You’re standing in the dense vegetation of a land navigation course, frustrated and looking for your next point. “It should be here,” you say to yourself. You know your pace count and azimuth were accurate. Time passes, doubt creeps in, and you realize you might be off course. There’s nothing left to do but get your bearings, course correct, and try again. We’ve all been there. Land navigation is an essential military skill. A slightly incorrect azimuth, just a degree or two off course, has minimal effects in the short-term. But a small discrepancy, over time or distance, can lead you significantly off course. This is similarly the case in navigating ethical decision-making. Leadership requires an accurate moral compass.
Step 1 – Know Where You Are
The first step in knowing where to go is understanding where you are. Finding your moral baseline requires reflection. Seek to understand your personal interpretations of right and wrong, and determine the basis for those beliefs. This is partially a personal decision, but let’s not forget that we are each voluntarily part of a profession. When we sign up to serve, we agree to uphold a standard and professional ethic. Leaders need to communicate this common set of values. Our words and deeds demonstrate our individual baselines. The challenge is every Soldier is different. It is through this knowledge that leaders can strategize how to unite under the common Army ethic.
Step 2 – Know Where You’re Going
Next, confirm where you’re going. This means understanding the Army ethical framework. What’s the Army’s black and white criteria for differentiating right from wrong behavior? This requires you to do some reading. The doctrinal foundation for the Army Ethic is Chapter 1 of ADP 6-22 (Army Leadership and the Profession). The Center for the Army Profession and Leadership has literature, training support packages, and multiple case studies on their website (capl.army.mil). Your unit chaplains are trained in military ethics and provide great counsel. Once knowledgeable, you can now compare the Army Ethic to the moral baselines of you and your Soldiers.
Step 3 – Plot Your Course
Once you know where you are going, plot your course to get there. Consider how your personal morals nest within or possibly deviate from the Army’s ethical framework. That will help you develop the direction in which you need to go as well as how far away you are from your goal.
Step 4 – Identify Obstacles
What stands in your way? What will cause your compass to stray off an accurate azimuth? This is the most important step. It’s easy to navigate when paths are clear, well illuminated, and everything is in our favor. While orienteering, steep elevation, a lack of illumination, or even a prevalence of metal ore can hinder your journey. In the case of ethical leadership, it will be the internal and external factors that allow you to justify witnessing or even engaging in possible unethical behavior. Some examples of these factors include peer pressure, careerism, nepotism, time-constraints, and apathy. In a deployed environment, the will to survive is a considerable factor. To what can your soldiers fall victim? This is where deliberate engagement and structured reflection with your soldiers is essential, as it helps facilitate the final step.
It is important to understand what factors can skew our moral compass, so that we may mitigate them.
Step 5 – Check and Recheck Your Azimuth
By discussing the steps to maintain a moral azimuth, leaders and Soldiers can develop the efficacy to serve in an ethical organization.
The fifth and final step is the enduring and continuous reevaluation of the previous criteria throughout your journey. This is especially important as you feel yourself, your soldiers, or your organization being pulled from the true and right azimuth by previously identified obstacles. Has anything changed since you stepped off? Do you still know where you are? Where you are going? Are you knocked off course by any obstacles? This part is crucial. If you identified that you strayed from your planned route and are at risk of getting lost, this is the time to course correct.
Just as in orienteering, the sooner you identify any issues, the better the chances you have of course correcting and being successful. Ethical leadership is also a continuing process. The ever-changing nature of our personnel, standards, and operating environment demand vigilance. We should not be surprised when we get to a predicted land navigation point only to find we are lost. However, we should equally be unsurprised if our organization becomes lost in a black hole of morality.
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As leaders, we are the moral compass. It’s our responsibility to keep our organizations on azimuth and moving towards the right ends. Small actions can have large consequences. We rarely see a soldier shoot an azimuth that is 180 degrees off course. But small choices, over time, can draw them away from the behaviors expected within our shared Army Ethic. We are responsible for meeting them at their level, educating them on the standard, training them with the tools to maneuver and succeed in a complex world, course correcting them, and – ultimately – holding them accountable to that standard. In an increasingly decentralized battlefield, every leader must be confident that their soldiers will effectively navigate through the challenges of their assigned missions. These steps will not only help them get to the correct physical point, but also allow them take the moral high ground.
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