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D. Christopher Kayes, Col. Nate Allen and Nate SelfEducation: Lessons From Army Officers in Iraq and Afghanistan

Integrating Learning, Leadership, and Crisis in Management

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456168 JME37210.1177/1052562912456168Journal of Management EducationKayes et al.© The Author(s) 2012

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1The George Washington University, Washington, D.C., USA2National Defense University, Fort NcNair, D.C., USA3The Praevius Group, Salado, TX, USA

Corresponding Author:D. Christopher Kayes, The George Washington University, School of Business, 2201 G Street, NW Funger Hall, Washington, D.C. 20052, USA. Email: [email protected]

Integrating Learning, Leadership, and Crisis in Management Education: Lessons From Army Officers in Iraq and Afghanistan

D. Christopher Kayes1, Col. Nate Allen2, and Nate Self3

Abstract

This article presents a model and case study used to teach crisis leadership as a management education topic. The materials emerge from studies of U.S. Army leaders (company commanders and platoon leaders) working in Iraq and Afghanistan. The authors explain how examples and cases from military combat provide tools to teach about crisis leadership. The authors describe a case study based on a battle fought in Afghanistan in 2002 that they use to increase awareness of the nature of, the experiences associated with, and the competencies necessary to deal with crisis. Finally, the authors link their pedagogy to theory on crisis, leadership, and learning.

Keywords

learning, leadership, crisis, management education, military, case study

Teaching Innovations In Crisis Management Education

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Kayes et al. 181

Leading during crisis is no longer a tangential leadership competency. A recent study confirms that crisis is the norm, as 82% of leaders report an increased pace of change, and 69% of leaders report that they have experi-enced disruptive change—severe surprises or unanticipated shocks (American Management Association, 2007). The prevalence of crisis and the need for an effective response have become so critical that crisis leadership is a key com-petency sought out by many employers (Coombs, 2006).

In this article, we present a model and a case study of military and combat situations that we use to teach about crisis leadership. The aim of this article is to articulate a framework and to offer thoughts about teaching crisis leadership based on military and combat examples. The purpose of our teaching is to increase awareness about the environment that leaders face, to introduce key concepts related to crisis, and to illustrate how these concepts can help leaders learn and navigate crisis. Drawing on research with combat officers in Iraq and Afghanistan, we explain how leaders in crisis learn to function in complex, dynamic, and novel situations. In addition, we explain how the crisis situations faced by frontline army officers in Iraq and Afghanistan can be linked to other management education topics such as leadership and teams. We conclude that leaders working under the volatile conditions of military combat can teach us important lessons about crisis leadership in organizations.

We begin by making a case for the importance of teaching crisis leader-ship in management, organizational behavior, and leadership (Schmidt-Wilk, 2011). We then present our conceptual framework, drawing connections between bodies of literature on learning, crisis leadership, and management education; and we link military and combat situations to relevant manage-ment concepts. Finally, we present our model and our teaching approach, which involves a case study of the events at Takur Ghar, Afghanistan, in 2002.

Goals and Approaches for Teaching Crisis LeadershipWe have three main goals for teaching crisis leadership: (a) to improve awareness of the factors that constitute a crisis, (b) to explain the various experiences associated with a crisis, and (c) to illustrate how leaders learn to navigate a crisis. As such, the pedagogy we propose focuses on awareness of the crisis experience and competencies associated with crisis rather than developing the specific skills necessary to manage a crisis.

The process of teaching this topic typically begins with a definition of crisis, which is no easy task because the interdisciplinary nature of the study



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of crisis has led to considerable disagreement about what constitutes a crisis. For example, crisis is often used as a synonym for terms such as disaster, error, and failure. Despite the lack of agreement, Boin’s (2006) review of the crisis literature serves as a starting point. He summarized that crisis involves

• A period of discontinuity• A situation where core values of a system are under threat• A period where critical decisions are made• A destabilizing effect to the organization and its members• An escalation of one of more issues, errors, or procedures

Definitions of crisis are multifaceted (Sagan, 1993; Wilensky, 1967), and whereas Boin (2006) focuses on situational facets, our primary focus is the psychological facets associated with leading before, during, and after crisis occurs. Thus, our approach to crisis leadership implies a situation where a leader’s capacity to cope is overtaken by the demands of the immediate situ-ation (Smith & Elliott, 2006).

Three streams of research facilitate our understanding of the role a leader plays in crisis. One stream is normal accident theory (NAT), which defines crisis from a systems perspective as a normal part of operating in a complex, dynamic, and high-risk environment. According to the NAT viewpoint, lead-ers and their organizations remain vulnerable to crisis despite human efforts to improve reliability. Perrow (1984), for example, described how the inter-action of complexity and task coupling leads to small deviations in normal operating procedure. These small deviations are common and expected under normal conditions but escalate into unanticipated events. Leaders need to learn to recognize these small deviations and take action before they escalate into a full-scale organizational crisis. Leaders also are called on to play an important role in responding to the crisis once it has erupted.

A second approach comes from research on high-reliability organizations (HRO), which focuses on the cognitive aspects of intra- and interteam coordi-nation. An organizational crisis emerges and tests a team’s ability to make sense of a situation, but sensemaking deteriorates in the face of increasingly complex events (see, e.g., Weick & Roberts, 1993; Weick & Sutcliffe, 2001). Leaders help overcome crisis by improving coordination and creating the abil-ity to make sense out of situations. Collectively, both HRO and NAT guide understanding of crisis by offering insights into how leaders cope with new technology, respond to innovation, get work done, and learn (see Klein, 1999).

A third approach to crisis leadership involves descriptions of crisis (e.g., Berinato, 2010), first-hand accounts (e.g., Barton, 2008), and journalistic



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inquiry (e.g., Maclean, 1992). These approaches often involve personal nar-rative or accounts of direct experience with leading during times of crisis. The personal narrative approach is illustrated by Barton’s (2008) effort, which seeks to distinguish itself from more academic considerations of crisis leadership. This perspective emphasizes the role of experience in leading a crisis. In this approach, first-hand accounts of crisis provide transferable pro-totypes of a situation, which in turn, serve as the basis for determining what actions should be taken in future crises.

We offer an alternative perspective that is informed by NAT, HRO, and personal crisis narrative, but relies more heavily on the role of experience, emotions, and human development in the process of crisis leadership. This experiential learning approach to crisis leadership considers how experiences inform a leader’s understanding of and response to crisis in organizations (Kolb, 1984). Distinct from but informed by the narrative approach, our approach seeks to understand how experiences inform general theory, which, in turn, guides further research and understanding of the phenomenon more generally (e.g., Kayes, 2004; Kolb, 1984). This approach is theoretically con-sistent with research on learning from errors and mistakes (Edmondson, 1996; Morris & Moore, 2000). At the same time, a distinction can be drawn between the experiential learning approach and the NAT and HRO approaches because the former focuses more on generalizable experiences than on cogni-tion (e.g., HRO) or systems (e.g., NAT). In summary, the approach we pro-pose places more emphasis on the role of emotions and experience than do the NAT and HRO perspectives. At the same time, we move beyond the per-sonal narrative account by offering a generalizable approach to teaching cri-sis. As we will show later in this article, the ability to manage emotions in self and others is a key, but often overlooked, component to preparing leaders to deal with crisis. In the next section, we present a framework that further explores this approach in the context of management education.

Framework: Integrating Crisis Management, Leadership, and Management EducationIn this section, we identify a general framework that can guide the teaching of crisis leadership, while recognizing that, by definition, each crisis situa-tion holds something unique. A link between the literature on crisis and the literature on management learning can be found in the works of Kayes (2002) and Useem, Cook, and Sutton (2005), which show how crisis situa-tions can provide a context for understanding management learning and organizational behavior principles. These works imply that although the




context of crisis and noncrisis may be different in some ways, they share some common characteristics. Both crisis and noncrisis situations, for example, involve task novelty and complexity (Day & Zaccaro, 2004), and in both situations, learning helps leaders navigate novelty and complexity (Kayes & Kayes, 2011). In a crisis situation, the need for learning becomes more pronounced, even as the process of learning becomes more demanding; and the lack or breakdown of learning further fuels the crisis (Kayes, 2004). The environmental demands exceed the learning capacity of the leader (Kegan, 1998). Crisis situations thus provide opportunities for leaders to explore situations where circumstances fail to conform to expectations (see Lewis & Dehler, 2000) and to develop an understanding of the skills they need to deal with heightened levels of anxiety (Vince, 1998; see Stein, 2004).

A better understanding of crisis, therefore, helps students learn how lead-ers navigate complexity and novelty in or out of crisis. Smith and Elliott (2007) took this notion a step further to show how leaders might navigate crisis as it unfolds. Smith and Elliott (2007) further emphasized the importance of learning at three different points in the crisis life cycle—organizational leaders (a) learn to cope with the demands of crisis by build-ing learning into everyday practice before a crisis occurs, (b) continue learning as the crisis unfolds, and (c) identify lessons learned in the aftermath of crisis. Figure 1 shows leader effectiveness as a function of learning across stages of a crisis (Turner, 1976). It depicts the relationship between learning, emergent crisis, and leader effectiveness. The figure illustrates that learning is essential for meeting the increasing demands of the emerging crisis. Over the course of the crisis, predictability decreases, whereas the learning demands of a crisis situation and the complexity of the variables increase. When learning occurs at each stage of the crisis, leadership effectiveness improves. If learning decreases, then leader effectiveness decreases. In the next section, we illustrate how military and combat examples provide an important source of learning in crisis.

Crisis and Management Education: Lessons From Military LeadershipRationale for Examining Military Examples of Leadership

The connections between military leadership and management education run deep but are not always obvious. We have found that because military battles are not generally part of the management education classroom, faculty may need to discuss the relevance of military leadership to nonmilitary contexts.



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For example, students might ask why their instructor is using a military example instead of an organization such as Google or Apple. Faculty can address students’ questions by making connections between military and civilian leadership. One tactic is to show how military leadership has influ-enced thinking on leadership more broadly. In fact, many leadership prac-tices that have been developed in the military have been adapted by or serve as the basis for civilian training. One program is notable. Crew resource management (CRM; see e.g., Helmreich, Merritt, & Wilhelm, 1999) was designed by military organizations in response to the alarming level of avia-tion accidents attributable to human error. A central tenet of CRM is to train pilots how to equalize power in the cockpit. The deliberate empowerment of copilots and other members of the crew gives them greater opportunity to recognize problems and inform their crew captain about time-critical threats to operational continuity (Fraher, 2011). CRM principles have been adopted by a variety of organizations, and the concepts underlying CRM have made their way into research associated with learning and teams in management (e.g., Edmondson, 1999).

Military research and related training has sparked a growing interest in how military practices can inform business leadership. It is no coincidence

Figure 1. Relationship between learning, emergent crisis, and leader effectiveness.




that the Greek work for a “General” translates into English as “the art of strategy.” The practice-based literature on management and management learning has shown a particular interest in identifying connections between business and military crisis leadership (see, e.g., Groyberg, Hill, & Johnson, 2010; Klann, 2003; Kolditz, 2007). Some have gone so far as to argue that military organizations should serve as the model for developing leaders in business because leadership development in the military has been around longer and is more highly developed than comparable programs in business (Useem, 2010). Furthermore, the complexity of contemporary crises often requires an understanding of a broad range of organizational leadership prac-tices. The BP oil spill illustrates the importance of both military and civilian leadership and how both forms of leadership were necessary to respond to a crisis (Berinato, 2010). In addition, military institutions of higher education require courses in management and leadership training, reminding us that leadership development is not simply the domain of civilian institutions but also the domain of military education.

Perhaps the most relevant reason for connecting military and business leadership is to challenge the assumption that military organizations are more hierarchical than business organizations. Oftentimes, students perceive mili-tary leadership as hierarchical and characterized primarily by programmed decision-making procedures. In contrast, they perceive business leadership as more democratic, less hierarchical, and more flexible. However, research (Darling, Parry & Moore, 2005) and our own experience indicate that some facets of decision making are less hierarchical in the military than in busi-ness. The case study we discuss later in this article illustrates some of the ways today’s military challenges hierarchical thinking.

The goal of using military examples and integrating combat scenarios in a nonmilitary classroom is to engage students to think about the lessons learned as a kind of analogy or parable about leadership (Greenhalgh, 2007). True, most leaders will never experience the kind of life-and-death situations faced by combat officers, but by looking at leadership under the most hostile and extreme environment, we can shed light on the demands faced by leaders in less hostile situations.

The Relevance of Military Leadership to Management EducationBecause of the factors discussed above, we take time in the introduction to our class sessions to highlight the links between leadership in combat and topics more commonly taught in management (see, e.g., Suedfeld, Corteen,



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& McCormick, 1986). These connections emphasize the relevance of mili-tary concepts for management and their application in the context of crisis.

One source of relevance for military leadership in more traditional organi-zations relates to the recent research on leadership in extreme contexts (Hannah, Uhl-Bien, Avolio, & Cavarretta, 2009). Extreme contexts create specific learning demands on leaders, because the consequences are high, the feedback loops are quick, and threats carry significant impact and place psy-chosocial demands on leaders. Specifically, military leadership, when applied to more common settings, shows how stress and time affect decision making. When considered as a form of extreme leadership, combat highlights that learning in that context matters, as does the ability of managers to adapt to new contexts by learning both cognitive and emotional skills. Furthermore, the events show the importance of preparation, especially training, in how to respond in a crisis situation (Useem et al., 2005).

Military organizations also illustrate how organizations build resilience, correct for problems, and learn in the face of disaster (Weick & Sutcliffe, 2001). For example, Becker (2007) conducted an analysis of a plane crash in the Great Bear Wilderness to show how team learning allowed a crash victim to find his way to safety through an unfamiliar forest. The Great Bear Wilderness case demonstrates how novices can learn in the moment and transfer that learning into action.

The literature on teamwork provides a third source of relevance. Specifically, a team in crisis represents a kind of action and negotiation team (Sundstrom, DeMeuse, & Futrell, 1990) in pursuit of a short-term outcome. An action and negotiation team engages in a one-time event that often requires learning, because the action is novel and successfully completing the task requires new knowledge and an innovative response. The requirement for new knowledge also links to team learning more specifically because of the need to coordinate different skills and transfer knowledge in the face of a clear goal but unclear processes. For example, Gersick (1991) described how ad hoc project teams develop and change over the duration of the project. Boin and ‘t Hart (2003) emphasized the need for leaders to exploit these changes in order to deal with a crisis at key stages, particularly in cases of public leadership. Understanding this dynamic may help leaders focus on tasks relevant to the particular phase that the team is experiencing. Woodson (2009) concluded that short-term project teams involved in action and nego-tiation tasks may require special types of training to meet the unique demands presented by these high-stress situations.

We have described three concepts that link military leadership to organi-zational concepts: extreme situations, response to crisis and resilience, and




short-term project teams. These concepts are illustrative, rather than exhaus-tive, and provide connections to making military leadership relevant in civil-ian organizations. In the next section, we present a model of crisis leadership that emerged directly from observation of combat troops, and we connect the model to management concepts.

A Model of Crisis Leadership: Context, Experience, and Response and RecoveryWe present a model that emerged from our research with army officers and the subsequent teaching that resulted from these studies (see Allen & Kayes, 2012). The research began in 2005, when one member of our research team, Nate Allen, went to Iraq and conducted in-depth qualitative interviews and participant observation, observing leaders in action by traveling with soldiers as they carried out daily missions and engaged with their environment. Participants were identified for the study through informal and formal net-works. Many of those we interviewed had participated in professional forums designed to improve leadership skills. Additionally, participants were selected for diversity by functional specialty, amount of time in leadership, and whether or not they had prior combat experience. From this research, we developed a model that described how leaders learn to navigate the demands of combat and what they are learning. Allen returned to the combat theater a second time, in 2007, to test and clarify the model, relying on the same inter-view and observation techniques. This second round of data collection helped refine the model and identify new forms of learning. Self contributed to this research as a subject matter expert. He had served in Kosovo and Iraq and had also served as a platoon leader in the U.S. Army Rangers unit in Afghanistan.

From the research emerged an inductive model of crisis leadership that served as the basis for training and teaching about crisis leadership. The model, depicted graphically in Figure 2, considers three dimensions of lead-ing in crisis: the context, the experience, and the response and recovery cycle. Many of the lessons learned from army officers operating in a combat zone revealed wider patterns that have proven useful in understanding crisis lead-ership, as well as leadership more generally, under less hostile conditions.

Context of CrisisSeveral management concepts facilitate understanding of a crisis environ-ment. Programmed decision making involves routine situations where actions



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are predictable and largely quantifiable. In contrast, nonprogrammed deci-sion making involves situations that are in flux, where solutions have not yet been discovered (for a discussion, see Kahneman & Klein, 2009). Within the learning and development literature, the concept of an ill-structured problem is also applicable. Ill-structured problems offer an unclear path to completion and require meeting multiple standards for success, such that experts will disagree on the meaning of what actually constitutes success (see King & Kitchener, 1994). Similar to Reason’s (1995) description of the environment faced by teams of anesthesiologists working in an operating room, our research captured the decision-making context of crisis. These characteristics include the following:

• A sense that existing routines don’t work. One army commander summed up crisis leadership as a “situation where you’ve been taught the way to do something your entire career and it just isn’t working.”

• Constantly shifting information needs and information availability. Crisis situations are characterized by information oscillation—not

Figure 2. Model of crisis leadership.




enough information to make a decision, too much information, conflicting information, and changing information. As one officer expressed, “I was fighting for information and feeling like I’m los-ing the battle.”

• Unexpected events. Crisis constitutes a diversity of problems with competing agendas. It is a situation for which you cannot plan or predict all contingencies. One officer described it this way: “You conduct a mission [project] expecting one thing and then another happens.” As one illustrative example, a platoon might be on their way to conduct a ribbon cutting ceremony at a local school and on the way they are ambushed. The platoon has prepared for com-munity outreach but must shift to combat action. Preparing for the unexpected is what Fletcher (2004) described as cognitive readi-ness, where actors prepare not only for the technical aspects of a task but also the cognitive and emotional demands that they will face. Cognitive readiness implies that even though leaders cannot fully prepare for all the contingencies of a crisis, they can prepare themselves by developing a mindset that helps them accept that they can’t control everything.

• Escalating complexity. Crisis leadership involves volatility and complexity of situations as well as solutions; the emerging circum-stances quickly overwhelm the actors. As told by one leader, “You start a mission and you end up with 20 different missions.” Under these conditions, leaders need to be aware of maintaining a priority focus because the environment responds in unpredictable ways and new challenges and opportunities will emerge.

Emergent Crisis ExperienceWhen a crisis situation emerged, which occurred on a daily basis for army officers in Iraq, it created certain internal emotions, reactions, and anxieties that are often associated with learning (Vince, 1998). Likewise, in the man-agement literature, Bennis and Thomas (2002) have noted the importance of “crucible experiences” in developing leaders. Crucible experiences define the leader in new terms. These are the moments when a leader’s identity is shaped. Within the learning literature, the concept of a disorienting dilemma (Mezirow, 2000) is instructive. A disorienting dilemma leads a person to reevaluate his or her old habits, perspectives, and assumptions. Within the research on transformational leadership, the notion of concern for followers also applies (Bass, 1998; Burns, 1978). One distinctive characteristic of the



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transformational leader, compared with the transactional or bureaucratic leader, is individualized consideration. It is through emergent experiences that the leader becomes aware of his or her mission as a leader and the impor-tance of followers in achieving that mission. An emergent crisis experience, then, had the following characteristics:

• Sense of profound responsibility for others. As one officer noted, “My fear is not so much for myself anymore; now I fear more for those who report to me.” Others have a significant stake in leader decisions. As another officer said, “Every decision you make will impact people and has weight.” In combat, there are often situations where the leader realizes that there is no backstop, the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of an outcome will depend on decisions that they themselves need to make.

• Intense affect. Crisis also leads to an intense range of emotions. The emotions ranged from sheer relief, joy, and love, to intense rage, anger, and despair. Leaders commented: “I felt as if my heart was ripped out of my chest” and “I knew my direct reports were feeling the same thing.” For many leaders, this is the first time they had experienced these extreme emotions. As a consequence, they learned how to manage these intense emotions, both in themselves and in others. Based on this observation, we argue that any course in crisis leadership should explicitly address the intense emotional compo-nent of crisis leadership.

• Moral responsibility. Those experiencing crisis situations sense that their decisions have implications for their competence and character. “My actions can be a credit or disgrace to my organiza-tion or nation.” In addition, the leader understands that any one decision carries an organizational consequence. In this sense, an action taken by any one soldier can quickly escalate to a national strategic issue.

• Embodied feedback. In a crisis, feedback from decisions leaves a lasting impression on the soul. Embodied feedback is an unforgiving and enduring component of crisis leadership. Examples include the failure of a mission that results in the loss of a life of a soldier, loss of a critical resource, or the injury of a local. Whereas traditional feedback might require a small incremental adjustment to behavior, for example, “change the tone and pace of your approach,” embod-ied feedback leaves an enduring impression on one’s being. Embod-ied feedback is never forgotten; its voice is always present.




Response and Recovery Cycle

The final insight on leadership emerges from leaders’ actions that succeeded in the crisis environment. We called this process the response and recovery cycle because it mirrors what Kolb (1984) described as the cycle of learning from experience. The response and recovery cycle requires leaders to move between two distinct modes of learning. In the response mode, leaders react to the environment by deploying new routines, taking actions, and updating assessments of the situation. In the recovery cycle, leaders identify lessons learned, build resilience through conversation, experience renewal, and express compassion for others. These phases mirror the abstract conceptual-ization and reflection components of the experiential learning cycle.

The cycle time between response and recovery might be days, but in some cases it occurs within hours. Thus, the learning cycle is not a casual, rational process but involves deep emotions and reflection. Crisis response and recov-ery require an understanding of and ability to manage the volatility of emo-tions in this context. The emotions of anger and fear emerge most commonly and are potentially volatile. Leaders therefore need emotional intelligence to regulate their responses (see, e.g., Boyatzis, 2009). Properly regulated emo-tions interweave with cognitive aspects of judgment, enabling leaders to take action based on their awareness, intuition, and values.

Crisis situations require leaders who not only show the capacity for adap-tation but also find new ways to solve problems and take action. The environ-ment demands that leaders facilitate an innovative and ongoing learning process within their organizations. It is critical in combat to learn and adapt more quickly than the enemy does. More generally, the lesson revolves around the nature of decision making for leaders in all situations. Importantly, the les-sons learned are not about command and control or hierarchical decision mak-ing often associated with military leadership. For example, Croswell and Yaroslaski (in press) explain how military doctrine has shifted from recogniz-ing leadership as a process that emphasizes the “exercise of authority” to rec-ognizing it as the interaction of parts and processes. The command and control model of decision making proved decisive in World War II. It became the standard organizational and leadership model for the next few decades. Military and business organizations adopted the command and control models and trained leaders around their core principles. Today, these models of lead-ership appear outdated. Command and control models prove less effective in both military and civilian organizations. They may even prove disastrous. Rather than simply respond to command and control procedures established in previous wars, the young leaders in Iraq and Afghanistan adopted a stance of



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response and recovery (see Baum, 2005). The response and recovery cycle was built on a foundation of emergent experiences that looks a lot more like learn-ing and adaptation than simply following orders and establishing routines.

Teaching Approach: A Case Study of the Battle of Takur GharIn light of our objectives for students to understand the crisis environment leaders face, the experiences associated with a crisis, and the learning needed to navigate crisis, we developed a case study that illustrates and makes con-nections between the three areas of crisis leadership (e.g., context, experi-ence, and response and recovery). The case is based on the battle fought at Takur Ghar in Afghanistan in 2002, which serves as an exemplar for crisis leadership (March, Sproull, & Tamuz, 1991). We were guided by teaching from an experiential learning perspective (Reynolds & Vince, 2007). Using a case allowed us to create a common story and set of events that highlight patterns of behavior that occur in all organizations. Specifically, we relied on the case to trigger insights into leadership, teamwork, decision making, and opportunities for improvement in the student’s organization; move from ask-ing who made the wrong decision to asking about the circumstances that prompted the decision; and prompt students to consider the conditions under which they might need to make these kinds of decisions. We developed a short teaching module for this case and a series of questions to guide discus-sion (see Appendices A and B, respectively, which are also available online at http://jme.sagepub.com/supplemental).

Brief Summary of the Battle of Takur GharThe case describes how a group of Navy SEALs and Army Rangers secured a key strategic mountain, called Takur Ghar (translated as “High Mountain”). During the battle, eight U.S. service members were killed. The larger mili-tary operation, Operation Anaconda, was intended to kill or capture a group of terrorists consolidated in valley hideouts in Afghanistan (U.S. Air Force Headquarters, 2005). The overall operation proved the first successful sup-pression of Afghanistan forces in the last century by Western forces, chal-lenging conventional wisdom that Afghanistan could not be taken militarily, something that both Great Britain and the Soviet Union had tried and failed to do. Details of the events are available in other sources, including an auto-biographical account (Self, 2008), journalistic accounts (MacPherson, 2005; Naylor, 2005), and media interviews (Phillips, 2006). (For a list of




resources, see Appendix C, which is available online at http://jme.sagepub.com/supplemental.)

The case about the battle at Takur Ghar describes the communication, logistical, and organizational coordination challenges in a combined effort of the U.S. Army, Navy, and Air Force. Communication protocols and channels were an ongoing issue. Command of operations was constantly being handed back and forth, and chain of command was under constant negotiation. Two minutes from the target-landing zone, the Army Ranger Quick Reaction Force lost radio contact with a second helicopter carrying another Ranger team. This is where the case begins. The remaining elements of the case describe the challenges associated with crisis leadership, including elements of the envi-ronment, the event experience, and the competencies necessary for response.

The situations faced by army leaders in combat, and more specifically the battle at Takur Ghar, represent the kind of ill-structured problems faced by lead-ers in a crisis. Captain Nate Self, the platoon leader and focal point of the case, leads his team in finding one member of the SEAL team, Neil Roberts, who was jolted out of his helicopter earlier in the night. It was later discovered that Roberts was killed by enemy forces. Self’s team had not heard that the SEAL helicopter was shot down, nor had it heard the specifics of Roberts’s case. The team faced not only a changing environment but also one that was new to them.

The command structure involved integration of multiple forces and agen-cies, to include nonmilitary organizations such as the CIA. Not only did this joint interdependence create communication and logistical challenges, but it also exposed how current practices prove limited in novel situations. The story of Captain Self reveals that leading in novel situations requires the leader to navigate unclear and shifting goals. At first, the mission was to secure the downed helicopter; then, prior to take-off, the mission was expanded to pos-sibly include a “missing American”; and then, en route, the mission was altered again to reinforce a distressed SEAL team.

The events of Takur Ghar are representative of what leaders in the U.S. Army face in Iraq and Afghanistan. They reveal that leaders seldom operate with simple, well-structured problems. Instead, most leaders face problems that are poorly delineated and have no clear outcome. Even when an outcome is reached, experts will disagree about the success of the events (King & Kitchener, 1994). Managers facing ill-structured problems need to engage in learning, because cause-and-effect relationships are more complex and require constant reevaluation. Most striking of all, perhaps, is that the efforts on Takur Ghar reveal the significant unintended consequences that confront leaders. The mission was accomplished, in the sense that the mountaintop was secured, but at the expense of seven soldiers’ lives.



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Effectiveness of Lessons

We have presented the model and the case to MBA and undergraduate busi-ness students, in addition to a variety of leaders working in government, business, and academia. Participants in executive education sessions viewed the Rescue on Roberts Ridge (Phillips, 2006) video and engaged in discus-sion and analysis of the case and the model. About 30 participants responded in writing to two questions at the end of the session. These two questions, “The subject matter was interesting” and “The subject matter was relevant to my position,” received average scores of 4.5 or higher on a Likert-type scale ranging from 1 = completely disagree to 5 = completely agree.

We collected written qualitative evaluations from 35 undergraduate stu-dents from two different class sections, an introductory class in Leadership and an introductory class in Organizational Behavior. We solicited the feed-back at the end of one lesson in which we discussed the model and viewed the Roberts Ridge video (Phillips, 2006). Students expressed generally positive learning outcomes after viewing and discussing the case. One student noted how the case illustrated that “leadership is not all learned and practiced; some of the actions seemed innate.” This is a common observation and provides the opportunity to discuss whether students think leadership is learned or innate. Another student noted the importance of “communication and adaptability in a complex situation.” Yet a third student explained that “You can’t always plan ahead” and “As a leader, you can be put in unexpected situations.” Other students made clear connections between crisis and leadership: “As a leader you will be put in unexpected situations and you should be able to cope”; “You should always be prepared for the worst. I was shocked and surprised at how many times the situation changed”; and “I couldn’t believe that they could think of a plan while under fire.” The case also encouraged some par-ticipants to reflect on their own leadership: “I’m not sure that I could handle [the situation] with the same composure that they did.” Others reported that they were “emotionally attached and affected by the video” and described “feeling on edge while watching the video of the battle.”

Boundary Conditions and Other ConsiderationsOur purpose in this article was to share our experiences teaching crisis lead-ership, to review relevant research that has shaped our thinking, and to offer a framework that guides future thinking on the topic. We now offer some of the boundary conditions for applying this approach. First, the links between military combat and some forms of crisis leadership have their limits. Combat




often occurs within a compressed time frame, whereas organizational crisis can unfold over days, months, and years. Second, women’s roles in combat have continued to evolve as the nature of combat and the environment have changed. Our interest focused specifically on the combat experience of U.S. Army leaders. Throughout our research and observation, we have worked with female Army officers who served in combat positions, and several of their experiences have been integrated into the models and observations. A third consideration rests in the high-stakes nature of combat, which creates an environment unlike the typical business environment. Thus, the psycho-logical and physical stress of combat is quite different from that experienced in a typical office.

Furthermore, some will argue that the use of a case study based on combat ”glorifies” or “romanticizes” the military and seeks to reinforce a militaristic culture in American society. Although we are sympathetic to this concern, we believe that the case study and the research have the opposite effect: to show the harsh realities of combat in order to learn lessons not only about how to become better leaders but also about making tough choices about putting individuals in harm’s way in the first place.

We believe the application of our research on army officers and the Takur Ghar case study provide an informative, interesting, and thought-provoking tool to improve awareness of the crisis leadership context, experience, and competencies necessary to be effective in crisis. This article offers manage-ment educators a framework for understanding how military leadership, especially during combat, can provide meaningful insights into leadership during crisis. Integrating military examples and lessons into management education can enrich student understanding of the demands and competen-cies associated with crisis leadership.

Appendix A

Sample Program (2-Hour Session)

Key Topics Covered Crisis leadership Leadership decision making and communication Teams Crisis planning and response Innovation and change Learning and adaptation



Kayes et al. 197

Learning GoalsParticipants should be able to

° Recognize and explain characteristics of the crisis environment

° Discuss concepts and aspects of response to crisis

° Illustrate how these concepts can help leaders learn and navigate crisis

Preassignment• Participants will receive, and be expected to read, the case study and

supporting materials before the session.

Schedule30 minutes: Introduction

Instructor provides an overview of the leadership model and describes the day’s activities.

50 minutes: Video case study

The class learns what happened at Takur Ghar by watching a video of the case (see Appendix C for resources).

5 minutes: Instructor initial debrief

Instructor asks for general reactions to this emotional case and pro-vides context for participants.

20 minutes: Team discussion

Students form teams and discuss questions related to the case (Appendix B).

15 minutes: Instructor detailed debrief

Instructor describes the case and works through the questions with the teams.




Appendix B

Discussion Questions to Use With Video Case Studies

For use with Rescue on Roberts Ridge (Phillips, 2006) or Robert’s Ridge: Rescue in Afghanistan (Solid Entertainment, 2006)

Describing the Situation• What factors made the situation complex?• What was the goal in Operation Anaconda?• What did the Navy SEALs hope to achieve in their pursuit of Takur

Ghar?• What were some of the unintended consequences of what happened?• What was the situation faced by the Army Rangers Quick Reaction

Force led by Captain Nate Self?• How did the Quick Reaction Force adjust or learn in the

moment?• What was the exit plan for the battle? How did it change over

time?

Application to Leadership and Organizational Behavior• What lessons can be learned about leadership in a complex, novel,

and dynamic environment from the case?• What do the events teach us about our organization?

— How can we use these lessons to avoid the mishaps that occurred on Takur Ghar in our organization?

— Identify a situation at work (or former workplace) where the break-down of learning occurred. Which warning signs did you see?

— Based on the case study, what will you do differently at work?

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or pub-lication of this article.



Kayes et al. 199

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