Command and General Staff Officers' Course (CGSOC) Common Core L100: Developing Organizations and Leaders
L100 supports the CGSS common core goals of preparing leaders who understand the complexity of the operational environment, are critical and creative thinkers, and can meet organizational-level leadership challenges in a complex, uncertain, ambiguous, and volatile environment. The block also enhances your ability to communicate concepts with clarity and precision in both written and oral forms. The lessons in L100 provide you the opportunity to improve your critical thinking, enforce the importance of lifelong learning, and provide meaning making by linking personal experiences to models and concepts of organizational leadership. The lessons are:
- L101 - Developing Organizational Leaders and Organizations
- L102 - Ethical Dimensions of Organizational Leadership
- L103 - Organizational Power and Influence
- L104 - Organizational Culture and Climate
- L105 - Leading Organizations In Change
- L106 - Developing Learning Organizations
- L107 - Building Organizational Teams
- L108 - Organizational Stress and Resilience
- L109 - Developing Ethically Aligned Organizations
- L110 - Implementing an Organizational Vision
- L111a: Extending Influence through Negotiation
- L111b - Extending Influence through Negotiation Practice Exercise
Command and General Staff Officers' Course (CGSOC) Advanced Operations and Warfighting Course (AOWC) L400: Art of Command
The Art of Command, is a sixteen-hour block that examines organizational leadership from the perspective of a commander. The block prepares officers to exercise mission command in complex multi-domain operations by building on the organizational leadership construct established in Common Core. The essence of the block involves what command is and how commanders exercise mission command through the elements of command, to operate in the dynamic, uncertain rapidly changing operational environment. Notable subjects include understanding complexity, leading in multi-national operations, the challenges of commander’s visualization, impediments to decision making, sustaining ethical organizations in the rigors of war, and developing morally courageous followers.
The Art of Command specifically addresses the CGSS mission of educating adaptive, and innovative field grade leaders who lead organizations in complex and uncertain environment through the skilled use of the art of command and the ethical application of land power. We do this by examining the human dimension of warfighting—the cognitive, social, cultural, and ethical aspects field grade leaders must understand to effectively exercise command. Applying a case method, Socratic-questioning approach, students examine concepts and apply them to case studies involving commanders facing the dynamic problems of large-scale combat operations. In all these cases, leaders face uncertainty, complexity, risk, physical and psychological stress, and ethical ambiguity. We assert that how leaders responded to those situations is informative for today’s field grade leaders and commanders.
By design, the eight lessons are concurrent and integrated with AOC modules one to four and allow students to incorporate and apply the ideas, concepts, and theories from the leadership lessons into other AOC classes and exercises.
- L401 - Military Genius: Intellect, Courage, and Determination
- L402 - Complexity
- L403 - Adaptive Leadership
- L404 - Commander's Visualization
- L405 - Impediments to Decision Making
- L406 - Leading in Multinational Operations
- L407 - Sustaining An Ethically Aligned Organization in War
- L408 - Morally Courageous Followers
Electives
A710 Total Fitness: The Leader’s Mind, Body, & Spirit:
This course provides participants with evidence-based approaches and tools for improving fitness in five domains; emotional, social, family, physical, and spiritual. The course covers what it means to be fit in those domains, and methods to achieve fitness in each. The course covers many of the MRT skills and touches on nutrition and alternative forms of physical fitness training.
A713 Mentoring
This 24-hour course is designed to give you valuable tools to help you become a better leader, mentor and mentee. It builds upon concepts from the common core and AOC lessons such as leader development, developing leaders, critical and creative thinking, and organizational leadership, and puts them into the context of organizational and strategic-level leadership through the use of doctrine, academic writing, audio visual media, and expert lectures.
A714: Hacking the Tactical Brain:
This course accelerates tactical expertise. It uses cognitive training methods to improve students’ ability to make high-quality tactical decisions under conditions of stress, uncertainty, and risk. The course helps students apply tactical knowledge using the Adaptive Tactical Thinking (AT2) framework. Simultaneously, it helps students understand and overcome common tactical thinking errors resulting from cognitive biases, time pressure, stress, uncertainty, and risk
A716 Leadership-A Force For Change:
In this course students study and evaluate different methodologies and techniques to successfully lead organizational change. Using the Kotter Change Model and others, students identify and study factors that influence change issues and successful leadership techniques used in changing organizations.
A718 Negotiations for Leaders:
This course develops bargaining and negotiating skills for the contemporary operating environment. Special emphasis is placed on the areas of interpersonal and inter-group conflict, interpersonal influence techniques, and various tactics and strategies as practiced through negotiation simulation exercises.
A720 What’s Your Plan for Leadership Development?:
This 24-hour course is designed to help new organizational level leaders understand and develop their own plan to develop future organizational leaders. You will gain more depth of various elements of leadership development than you received in L100 and L400. You will also learn how to develop an individual plan for subordinates.
A721 Women & Leadership-The Next Generation:
Build on your understanding of culture to examine leadership and the next generation of women in the military. Learn what you need to know to lead and develop the women in your formations. You are an organizational level leader at a time when women are in almost every unit. This class helps you lead them confidently.
A722 Emotional Intelligence for Leaders:
This course helps leaders understand and use emotional intelligence to become better leaders, assist students in developing the skills to understand emotions in themselves and others, discusses how to constructively and effectively apply emotional intelligence, and how to lead with emotional intelligence.
A724 Organizational Leadership Case Studies in Combat:
This course builds upon concepts from common core and AOC. Using a multi-media approach and classroom discourse, the course analyzes the leadership attributes, competencies, and decision making of organizational leaders in combat or preparing for combat. The intent of this approach is to contextualize your future role as an organizational leader in LSCO.
A726 Art of Command:
This course focuses on the challenges that battalion and brigade commanders face as they develop their organizations and subordinate leaders. Several current and former battalion and brigade commanders serve as guest speakers to facilitate learning. The intent is to make you think about the challenges you wrestle with in order to expand your leadership perspective, inform your intuition, and further develop your command philosophy and associated tools.
A731 Genocide and the Military Role:
This course familiarizes international military officers with the concept of genocide prevention. Students gain the tools necessary to advise and assist their government in recognizing and preventing genocide. The course examines and analyzes the military’s capacity to assist in policy making and understand the ability of enlightened military action to prevent genocide.
A734 Genocide and Mass Atrocities Seminar:
Develop an analysis framework for understanding the who, what, and how of genocide and mass atrocities. Prepare to advise senior commanders concerning the prevention of genocide or mass atrocities within any region. Engage with a variety of instructors on topics including pre-situation analysis through post-situation reconstruction within the field of genocide studies. Includes a 1-week TDY to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C. for classes with experts in this field of study and the national security policy arena. This is a 4-credit elective. U.S. Students Only.
A741 Ethical Leadership:
Come explore ethical leadership. Specifically, what ethical leadership is, why it is important, and ways to implement it at the organizational level. Investigate ethical and leadership theories and grapple with historic approaches to gain a more holistic perspective of what it means to practice ethical leadership. current ethical problem.
A797 Future Hunters:
This course provides emerging Army leaders with vital tools and skills to understand, plan for, and make decisions regarding long-term future operating environments. Students leave the class knowing how to identify signals of future change and how the implications of future change shape their decision making.
A798 Focused Research Project:
This course provides elective credit for significant participation in special projects collaborated between CGSC and senior military leaders.
A799 Independent Study in Leadership:
Pursue research in a topic related to organizational leadership. Conduct research and produce written results under the supervision of a designated leadership instructor. Students must have approval of their topic before they are enrolled.
Lesson details are available to registered users of our Blackboard site: https://cgsc.blackboard.com/
