Followership Values and Traits of Senior Enlisted Advisors Within the United States Special Operations Forces

• In Event: Leader-Follower Dynamics During Crisis and Change

Short Description

The Special Operations community consists of some of the most highly trained, educated, and diverse individuals in the world. This presentation will explore how their followership values and traits have developed during their many years of service in peace, war, and other turbulent times.

Detailed Abstract

The purpose of the research project is to gain an understanding of the followership characteristics, values, and traits that are held by individual members of the Senior Enlisted Special Operations Forces. The U.S. Special Operations community has a unique population base to begin the study of followership. While leadership is one of inherent traits of the United States Special Operations Forces community, there is little data regarding the art of followership in this community.
The initial study will begin with a collaborative group, consisting of some of the most highly experienced U.S. Special Operations Forces, Senior Enlisted Advisors. The data received from this sample population will be presented as the framework for further studies. Secondary and tertiary studies will eventually be conducted to compare the results to conventional Navy Senior Enlisted Advisors as well as junior Navy service members to determine if there are trends to identifying traits and followership values that can be correlated to success rates throughout the various levels of Special Operations, selection, and certification courses.
Follow-up studies would consist of comparing the data to other Special Operations Forces leaders, conventional force leaders, and newly enlisted volunteers. Once multiple sample populations are analyzed, we hope to be able to identify values and traits early on that are indicators of entry level service members having increased potential to eventually be selected for Special Operations Senior Enlisted Advisor positions.

Participants

• Daniel L. Williams, Indiana Wesleyan University

• Bri Flynn, John Deere

• Kathleen Callahan, Christopher Newport University