Military Review English Edition January-February 2014 | Page 7

LEVERAGING SOCIAL MEDIA

The Army and Social Media
Army social media pioneers Col. Tony Burgess
and Col. Nate Allen had the foresight and motivation in February 2000 to transfer their after-hours,
front-porch conversations about their company
commands into a virtual front-porch community
that evolved into the Company Command Forum.5
The Army created many other forums modeled
after this one, which serve as collaborative sites
where personnel can seek help, learn, share, and
make connections.
The U.S. Army’s Office of the Chief of Public
Affairs formed an Online and Social Media Division in January 2009.6 The division focuses on the
effective use of social media to provide relevant and
timely information to vast audiences as news and
content delivery becomes portable, personalized,
and participatory.7
As evidenced by membership numbers, many
uniformed and other personnel have embraced
these collaborative tools, but significant numbers
avoid or ignore their possibilities. Although there
is no substitute for face-to-face communication,
social media is a powerful tool Army leaders should
leverage and integrate to extend and enhance their
leadership influence. This essay examines concepts
of leadership and the phenomenon of social media
and how leaders can leverage and integrate the
social tools available across the modern human
landscape.

contexts.10 These small samplings of definitions all
suggest influence is critical to leadership, and this
point appears valid. Now consider what leaders do
with this influence.
The Leadership Institute’s founding chairman,
Dr. Warren Bennis, proclaims leaders provide
direction and meaning, generate trust, create a
sense of hope, optimism, and investment in the
future, and act to get results.11 Combine these ideas
with previous concepts of leader influence and
compare them to the Army’s definition. According
to recently published Army Doctrine Publication
(ADP) 6-22, Army Leadership (August 2012),
leadership is the process of “influencing people
by providing purpose, direction, and motivation to
accomplish the mission and improve the organization.”12 This gives one an idea of what leaders do
with their influence, but there is more to explore
in the how.
Some argue power is the key ingredient for a
leader to influence others. In 1959, sociologists
John French and Bertram Raven claimed that the
five sources of power in organizations included
coercive, referent, legitimate, expert, and reward
power.13 Coercive power comes from influencing
others via threats, punishments, or sanctions.14 Referent power comes from interpersonal relationships
cultivated with others in the organization, and is

Whats and Hows of Leaders and
Leadership
There are countless definitions of leadership and
descriptions of what leaders must do, but most agree
that leaders should be able to influence others to
take action by using a variety of measures. Organizational-culture professor Dr. Edgar Schein argues
the function of leadership is to perceive functional
and dysfunctional elements of an existing culture
and manage evolution and change so the group can
survive in a dynamic environment.8
Harvard professor and cognitive psychologist Dr.
Howard Gardner defines leaders as individuals who
significantly influence the thoughts, behaviors, and/
or feelings of others.9 In the book In Extremis Leadership: Leading as if Your Life Depended On It, retired
Brig. Gen. Thomas Kolditz stated that leaders can
profoundly influence followers in life-threatening
MILITARY REVIEW

January-February 2014

ADP 6-22, Army Leadership.
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