Trust and Dialogue in the Army Profession; Monograph

摘要

Trust is an essential element that forms the core of the professional military ethic. Trust, from an organizational perspective, facilitates the lasting commitment to meet strategic aims. Trust involves the expectation that the object of trust will behave in a favorable manner, and includes the willingness of a person to be vulnerable to the actions of another based on this expectation. Trust binds the Army together as a cohesive unit. Unfortunately, in the Officer Corps there is the perception of a serious erosion of trust that may be reaching dangerously dysfunctional levels. Specifically, there is the perception among Army officers that senior Army leaders are not concerned with representing their services or the military as a whole, but are relenting to civilian officials for their own gain. If the underlying problem within the current Army profession is a perceived lack of trust, then this perceived lack of trust is a function of the true dialogue between the senior/strategic leaders and the junior and mid-career officers. The mechanisms and building blocks of trust revolve around communication and relationships. However, for the Army profession, the concept of communication is misunderstood. More importantly, the Army as a profession does not truly understand the concept of dialogue. This lack of understanding has allowed the perceived erosion of trust amongst the Officer Corps to occur. This monograph seeks to address this issue by defining trust and the Army profession. It identifies the source of the perceived trust erosion within the profession, and it provides a more complete definition of communication involving the concepts of discourse, dialogue, and discussion. It shows how the Army, in attempting to build a learning organization, has failed to include dialogue in its efforts. Finally, the monograph provides recommendations for how the Army profession can rebuild and sustain trust in the future.