Leadership and Unit Effectiveness in Combat Infantry Platoons.

Mapping the components of military leadership exhibited by Israeli platoon leaders was achieved using subjective reports by the platoon leaders themselves and by others peers, subordinates, and supervisors regarding perceptions of their leadership. The subjective reports implicit perceptions of leadership extracted from the analysis of our respondents 91 infantry platoon leaders suggest the following tentative scheme of leadership The Israeli platoon leaders representations include both internal qualities of the leaders and overt behavioral patterns. The internal qualities are Two types of military skills personal and command abilities two types of motivations general achievement and militaryorganizational commitment and a general factor of traits. The main theme of all the internal elements is a mission-oriented and success-driven individual combatant. The external-overt factor, i.e., behavioral patterns, reveal the classical dimensions of leadership mission- and task-related behaviors the human relations aspects of the group maintenance behavior and, finally, a value-transmission and educational activity.