Effective military leadership is contingent upon a host of performance capabilities. One capability central to success is effective influence across a variety of contexts and people. In the Army, leaders at all levels must be able to influence others across different types of missions. Leaders must be able to influence their own unit and chain of command, as well as personnel from other government agencies, nongovernmental organizations, and joint, combined, and host nation elements. Because influence has a central role in leadership, it is critical to ensure that influence capabilities are an integral element of the leader assessment and development process. Thus, it is necessary to have a comprehensive picture of the knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics (KSAOs) underlying effective influence behaviors. This report identifies leader influence strategies, describes 64 KSAOs relevant to leader influence, and provides recommendations for measuring and training KSAOs. The identified KSAOs serve as targets for building training and assessment interventions designed to enhance Army leaders ability to influence. Procedure: We reviewed existing academic and military literature regarding leader influence, KSAOs related to influence, and training strategies that could be applied to develop these KSAOs. Relevant literature included social capital, power, influence tactics, persuasion tactics, and impression management. Two models of leader influence-one pertaining to building influence capability and one pertaining to applying influence strategies-were developed from the literature. We organized KSAOs into proximal, medial, and distal predictors (i.e., immediate, midrange, and distant predictors) of influence behaviors. Proximal predictors included selfregulation and procedural knowledge and skills, medial predictors included declarative knowledge and influence motives, and distal predictors included cognitive attributes, noncognitive attributes (e.g., personality), and leadership/influence experience variables. We identified existing measures for the KSAOs and we rated measurement approaches for their utility in assessing each KSAO. Additionally, potential training methods were reviewed and considered visa -vis the KSAOs. Findings: The review indicates that complex relationships among power, influence tactics and influence outcomes exist. With respect to outcomes (i.e., compliance, commitment, and resistance), hard influence tactics (pressure, coalitions, legitimating) are more likely to result in compliance. Conversely, soft tactics-particularly rational persuasion, inspirational appeals, and consultation-result in higher commitment and are more effective at influencing others. vi Regardless of the tactic used, influence attempts are more likely to result in favorable outcomes when the leader has high referent power. Research also suggests that applying multiple influence tactics in combination is useful, but research has not yet delineated the best approaches for leaders to combine and sequence tactic...

A survey targeting interpersonal, cultural, language, and advisory activities was administered to 565 Army and Marine advisors returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Advisors rated how frequently they engaged in 151 activities, as well as indicated how important those activities were to advisor performance. Results indicated that the most frequent activity engaged in by advisors was communicating through an interpreter, followed by role modeling behaviors and behaviors demonstrating consideration and respect. Results suggest that advisors did not view language proficiency as necessary to perform their job, but that knowledge of common words and greetings in the host nation language is important. Results also highlight the importance of impression management skills, skill at interpreting nonverbal behavior, mentoring and coaching skills, the ability to compare one's culture with the counterpart's culture, the ability to detect manipulation, rapport building, and interacting with coalition forces.

A survey targeting interpersonal, cultural, language, and advisory activities was administered to 565 Army and Marine advisors returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Advisors rated how frequently they engaged in 151 activities, as well as indicated how important those activities were to advisor performance. This Research Note is a companion to ARI Technical Report 1248 (Ramsden Zbylut, Metcalf, McGowan, Beemer, Brunner, & Vowels, 2009), which presented analyses regarding the interpersonal, linguistic, advisory, and cultural activities performed by the 565 transition team advisors in the sample. This document is a supplemental appendix that presents the descriptive statistics for advisor activities within specific positions on military transition teams. The following team member positions are included:

No abstract

Public reporting burden for the collection of information is estimated to average 1 hour per response, including the time for reviewing instructions, searching existing data sources, gathering and maintaining the data needed, and completing and reviewing the collection of information. Send comments regarding this burden estimate or any other aspect of this collection of information, including suggestions for reducing this burden, to Washington Headquarters Services, Directorate for Information Operations and Reports, 1215 Jefferson Davis Highway, Suite 1204, Arlington VA 22202-4302. Respondents should be aware that notwithstanding any other provision of law, no person shall be subject to a penalty for failing to comply with a collection of information if it does not display a currently valid OMB control number.