Center for the Advancement of Leader Development and Organizational Learning: Site Pages

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System Account — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 20:39:09 GMT

About

System Account — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 14:17:04 GMT

About Us

The Center for the Advancement of Leader Development and Organizational Learning (CALDOL) was established at West Point to be a support cell-a small team that exists as a catalyst for members of the profession to connect, to engage with each other, and to advance the profession. CALDOL serves company-level leaders as well as the cadets who are preparing to lead Soldiers now. In addition to developing and operating professional forums and otherwise connecting leaders across the Army in conversation about leading and growing combat-effective teams, the CALDOL provides the Army with research on leader development and organizational learning.

A foundational assumption that drives us is the idea that the cutting-edge knowledge of the Army resides in the minds of leaders at the tip of the spear-leaders in the experience right now. Connecting those leaders in conversation with each other as well as with those who will follow in their footsteps brings together the Army's greatest knowledge resources.

We believe that connecting leaders in conversation about their work transforms the individuals who participate as well as the whole of the profession. To be effective individually and collectively, members of the profession must have access to each other and to the knowledge that they develop together.

[View the CALDOL slide presentation]

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System Account — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 21:06:55 GMT

Center for the Advancement of Leader Development and Organizational Learning

We believe that the Army profession is effective only to the degree that its members take responsibility for it, engage in the collective conversation that shapes it, and see themselves as being connected to their fellow warriors-past, present, and future. The profession is like a powerful river-in constant motion as it gains new Soldiers and loses experienced ones-its members learning and innovating as they engage with a rapidly changing environment.

One way that leaders are connecting in conversation is through online professional forums (aka online communities) like the Company Command (CC) and Platoon Leader (PL) forums. These forums bring together leaders from across the Army to share ideas and experiences and to improve our collective effectiveness. The PL forum specifically also gives cadets at West Point and in ROTC unprecedented access to the ongoing conversation of the profession they are preparing to join. It is like having a four-year CTLT experience plugged into a living curriculum grounded in the cutting-edge, current experiences of actual platoon leaders.

By engaging in professional forums like the PL forum, leaders gain access to knowledge-however, more powerfully for the profession, they gain a platform to share their ideas, lessons learned, and wisdom born of experience. They are enabled to be professionals on a scale never before possible.

The stories and examples we are seeing depict a profession that is advancing toward an exciting future-one marked by leaders who see professional forums like the CC forum not just as a place to get something or even to "give back," but as a place where the profession grows.