Cadet Randy Hopper, Keith H. Hammonds,

"This is a unique world, where everyone is trying to develop you," says David
Sattelmeyer, a senior, or "firstie," and a battalion commander, one of the
highest-ranking cadet positions. "You're constantly watching others to see what
works. And people are constantly looking at you. The place keeps pushing you."
Everyone is following, and nearly everyone is leading, all the time. Everyone is
evaluated -- all the time. Every action is taken as an opportunity to learn.
Leadership Lessons (II) "I had a former roommate who committed an honor-code violation. When he told me
what he'd done, I didn't bat an eye. I reported him. Not because I didn't care
about him; I cared deeply. But I knew that the principle was more important than
his being given a second chance. I was 18, and I realized that my first
responsibility was to the principle of honor."
--John Grisillo, '87, president, Compass Group
The Leadership Formula: Knowing, Doing, Being
"People say you can't change someone," says Lieutenant Colonel Scott Snook, "but
we're privileged here. We have some of the best and brightest potential in this
country, and we have them for 47 months, 24-7. We got 'em at night, on weekends,
all summer long."
He is not boasting, exactly. He is marveling at the opportunity. "We have them
when they're 18, which is a crucial moment," says Snook, who graduated from West
Point in 1980. "They're ripe for change. Not only do we have them, but we're
also empowered to change them. The country asks us to change who they are!"
Back in rural Pennsylvania, where he grew up, Snook wanted to be a doctor. To
his own surprise, he has stuck with the Army for 21 years since his cadet days.
He was the executive officer of a company in Grenada, where he was wounded by
friendly fire. He earned an MBA and a PhD in organizational behavior at Harvard,
where he returns regularly to teach in executive programs.
Snook now heads West Point's Office of Policy, Planning, and Analysis. His
mandate is to confront the academy's well-worn apparatus for leadership
development and to seek a scientific basis for a system that's rooted in
experience and inertia: Why are things done the way they are? What works? How
does it work? Could it work better?
The first Army leadership manual, written 25 years ago, coined the expression
"Be, know, do." It was a neat summation of how effective leaders operate, but it
also pointed to the central challenge of leadership development. The capacity
for "knowing" and "doing" is relatively easy to build up in a student. It's a
function of education and training, which is what most universities are good at.
But knowledge and skills are perishable -- both because they're not applied all
the time and because they can become outdated. It's the "be" piece -- your
self-concept, your values, your ethical makeup, who you are -- that lasts.
That's what consumes Snook: What does it mean to be an officer? And how can West
Point shape the "be" piece for each of its 4,000 cadets?
Snook really loves this stuff. West Point has devised a mechanism, perhaps
unwittingly, that forces 18-year-olds to grow up. Cadets advance by confronting
moral ambiguity, by resolving competing claims on their identity. That's how you
get at the "be" piece. "We don't know if we have it right," Snook says. "But it
happens through experiences, if you're passionately involved. And bottom line,
the sorts of experiences that change you are those that get you out of your
comfort zone.
"Sometimes," Snook continues, "the biggest window for changing someone's
self-concept opens when he fails. That's a fundamentally different way of
thinking about development. It might be when he fails a course for the first
time in his life or when he commits an honor-code violation. When that happens,
he's open to self-reflection."