With every change of administration, some programs continue and new ones begin. As new leaders identify the problems they will focus on and the changes they will make, they often implement new solutions to issues that existed before their time.
In January, DoD welcomed a new secretary of defense who immediately ordered a review of how the services handle sexual assault and harassment cases. Several members of Congress voiced their belief that prosecution of sexual assaults should not belong to military commanders.
Instead, they believe there should be an independent entity that prosecutes sexual assault cases in the military. Their proposed solution does not address the root cause of sexual assault in the military and only provides the appearance of doing something to solve it.
Question of Character
Service members enter the military with a character they developed over their lifetime. Still, we expect soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines to have a higher morality and act in a virtuous manner. Studies have shown that the military can change the behavior of recruits, but we do not expect it to rewrite an individual’s character completely. While the character of the majority of service members aligns with those of the service, it should not be a surprise that the military has the same struggles as the rest of society.
The Army population is a cross-section of the United States. There are people from every culture, religion, race and gender. With approximately 40% of soldiers between the ages of 18 and 24, the demographic is similar to a college campus. The Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network reports that college-age women are at a higher risk of sexual assault in the U.S., and only 20% of victims report the crime to law enforcement.
The prevalence of sexual assault is a cultural problem and not just a military justice system issue. We do not fully understand what propagates this behavior; one argument is that the normalization of sexual assault in the media and popular culture created a rape culture in the U.S. that objectifies women and creates a disregard for their rights and safety. Removing military commanders’ ability to prosecute sexual assault cases will not address this widespread cultural issue. If our actions reflect and determine our character, the focus should be on determining what the Army can do to change its soldiers.
Individual and organizational culture takes time to develop and is difficult to change. While DoD cannot change the United States’ overall culture, it can focus its efforts to influence and change accepted behaviors within its workforce. Leaders should focus on changing the beliefs and values of those who choose to serve in the military.
Edgar Schein is a professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who is well known for his work in the field of organizational culture and leadership. He developed a set of primary and secondary embedding mechanisms that guide leaders who want to implement belief and value changes within their workforce. The primary way leaders embed their values includes the things they pay attention to, react to and allocate resources to, and how they distribute rewards and promotions. Secondary reinforcement includes organizational design, systems, rituals, physical space design, stories and formal statements.
Reinforcing Changes
The Army mainly implemented secondary methods to reinforce changes to the culture and prevent sexual harassment and assault. The service created an organizational structure and implemented systems that allow victims and bystanders to have a place to report activities. Army senior leaders make formal statements condemning this behavior and encouraging soldiers to report it if they see it happening. The focus remains on prevention by secondary methods instead of actively changing the culture using primary methods.
DoD’s fiscal 2019 annual report to Congress identified the department’s focus as prevention by addressing culture and unit command climates, and identified the importance of leaders in the rank of specialist to staff sergeant in creating a positive workplace climate that reduces the risk of sexual assault and harassment.
The Army should focus its efforts on developing these junior leaders to set desired command climates. Using primary methods, the Army should focus on teaching how to foster the appropriate environment in leader development, react appropriately to leadership failures, allocate enough time to teaching these leaders and reward those who are successful.
Leader Development
If the Army hopes to change individuals entering the service, then cultural change measures need to be a focus of all leader development. Recruits should receive more than just a briefing on the Sexual Harassment/Assault Response and Prevention (SHARP) program. Instead, they should participate in training activities to identify inappropriate actions and how to respond appropriately. Base knowledge will help soldiers understand how to react so the legal system can hold perpetrators responsible for their actions. For the Army’s future junior leaders, foundational knowledge in the SHARP program reinforced in all other professional military education would help them become leaders who foster appropriate command climates.
When a specialist goes to the Basic Leader Course, identifying and advancing a command climate that prevents sexual assault and harassment should be a primary learning objective. These soldiers will return as small-team leaders to units where most of their subordinates are in the college-age range. These first-line supervisors are the key to countering the culture that allows sexual harassment and assault to exist in the service.
As a soldier progresses to the Advanced Leader Course and the Senior Leader Course, their training must build on the foundation already created and focus on identifying the appropriate command climate, reacting to leaders who foster the wrong type of climate and practicing appropriate leader behaviors to deal with junior leaders and subordinates. It is only by rewarding the expected behavior that the Army will change the way soldiers think about sexual harassment and assault.
As part of leader development, the Army can use the secondary method of storytelling, but these must be relevant stories told by people with firsthand knowledge. The most effective training comes from personal accounts provided by victims, victim advocates and bystanders. The Army should incorporate firsthand accounts in the development of all leaders.
Take Action
Leader development alone is not enough to change how soldiers view sexual harassment and assault. Soldiers need to see senior leaders react to command climates that fail to protect soldiers.
Leaders often make general statements on sexual harassment and assault climates, but senior leaders must take action to correct a poor climate if it’s identified in a unit. The Navy makes news for relieving ship captains for something less than shipshape that happens onboard. The Army should learn from this behavior and make the relief of commanders for poor command climate a tool to motivate others.
Leaders who see peers or superiors continue to succeed despite poor command climates are more likely to replicate this behavior, whereas seeing another leader fired for a poor command climate could prevent them from doing it.
The Army allocates substantial resources to maintain the SHARP program, but it must allocate more of its most valuable resource—time. It takes time to train and educate leaders to foster desirable command climates, and there is never enough time to train all the necessary skills. The Army rightly prioritizes the skills needed for a soldier to be successful in battle. It must also prioritize the training required to create an environment where all soldiers can succeed.
The Army evaluation and promotion system does not reward leaders for creating positive command climates that foster respect for everyone. The Army must develop a way to identify leaders who prevent sexual harassment and assault and reward them with greater responsibility. What most soldiers see is a leader who commits an act of sexual harassment being allowed to retire. It appears that the Army is rewarding the leader by allowing them to retire with generous benefits instead of punishing them.
Suitable Response Required
If Army leaders are serious about changing junior leaders’ behavior, then they must demonstrate that leaders at any level who fail in this category will receive a suitable punishment. The appropriate response to abuses of power will demonstrate the importance the Army places on proper use of power.
The Army must deal with the possibility of a rape culture. Soldiers enter the service with their own beliefs, morals and behaviors. In order to change these over time, the Army must pursue active measures to embed new beliefs into service members. Changing organizational culture is complex and requires the sustained investment of resources over time. It is even more complicated when attempting to change an attitude that is prevalent in the society from which soldiers are recruited.
DoD is often at the forefront of social change in the United States. If the Army can develop a technique to change soldiers’ beliefs on sexual assault and harassment, it could positively change society over time.
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Lt. Col. C.J. Phillips is an Army strategist with 23 years of government service. He is the academic year 2022 U.S. Army War College fellow at the McConnell Center, University of Louisville, Kentucky, and is a doctor of strategic leadership student at Regent University, Virginia.