Embracing Change: The Israeli Military Culture and Training Methodology

I read “Future Leader: The Journey of Developing (and Nurturing) Adaptability, The Future is Now,” written by Mr. Donald E. Vandergriff and published by the Future Center, with great interest. It was particularly fascinating to me because the approach proscribed for the development of future military leaders reminded me so much of my own past.

I was born, brought up, and educated in the United States, but in June 1990 I moved to Israel. Four months later I was serving with an Israeli paratrooper unit. My preconceptions of military culture and training were largely based on US war movies. Like most conscripts – be they American or Israeli – the day-to-day reality of military life is far different from the world imagined.

I was chiefly surprised by the relatively collegial atmosphere. I expected to be yelled at, have my personal space invaded, to be insulted, and even to be humiliated by commanders. I was not prepared for sergeants and officers who acted like nurturing mentors. They ran us into the ground, but they did it by encouraging us to succeed. Instead of trying to break us down in order to re-build us, they worked to understand our particular strengths and provide us with opportunities to excel. More importantly, they empowered us to figure out on our own the best way to accomplish our tasks.

Vandergriff writes that the US army wants to create “leaders of character who are ready, willing and able to make the right decisions in the face of adversity, be it the enemy, subordinates, peers or superiors, on and off the battlefield.” This statement also accurately describes the Israeli military ethos.

The concepts that lay at the heart of Vandergriff’s six-week Adaptive Leadership Course (ALC), the competencies valued by the program, and the behavior of the course instructors closely resembles the Israeli model.

Evaluating his experiment, Vandergriff lists several observed benefits and limitations of the course. According to Vandergriff, the course improves pattern recognition skills, decision-making, communication skills, and leadership development. The limitations include a difficulty simulating operating environments, failure to capture the on-going interactive nature of tactics or decision-making, the belief that the course works best only at the company level, and the inability to effectively apply the program to special operations.

Vandergriff’s evaluation of the benefits and limitations associated with his experiment at the Georgetown ROTC provide a valuable glimpse at the potential impact these concepts can have on a soldier’s development, but to gain a more comprehensive understanding of how the implementation of these concepts increases combat readiness, critical thinking, and the establishment of a learning organization, researchers may want to examine the Israeli training methodology more closely. For the Israeli military, these concepts are at the core of the military culture – from a soldier’s first moments during induction, throughout every stage of training, and even during real-world operations.

By fully integrating these cultural concepts with training and operations, Israeli soldiers gain all the benefits associated with critical thinking without suffering from the same limitations described by Vandergriff.

Selection and Training: It’s Always a Question of Character
As many people know, military service in Israel is compulsory. As a result of the tight integration between the military and civilian population, the values most admired by combat units are well-known. This, to some extent, enables a certain level of self-selection on the part of potential recruits. Recruits whose character reflects these traits gravitate toward combat units, while those who are self-aware enough to know that their temperament won’t meet expectations find alternative ways to fulfill their obligations.

Although it might seem counter-intuitive, physical strength and stamina are not highly valued. For instance, when recruits test for the paratroopers, officers evaluating performance mark down how many push-ups, pull-ups, and sit-ups a recruit achieves within a fixed period of time, but this information is mainly used as a baseline for gauging a recruit’s performance throughout the day-long entrance exam.

Throughout the testing, each group of recruits – anywhere between twenty and thirty individuals – is required to complete a number of tasks. The tasks can be as simple as running from Point A to Point B within thirty seconds. To complete the task, the recruits must run the distance and assemble in a series of rows before the allotted time elapses. The group will run back and forth as many times as are necessary until they succeed to complete the task on time. During these sprints, evaluators, who are aware of the individual strengths and weaknesses of each recruit, look to see if the stronger runners help other members of the group and monitor the resolve of those who are not as physically fit as their peers.

At other times, the group is given relatively complicated tasks – like finding a way to use a few pieces of provided equipment to get the entire group on the other side of a concrete wall without touching the wall. During these types of examinations, evaluators look to see which members of the group actively participate in the problem solving.

In addition, the testing process includes a series of physically draining tasks – carrying stretchers weighted with sand and continuous runs up and down hills with weight on shoulders – which are simply designed to provide the unmotivated with an opportunity to quit.

Evaluators attempt to identify recruits with high levels of determination (as evidenced by the willingness to continue despite obvious physical difficulty), team-players (demonstrated by helping others and active participation in solving group problems), thinkers (established by taking an active role in discussions and problem solving), and who demonstrate throughout the testing process a friendly, positive attitude.
Interestingly, an individual who exhibits remarkable athletic ability and coordination, but who is not perceived as having the valued character traits will not be selected to serve with the paratroopers.

Throughout the 14-18 month training period, commanders continuously monitor the behavior of recruits. Recruits who fail to demonstrate these desired character traits are not punished. Rather, officers, sergeants, and members of their own unit will impress upon them the value of these character traits through non-threatening, one-on-one discussions. If a recruit’s behavior improves, he is not explicitly rewarded. Those who fail to adopt the desired traits will either ask to leave the unit voluntarily or they might be asked to leave by commanders. Those who most closely embody the desired character traits are given additional responsibilities – such as communications, field medicine, sniper – for which they are esteemed within the unit and within society at large.

Typically, recruits who complete the entire training process leave the company-sized training group for one of four options.

1. Attend officer-training course. Depending on suitability, officers train new recruits or return to serve as officers within the battalion or division. Suitability to train new recruits is determined by demonstrating core character traits.
2. Attend non-commissioned officer training course. Depending on suitability, staff sergeants train new recruits or return to serve as sergeants within battalion.
3. Sent for additional training before returning to serve within battalion or division.
4. Sent directly to the battalion in order to serve with the primary assault group, reconnaissance, mortars, or anti-tank group. Suitability for each is determined by individual’s demonstrated aptitude during training.

Just because a recruit has demonstrated high levels of proficiency during training and combat missions does not mean that he is considered a suitable candidate for leading the next-generation of recruits. In fact, an individual’s personality and character traits are far more important than his technical proficiency.

First and foremost, leaders are expected to be smart, precise, innovative, hard-working, resolute, and likeable. Physical stamina and coordination are recognized as valuable traits that merely play a secondary importance to a soldier’s success.

Transforming Recruits Into Adaptive Leaders
From the very first day, new recruits discover that their actions as individuals directly impact the group. This idea is reinforced before, during, and after every training exercise and every activity. From the first moment recruits wake up, prior to every meal, between every training exercise, before going to sleep, and throughout the night, commanders devise creative ways to reinforce this idea. Although sprinting from point A to point B until the group completes the activity on time together is a favorite, recruits are asked to organize assault vests in rows prior to a lesson in tactics, set up targets prior to a training exercise, or organize the contents of their kitbags for inspection within a defined period of time.
In each instance, recruits are never told how to complete the task. They are only told the desired end-state and given a set period of time to accomplish the task. As a group, the unit must figure out the best way to achieve its goal on time. Units can repeat these mundane tasks literally ten times – often much more – before they work together effectively to complete the task on time. For much of a recruit’s first three months in the military, it seems as if life if measured in an endless series of tasks that he and his group are trying to complete in thirty seconds.

Recruits are also provided with a rationale for this focus on accomplishing tasks on time. Early on, recruits are told that this experience is meant to mirror the real world, where the success of a mission and the lives of people could depend on a unit being somewhere or accomplishing something by a specific time.

By the end of basic training, there is no longer any need to drill this concept into the minds of recruits. The lesson is learned. Proof of success is found when the unit consistently completes tasks on time.

Throughout those first few months, each recruit is provided ample opportunities for leadership. These opportunities manifest themselves in the form of helping to organize and support group efforts to complete tasks on time as well as within the context of training exercises.

Even at the earliest stages of fire and maneuver drills, where a three-man team attacks defended positions that lie ahead, recruits are only given basic instructions regarding their objective and the safety precautions they must take throughout the exercise. The leader of the three-man team is determined by the team itself. This individual gives the initial commands at the outset of the exercise, but a dialogue between the members of the small team – regarding what is seen and what next steps should be taken – is typical. To some extent, hitting the targets is a secondary goal behind learning how to communicate and act effectively as a small unit.

During basic training, most exercises focus on developing skills at the level of squad and platoon. Since the Israeli military understands that a unit’s commander may be killed in the first moments of any engagement, other members of the unit – even young recruits – should be comfortable taking command. For this reason, a unit’s commander if often “killed” or “wounded” during training exercises. Although the military has a clear chain of command – whereby a lieutenant takes over when a captain is wounded, etc – the military does not train recruits to wait for the next in line to take command. Rather, recruits are trained to understand that any one can take command and that the person closes to the issue – with a visual on attackers for instance – should feel empowered to direct the actions of other members of the team.

Fir instance, in a scenario where a commander – who leads from the front – is incapacitated, the radioman who is right behind him or the sniper on his left would be a far better position to direct the unit’s fire and maneuvering than another officer or sergeant who has been managing the force from the rear. But more important than the real-world implications of enabling a unit to react more quickly to contact with enemy fire, soldiers learn at the earliest stages of their lives as soldiers that they can and should be making command decisions.

As soldiers move further along in basic training and beyond, soldiers increasingly take on roles that are further up the chain of command. As a result, soldiers at every rank become more aware of how their unit’s actions fits within the larger strategy, increase their ability to coordinate with other forces taking part in operations, and become used to making command decisions.

Creating a Learning Organization
As Vandergriff points out, skills honed in a classroom or on the training ground don’t necessarily translate to the stress found in the field. This is not an issue for the Israeli model, which purposely places new recruits in operational environments during early stages of training.

This model serves two purposes. First, it enables commanders and soldiers to identify individuals who are not suited for the stress of combat at the earliest possible stage. Although officers and sergeants are all battle-tested, that doesn’t always mean that they are prepared to lead men into combat. Likewise, even the most technically proficient soldiers do not always function effectively when in the field. By gradually increasing the complexity of missions – from foot patrols in relatively calm environments and sweeps of villages to ambushes and arrests of wanted terrorists – the military is able to identify who is fit and who is not. If commanders or soldiers are not able to overcome the challenges that make it difficult for them to function in hostile environments, they transfer to support units.

Second, this enables soldiers to gradually gain experience with real-world combat situations and slowly gain the ability to deal with the related stress, learn to integrate what is experienced to improve techniques during training, and gives them the confidence to trust their own judgment.

An important facet of the Israeli training model is that debriefings are taken very seriously. They are employed at the end of every exercise and every action – whether it’s a brief fire and maneuver exercise by a three-man team, the arrest of a wanted individual, or a division-wide operation. From the very beginning, recruits are encouraged to ask questions – even ones that are critical of the purpose or nature of the exercise. During these debriefings, commanders don’t just take the time to answer every question, but use the forum as an opportunity to create an informative discussion regarding key strategic, tactical, or cultural issues that may arise. The goal of these discussions is to improve effectiveness by clarifying roles, exposing missed opportunities, and advancing new ways to solve the problems encountered. During these discussions, the group attempts to achieve consensus regarding best practices.

As recruits gain more experience, both by way of additional training and real-world experience, they increasingly feel comfortable voicing opinions that are different from their commanders and commanders feel more inclined to take their soldier’s feedback into account during future planning. Beyond increasing a soldier’s comfort with thinking critically, the dialogue between commanders and soldiers makes the adoption of new methods and techniques more likely. As new ideas evolve at the level of squad and platoon, there is a framework that enables, in fact encourages and rewards, lower echelon commanders who promote new ideas up the chain of command.

Furthermore, the Israeli military has a systematic program for the cross-pollination of new ideas and techniques. In Israel, officers and sergeants who are selected to train and lead new recruits often have served in different units. For instance, a company commander for the paratroopers may have served as the commanding officer of an elite reconnaissance unit associated with the Air Force, Shaldag, and some of the staff sergeants may have served with other elite units, like the Israeli SEAL unit, Commando Yami. Likewise, individuals who served with the paratroopers might end up training new recruits that have joined either the Golani or Givati brigade.

As with every military, each of these units have their own culture and slightly different methods for training and executing tactics. By enabling soldiers from different units to work together to train new recruits, the Israeli military facilitates the emergence of a constantly evolving culture that combines the best elements of each unit and that embraces change as the best way to achieve the common goal of creating a more effective fighting force.