• Know yourself and seek self-improvement
• Be technically and tactically proficient
• Seek responsibility and take responsibility for your actions
• Make sound and timely decisions
• Set the example
• Know your soldiers and look out for their well-being
• Keep your subordinates informed
• Develop a sense of responsibility in your subordinates
• Ensure that the task is understood, supervised, and accomplished
• Build the team
• Employ your unit in accordance with its capabilities
Leadership is the process of influencing people by providing purpose, direction, and motivation, while operating to accomplish the mission and improve the organization.
Within a unit, leaders are responsible for the cohesion and disciplined proficiency that enable soldiers to effectively train for, fight, and win the nation’s wars. But more fundamentally, Army leaders at every level have a solemn duty to embrace values. As Heraclitus said more than two thousand years ago, “A man’s character is his fate,” and the destiny of the led is bound to the leader. Those soldiers whom sergeants train, captains maneuver, and generals commit are, first, America’s sons and daughters. Given the great responsibility leaders have to the nation and its people, the Army is committed to values-based leadership that reaches for excellence every day.