Selecting and Training U.S. Advisors: Interpersonal Skills and the Advisor-Counterpart Relationship
Issue Date
2009-04-24Author
Phelps, Christopher Ely
Publisher
University of Kansas
Format
43 pages
Type
Thesis
Degree Level
M.A.
Discipline
International Studies
Rights
This item is protected by copyright and unless otherwise specified the copyright of this thesis/dissertation is held by the author.
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Show full item recordAbstract
Secretary Robert Gates, Department of Defense, stated, "(A)rguably, the most important military component in the War on Terror is not the fighting we do ourselves, but how well we enable and empower our partners to defend and govern their own countries." The role of the U.S. advisor is critical to empower our partners, and U.S. advisors being drawn from the conventional force is an enduring mission. Typically, U.S. advisors were drawn from the Special Forces community; however, the demand for more advisors coupled with the United States' global reach and commitments has far exceeded the organizational strength of one element within the U.S. military. The results from this study will not only improve the current mission assigned to the U.S. military, but will enable the Department of Defense to improve the selection and training of future advisors as the military prepares for the enduring advisor mission. A central research question for this study was: are the interpersonal skills of American advisors related to Iraqi perceptions of the American advisor's performance? The author embedded with thirteen U.S. advisor teams in al-Anbar, Iraq in May 2008. The team administered surveys addressing interpersonal skills to seventy-six U.S. advisor-Iraqi pairs. Results of the research indicated that Iraqi perceptions of an advisor's interpersonal behaviors strongly predicted both how effective they believed their advisor to be and how satisfied they were with their advisor.
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