environment
• Leveraging the power of technological change
• Balancing the sense of strategic opportunity with the calculation of immediate tactical risks
• The process of filtering critical initiatives from the multiplicity of important tasks
• The power of leadership at all levels and the role of individual leaders in creating an environment fostering initiative and ownership

Benefits
The Gettysburg Classroom program, as well as our other classroom programs, offers the following benefits:

• Cost-Efficient – Because these programs can be conducted onsite or at a client’s location of their choosing, these programs can be a highly cost-efficient way to introduce or extend leadership training programs to a larger group of leaders and managers.
• Highly Customized – 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 battlefield programs or the theme-based programs to make each classroom experience highly relevant and situational to all participants and the needs of that organization.

Who Should Attend
The character-based leadership training principles presented through The Gettysburg Classroom Experience can be tailored to meet the needs of the highest level senior leaders to the less-experienced yet rising leaders within an organization.  The Gettysburg Leadership program offers universal leadership themes upon which any leader will find beneficial to his or her career growth and/or organizational aspirations.

Additional
The Gettysburg battle was a large, complex operation that brought to bear the full spectrum of tactical capabilities in both armies, stretching leaders to their utmost limits. In a vivid way it spatially illustrates the intricate and complicated nature of the challenge of orchestrating different units and resources under separate commands for the combined benefit of entire armies. It depicts unmistakably the critical importance of an efficient and integrated supply chain to organizational functionality. Unlike many large operations, it was clearly focused in space and time, giving us an ideal framework for study. The documentation is extensive, the objectives are clear, and the sites necessary for in-depth analysis are easily accessible. Few of the notable battlefields from history satisfy these criteria so well.

The efforts by a smaller Confederate army to defeat a Union force occupying strong positions will inevitably evoke questions and powerful emotion. The self-sacrifice of soldiers in both armies inspires admiration. As we try to transcend obstacles in our daily work, the battlefield lessons put our problems in perspective and offer valuable clues as to how we can improve our contemporary effectiveness as leaders and members of leadership teams.

Recommended reading prior to the session is Michael Shaara’s, The Killer Angels, and viewing the Turner Entertainment movie, "Gettysburg," is suggested.  The movie is closely scripted following Shaara’s book if learning through video is preferred to reading.