Role of Resiliency Factors and Positive Psychology in Overcoming Leadership Challenges Essay

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Role of Positive Psychology and Resiliency Factors in Overcoming Leadership Challenges

Leaders in the profession of arms greatly rely on influence to make their leadership effective. Influence can be defined as that ability to direct the character and behaviour of someone else, as well as their development. The current army operates in a more or less decentralized environment, which is increasingly becoming a challenge to the army leaders. Thus the army leaders need to develop innovative leadership skills so as to cope with the complex operational environment (Meredith et al, 2011).

As the United States toiled through ten years of continuous war, which was filled with numerous deployments and difficult-to-tackle adversaries, the troops were evidently affected, both physically and psychologically. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan proved challenging for the service members together with their families. The conflicts forced the service members to be deployed for long periods repeatedly. This caused them and their families great stress. While other military personnel have a greater ability to cope under harsh circumstances, many are the ones who find it difficult to handle the stress of deployment (Meredith et al, 2011).

The US military leadership is faced with this challenge of managing the psychological effects of war. War comes with other vices such as domestic violence, sexual assault, drug and substance abuse, among many others. It is upon the military leaders to treat the psychologically impaired soldiers as well as prevent the adverse outcomes of combat exposure (Meredith et al, 2011). One way of creating psychological resilience among the soldiers is by inculcating positive psychology and using Master Resilience Training (MRT) programs.

Positive Psychology

Positive psychology involves the study and application of positive character traits, positive emotions and positive institutions. Positive psychology is mainly meant to complement pathology, which has for long been the focus of clinical psychology. For any given individual, positive psychology will aim at developing joy, well being and good character so as to realize optimal functioning of the said individual. The practice of positive psychology assumes that beneficial traits and the negative ones are two completely independent items (Mills & Kreutzer, 2016).

The military leadership has pointed out mental health as one major issue that has to be addressed, both during the war and after the war. This concern gave birth to the Comprehensive Soldier Fitness (CSF) program for the army in 2009, based on a framework proposed by Martin Seligman, an experienced psychologist (Mills & Kreutzer, 2016).

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The CSF program is tailored to cultivate psychological resilience in the soldiers, and their families, and thus improve the performance of the soldiers. This program came to being after an extensive research by the Positive Psychology Centre located within the University of Pennsylvania. It is a more holistic approach in dealing with the emotional, spiritual and social aspects of soldiers and their families. It particularly helps soldier to manage the stress that comes with the demands of war and continuous deployment. The CSF program employs four strategies to achieve its objectives. These are: Master Resilience Training (MRT), Institutional MRT, Comprehensive Resilience Modules, and Global Assessment Tool (GAT) (Mills & Kreutzer, 2016). We shall herein discuss the first strategy in details.

Master Resilience Training (MRT)

This is the main program under the CSF, designed to make the soldiers resilient, as the name suggests, as well as optimize their performance. Psychological resilience helps the soldiers both on and off the battle field. The MRT program also empowers soldiers to teach their colleagues how to be resilient. MRT borrows a lot from the Penn Resilience Program (PRP) developed by University of Pennsylvania in the 1990s. It helps prevent depression among the soldiers and helps manage post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The army leadership thought it wise to deal with PTSD proactively, rather than tarry till the soldiers return home with PTSD and then start to treat it (Mills & Kreutzer, 2016).

The first 5 days of the MRT program is mainly instructional, where the soldiers are instructed on how to build resilience, mental toughness and strong character. For the 3 days that follow, the soldiers are taught how to deliver resilience training, so that they can pass on this knowledge to the others in the battle field. Day 9 is for Resilience First Aid training, which is necessary in case the limits of MRT are exceeded. On day 10, being the final day for the MRT training, the soldiers are taught how to set….....

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