Decisive Point Podcast – Ep 3-46 – COL Everett S. P. Spain, COL Katie E. Matthew, and COL Andrew L. Hagemaster – Why Do Senior Officers Sometimes Fail in Character? The Leaky Character Reservoir

In this episode, the authors argue senior officers may fail in character because their rate of character development throughout their careers typically decreases as environmental stressors rise. They conceptualize character as an open system with both gains and leaks over time and integrate existing scholarship on personality and ethical development to create the Leaky Character Reservoir framework and then explain how it applies to Army officers’ careers. Military leaders will gain a new understanding of character and find specific actions officers, units, and the US Army can undertake to strengthen the character of its senior officers.

Read the article: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol52/iss4/15/

Keywords: ethics, personality, character, conditioning history, adult development, moral development

Episode transcript: Why Do Senior Officers Sometimes Fail in Character? The Leaky Character Reservoir

Stephanie Crider (Host)

You’re listening to Decisive Point, a US Army War College Press production focused on national security affairs.

The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of the Department of the Army, the US Army War College, or any other agency of the US government.

Decisive Point welcomes Colonels Everett S.P. Spain, Katie Matthews, and Andrew L. Hagemaster, authors of “Why Do Senior Officers Sometimes Fail in Character? The Leaky Character Reservoir.” Spain is the head of the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership at the United States Military Academy. Matthew is an Academy professor in the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership at the United States Military Academy. Hagemaster is a clinical aeromedical and operational psychologist in the Army.

Thank you for joining me today. I’m really excited to talk to you. Your article argues senior officers may fail in character because their rate of character development throughout their careers typically decreases as environmental stressors rise. Give us some background and maybe an example or two of failed character.

Everett Spain

Thanks, Stephanie. This is Everett Spain. So, this started when I was helping with the Battalion Commander Assessment Program at Fort Knox a few years ago—maybe three years ago—and a friend and colleague of mine from the surge in Iraq from 2007–08 days was Major General Matt McFarland. At the time of the conversation (he) was commander of 4th Infantry Division at Fort Carson, and he invited me to lunch. After we caught up a little bit personally, he said, “Hey, there’s something I’ve been wondering (that) I’d like your thoughts on.”

I said, “What’s that, sir?”

He said, “Well, I’ve noticed that back in World War I and World War Two, a lot of senior officers were getting relieved due to lack of battlefield competence directly related to leadership or their tactical abilities.”

He said, “But now all the reliefs I see of senior officers is due to character. Do you know what’s going on?”

And so we talked about it back and forth a little bit. And we flowed some hypotheses. But in the end, I said, “Hey, sir. Let me look at this a little bit and see if I can engage some of my teammates and circle back to you with a more thoughtful perspective.”

So when I got back to West Point, I queried my faculty for anyone who was interested in diving into this with me. Colonel Katie Matthew raised her hand. I think her quote was “put me in coach.” And Col. Andrew Hagemaster volunteered, as he always does, as a great teammate. And so, over the last few years, we looked into this from a variety of perspectives. And what we kind of discovered is a new way to look at character, for all of us—since we’re probably considered senior officers as well—is that character is not a permanent gain. When you have character, there are losses as well. And the bottom line that we’ll talk about a little bit more throughout this podcast is that we’d better increase our rate of character inputs faster than our rate of character losses is going. And that’s the leaky character reservoir. And the theory behind it is to build up our character faster than it’s leaking.

Host

What are the four drivers of potential character?

Andrew Hagemaster

This is Andrew Hagemaster. We identified four drivers of potential character. The first is heredity and experiences growing up. The second is the Army’s deliberate character development. The third is the environmental influences of Army life, and the fourth is ethical fading or erosion.

The first driver of character is heredity and experiences growing up. Our character and personality are the results of the combination of our genetics and the experiences we have growing up, particularly across early childhood development. A lot of us have seen this in our own children—raised in the same household but often have different personalities. The interaction of heredity and experiences also help explain differences in personality traits, including extroversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. But when we consider character, additional personality traits come into play, including resilience, judgement, perseverance, and integrity.

The second driver of character is the Army’s deliberate character development found across Officer Education School, starting with our commissioning sources and continuing through the Officer Basic Course, Career Course, and Senior Service College. We looked at deliberate character development in terms of hours of education where character is the primary learning objective and the curriculum is testable through papers, exams, or exercises. We were really stringent in this criteria as some schools incorporate character as a secondary learning objective that is woven throughout the curriculum. The same can be said of the core psychology and leadership course that I taught at West Point. Even though our determined goal is to produce leaders of character through each lesson, not all lessons met that strict criteria as having character as primary learning objectives. And, generally, we found in our research that the trend is that officers receive less character education over time throughout an officer’s career.

The third driver of character is Army life’s environmental influences. We talked earlier about how our personality is formed during our childhood while our environment continues to influence us as adults, particularly with character-related behaviors, and that we’ve all been part of organizations that encourage us to be better each day, and some that led us to just focus on surviving. Environmental influences include the climate of the organization set by the supervisors, peers, and even subordinates.

The fourth driver of character is ethical fading or erosion. Our ethical standards may drift over time. Small deviations from our ethical azimuth can go unnoticed by officers, especially during times of stress. And so that’s why we need supervisors and peers that know our baseline and can challenge us to be our best.

Host

Everett mentioned something a few minutes ago about the leaky character reservoir. I’d like to circle back to that. What is the leaky character reservoir?

Katie Matthew

Hi Stephanie, Katie Matthew here. So the leaky character reservoir stems from our idea that if character can have gains, it can, in theory, have losses. In our paper, we actually diagram this out (on page 130). It’s a metaphorical reservoir that you build up and basically store up through your personal experiences and growth, through training, through your experience in communities both in and out of the Army. But they’re stored up for future use when needed. Hence why our officer education system is structured the way it is to build up early on. But as a reservoir, leaks are going to be present. That’s just something to accept about life. And the potential to lose some of that character exists for all of us through some of those drivers that Andrew mentioned, that ethical fading, erosion, and then the stresses can all potentially drain on those resources.

So if at any time the level in the reservoir dips below the demand signal to do the right thing, we expect that is when a failure in character and/or unethical behavior will occur due to that gap or shortage. In simple terms, it’s not having enough in the tank when you need it.

Those drivers that Andrew was talking about work both ways. Some add to our reservoirs, and others don’t. Some are deliberate character development, both personally and through organizations in our units. And much of our experiences, both with our units and communities, can bolster that reservoir or start to let some of that fade out. The leaks are present, and our argument is that the goal should be to maintain our character as we do our physical readiness. And for the Army, that’s daily, deliberate, and an investment by the individual and the organization to continue to keep that level in the reservoir up above the needs.

Host

You recommend in your article some mechanisms to increase deliberate character conditioning and mitigate character losses. What are they?

Hagemaster

One of the mechanisms to increase deliberate character conditioning and to mitigate character loss is requiring mid-grade and senior officers to engage in deliberate self-reflection. This deliberate self-reflection is designed to examine our character strengths, vulnerabilities, and risk. This is currently happening as part of the four-day selection process with the Command Assessment Program, where candidates for battalion and brigade command are encouraged to engage in deliberate self-reflection. And this is built into the Command Asses...