Gut Feel: Developing Intuition in Army Junior Officers

摘要

Understanding how we make intuitive decisions and how we can develop this quality in junior leaders is important for an Army confronted with unfamiliar environments, rapidly changing circumstances, and surrounded by a seemingly ubiquitous media able to draw attention on the outcomes of heretofore innocuous junior leader's decisions. This challenge is particularly salient as we consider operational unit junior company grade officer leader development. Unit level commanders retain the critical responsibility to hone the leader development edge acquired in institutional training into a war fighting capability needed to execute rapid, effective in extremis decision making. This paper examines the cognition and development of intuition in Army junior officers from a strategic perspective. It poses several questions: first, to what extent does the US Army's training and leader development process focus on developing junior officer's intuition as a viable problem solving method or does it primarily focus on improving these leader s rational, analytical abilities. Second, how can US Army commander s better train and develop junior officers to confidently rely on intuition to make decisions in a VUCA environment. The paper concludes with potential leader development processes that can assist unit commanders in developing intuition in junior officers.