Journal of Management Education 2013 Kayes 180 202

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Integrating Learning, Leadership, and Crisis in Management

Education: Lessons From Army Officers in Iraq and Afghanistan
D. Christopher Kayes, Col. Nate Allen and Nate Self
Journal of Management Education 2013 37: 180 originally published online 11
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DOI: 10.1177/1052562912456168
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Teaching Innovations In Crisis Management Education
Integrating Learning,
Leadership, and Crisis
in Management Education:
Lessons From Army
Officers in Iraq and
Afghanistan
Journal of Management Education

37(2) 180202
The Author(s) 2012
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sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/1052562912456168
jme.sagepub.com
D. Christopher Kayes1, Col. Nate Allen2,

and Nate Self 3
Abstract
This article presents a model and case study used to teach crisis leadership
as a management education topic. The materials emerge from studies of U.S.
Army leaders (company commanders and platoon leaders) working in Iraq
and Afghanistan. The authors explain how examples and cases from military
combat provide tools to teach about crisis leadership. The authors describe
a case study based on a battle fought in Afghanistan in 2002 that they use
to increase awareness of the nature of, the experiences associated with, and
the competencies necessary to deal with crisis. Finally, the authors link their
pedagogy to theory on crisis, leadership, and learning.
Keywords
learning, leadership, crisis, management education, military, case study
The George Washington University, Washington, D.C., USA

National Defense University, Fort NcNair, D.C., USA
3
The Praevius Group, Salado, TX, USA
2
Corresponding Author:
D. Christopher Kayes, The George Washington University, School of Business, 2201 G Street,
NW Funger Hall, Washington, D.C. 20052, USA.
Email: dckayes@gwu.edu
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Kayes et al.
Leading during crisis is no longer a tangential leadership competency. A

recent study confirms that crisis is the norm, as 82% of leaders report an
increased pace of change, and 69% of leaders report that they have experienced disruptive changesevere surprises or unanticipated shocks (American
Management Association, 2007). The prevalence of crisis and the need for an
effective response have become so critical that crisis leadership is a key competency sought out by many employers (Coombs, 2006).
In this article, we present a model and a case study of military and combat
situations that we use to teach about crisis leadership. The aim of this article is
to articulate a framework and to offer thoughts about teaching crisis leadership
based on military and combat examples. The purpose of our teaching is to
increase awareness about the environment that leaders face, to introduce key
concepts related to crisis, and to illustrate how these concepts can help leaders
learn and navigate crisis. Drawing on research with combat officers in Iraq and
Afghanistan, we explain how leaders in crisis learn to function in complex,
dynamic, and novel situations. In addition, we explain how the crisis situations
faced by frontline army officers in Iraq and Afghanistan can be linked to other
management education topics such as leadership and teams. We conclude that
leaders working under the volatile conditions of military combat can teach us
important lessons about crisis leadership in organizations.
We begin by making a case for the importance of teaching crisis leadership in management, organizational behavior, and leadership (Schmidt-Wilk,
2011). We then present our conceptual framework, drawing connections
between bodies of literature on learning, crisis leadership, and management
education; and we link military and combat situations to relevant management concepts. Finally, we present our model and our teaching approach,
which involves a case study of the events at Takur Ghar, Afghanistan, in
2002.
Goals and Approaches

for Teaching Crisis Leadership
We have three main goals for teaching crisis leadership: (a) to improve
awareness of the factors that constitute a crisis, (b) to explain the various
experiences associated with a crisis, and (c) to illustrate how leaders learn to
navigate a crisis. As such, the pedagogy we propose focuses on awareness of
the crisis experience and competencies associated with crisis rather than
developing the specific skills necessary to manage a crisis.
The process of teaching this topic typically begins with a definition of
crisis, which is no easy task because the interdisciplinary nature of the study
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Journal of Management Education 37(2)
of crisis has led to considerable disagreement about what constitutes a crisis.

For example, crisis is often used as a synonym for terms such as disaster,
error, and failure. Despite the lack of agreement, Boins (2006) review of the
crisis literature serves as a starting point. He summarized that crisis involves

A period of discontinuity
A situation where core values of a system are under threat
A period where critical decisions are made
A destabilizing effect to the organization and its members
An escalation of one of more issues, errors, or procedures
Definitions of crisis are multifaceted (Sagan, 1993; Wilensky, 1967), and

whereas Boin (2006) focuses on situational facets, our primary focus is the
psychological facets associated with leading before, during, and after crisis
occurs. Thus, our approach to crisis leadership implies a situation where a
leaders capacity to cope is overtaken by the demands of the immediate situation (Smith & Elliott, 2006).
Three streams of research facilitate our understanding of the role a leader
plays in crisis. One stream is normal accident theory (NAT), which defines
crisis from a systems perspective as a normal part of operating in a complex,
dynamic, and high-risk environment. According to the NAT viewpoint, leaders and their organizations remain vulnerable to crisis despite human efforts
to improve reliability. Perrow (1984), for example, described how the interaction of complexity and task coupling leads to small deviations in normal
operating procedure. These small deviations are common and expected under
normal conditions but escalate into unanticipated events. Leaders need to
learn to recognize these small deviations and take action before they escalate
into a full-scale organizational crisis. Leaders also are called on to play an
important role in responding to the crisis once it has erupted.
A second approach comes from research on high-reliability organizations
(HRO), which focuses on the cognitive aspects of intra- and interteam coordination. An organizational crisis emerges and tests a teams ability to make
sense of a situation, but sensemaking deteriorates in the face of increasingly
complex events (see, e.g., Weick & Roberts, 1993; Weick & Sutcliffe, 2001).
Leaders help overcome crisis by improving coordination and creating the ability to make sense out of situations. Collectively, both HRO and NAT guide
understanding of crisis by offering insights into how leaders cope with new
technology, respond to innovation, get work done, and learn (see Klein, 1999).
A third approach to crisis leadership involves descriptions of crisis (e.g.,
Berinato, 2010), first-hand accounts (e.g., Barton, 2008), and journalistic
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inquiry (e.g., Maclean, 1992). These approaches often involve personal narrative or accounts of direct experience with leading during times of crisis.
The personal narrative approach is illustrated by Bartons (2008) effort,
which seeks to distinguish itself from more academic considerations of crisis
leadership. This perspective emphasizes the role of experience in leading a
crisis. In this approach, first-hand accounts of crisis provide transferable prototypes of a situation, which in turn, serve as the basis for determining what
actions should be taken in future crises.
We offer an alternative perspective that is informed by NAT, HRO, and
personal crisis narrative, but relies more heavily on the role of experience,
emotions, and human development in the process of crisis leadership. This
experiential learning approach to crisis leadership considers how experiences
inform a leaders understanding of and response to crisis in organizations
(Kolb, 1984). Distinct from but informed by the narrative approach, our
approach seeks to understand how experiences inform general theory, which,
in turn, guides further research and understanding of the phenomenon more
generally (e.g., Kayes, 2004; Kolb, 1984). This approach is theoretically consistent with research on learning from errors and mistakes (Edmondson,
1996; Morris & Moore, 2000). At the same time, a distinction can be drawn
between the experiential learning approach and the NAT and HRO approaches
because the former focuses more on generalizable experiences than on cognition (e.g., HRO) or systems (e.g., NAT). In summary, the approach we propose places more emphasis on the role of emotions and experience than do
the NAT and HRO perspectives. At the same time, we move beyond the personal narrative account by offering a generalizable approach to teaching crisis. As we will show later in this article, the ability to manage emotions in self
and others is a key, but often overlooked, component to preparing leaders to
deal with crisis. In the next section, we present a framework that further
explores this approach in the context of management education.
Framework: Integrating Crisis

Management, Leadership, and Management Education
In this section, we identify a general framework that can guide the teaching
of crisis leadership, while recognizing that, by definition, each crisis situation holds something unique. A link between the literature on crisis and the
literature on management learning can be found in the works of Kayes
(2002) and Useem, Cook, and Sutton (2005), which show how crisis situations can provide a context for understanding management learning and
organizational behavior principles. These works imply that although the
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context of crisis and noncrisis may be different in some ways, they share
some common characteristics. Both crisis and noncrisis situations, for
example, involve task novelty and complexity (Day & Zaccaro, 2004), and
in both situations, learning helps leaders navigate novelty and complexity
(Kayes & Kayes, 2011). In a crisis situation, the need for learning becomes
more pronounced, even as the process of learning becomes more demanding;
and the lack or breakdown of learning further fuels the crisis (Kayes, 2004).
The environmental demands exceed the learning capacity of the leader
(Kegan, 1998). Crisis situations thus provide opportunities for leaders to
explore situations where circumstances fail to conform to expectations (see
Lewis & Dehler, 2000) and to develop an understanding of the skills they
need to deal with heightened levels of anxiety (Vince, 1998; see Stein, 2004).
A better understanding of crisis, therefore, helps students learn how leaders navigate complexity and novelty in or out of crisis. Smith and Elliott
(2007) took this notion a step further to show how leaders might navigate
crisis as it unfolds. Smith and Elliott (2007) further emphasized the
importance of learning at three different points in the crisis life cycle
organizational leaders (a) learn to cope with the demands of crisis by building learning into everyday practice before a crisis occurs, (b) continue
learning as the crisis unfolds, and (c) identify lessons learned in the aftermath
of crisis. Figure 1 shows leader effectiveness as a function of learning across
stages of a crisis (Turner, 1976). It depicts the relationship between learning,
emergent crisis, and leader effectiveness. The figure illustrates that learning
is essential for meeting the increasing demands of the emerging crisis. Over
the course of the crisis, predictability decreases, whereas the learning
demands of a crisis situation and the complexity of the variables increase.
When learning occurs at each stage of the crisis, leadership effectiveness
improves. If learning decreases, then leader effectiveness decreases. In the
next section, we illustrate how military and combat examples provide an
important source of learning in crisis.
Crisis and Management Education:

Lessons From Military Leadership
Rationale for Examining Military Examples of Leadership
The connections between military leadership and management education run
deep but are not always obvious. We have found that because military battles
are not generally part of the management education classroom, faculty may
need to discuss the relevance of military leadership to nonmilitary contexts.
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Figure 1. Relationship between learning, emergent crisis, and leader effectiveness.
For example, students might ask why their instructor is using a military
example instead of an organization such as Google or Apple. Faculty can
address students questions by making connections between military and
civilian leadership. One tactic is to show how military leadership has influenced thinking on leadership more broadly. In fact, many leadership practices that have been developed in the military have been adapted by or serve
as the basis for civilian training. One program is notable. Crew resource
management (CRM; see e.g., Helmreich, Merritt, & Wilhelm, 1999) was
designed by military organizations in response to the alarming level of aviation accidents attributable to human error. A central tenet of CRM is to train
pilots how to equalize power in the cockpit. The deliberate empowerment of
copilots and other members of the crew gives them greater opportunity to
recognize problems and inform their crew captain about time-critical threats
to operational continuity (Fraher, 2011). CRM principles have been adopted
by a variety of organizations, and the concepts underlying CRM have made
their way into research associated with learning and teams in management
(e.g., Edmondson, 1999).
Military research and related training has sparked a growing interest in
how military practices can inform business leadership. It is no coincidence
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that the Greek work for a General translates into English as the art of
strategy. The practice-based literature on management and management
learning has shown a particular interest in identifying connections between
business and military crisis leadership (see, e.g., Groyberg, Hill, & Johnson,
2010; Klann, 2003; Kolditz, 2007). Some have gone so far as to argue that
military organizations should serve as the model for developing leaders in
business because leadership development in the military has been around
longer and is more highly developed than comparable programs in business
(Useem, 2010). Furthermore, the complexity of contemporary crises often
requires an understanding of a broad range of organizational leadership practices. The BP oil spill illustrates the importance of both military and civilian
leadership and how both forms of leadership were necessary to respond to a
crisis (Berinato, 2010). In addition, military institutions of higher education
require courses in management and leadership training, reminding us that
leadership development is not simply the domain of civilian institutions but
also the domain of military education.
Perhaps the most relevant reason for connecting military and business
leadership is to challenge the assumption that military organizations are more
hierarchical than business organizations. Oftentimes, students perceive military leadership as hierarchical and characterized primarily by programmed
decision-making procedures. In contrast, they perceive business leadership as
more democratic, less hierarchical, and more flexible. However, research
(Darling, Parry & Moore, 2005) and our own experience indicate that some
facets of decision making are less hierarchical in the military than in business. The case study we discuss later in this article illustrates some of the
ways todays military challenges hierarchical thinking.
The goal of using military examples and integrating combat scenarios in a
nonmilitary classroom is to engage students to think about the lessons learned
as a kind of analogy or parable about leadership (Greenhalgh, 2007). True,
most leaders will never experience the kind of life-and-death situations faced
by combat officers, but by looking at leadership under the most hostile and
extreme environment, we can shed light on the demands faced by leaders in
less hostile situations.
The Relevance of Military

Leadership to Management Education
Because of the factors discussed above, we take time in the introduction to
our class sessions to highlight the links between leadership in combat and
topics more commonly taught in management (see, e.g., Suedfeld, Corteen,
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& McCormick, 1986). These connections emphasize the relevance of military concepts for management and their application in the context of crisis.
One source of relevance for military leadership in more traditional organizations relates to the recent research on leadership in extreme contexts
(Hannah, Uhl-Bien, Avolio, & Cavarretta, 2009). Extreme contexts create
specific learning demands on leaders, because the consequences are high, the
feedback loops are quick, and threats carry significant impact and place psychosocial demands on leaders. Specifically, military leadership, when applied
to more common settings, shows how stress and time affect decision making.
When considered as a form of extreme leadership, combat highlights that
learning in that context matters, as does the ability of managers to adapt to
new contexts by learning both cognitive and emotional skills. Furthermore,
the events show the importance of preparation, especially training, in how to
respond in a crisis situation (Useem et al., 2005).
Military organizations also illustrate how organizations build resilience,
correct for problems, and learn in the face of disaster (Weick & Sutcliffe,
2001). For example, Becker (2007) conducted an analysis of a plane crash in
the Great Bear Wilderness to show how team learning allowed a crash victim
to find his way to safety through an unfamiliar forest. The Great Bear Wilderness
case demonstrates how novices can learn in the moment and transfer that
learning into action.
The literature on teamwork provides a third source of relevance.
Specifically, a team in crisis represents a kind of action and negotiation team
(Sundstrom, DeMeuse, & Futrell, 1990) in pursuit of a short-term outcome.
An action and negotiation team engages in a one-time event that often
requires learning, because the action is novel and successfully completing the
task requires new knowledge and an innovative response. The requirement
for new knowledge also links to team learning more specifically because of
the need to coordinate different skills and transfer knowledge in the face of a
clear goal but unclear processes. For example, Gersick (1991) described how
ad hoc project teams develop and change over the duration of the project.
Boin and t Hart (2003) emphasized the need for leaders to exploit these
changes in order to deal with a crisis at key stages, particularly in cases of
public leadership. Understanding this dynamic may help leaders focus on
tasks relevant to the particular phase that the team is experiencing. Woodson
(2009) concluded that short-term project teams involved in action and negotiation tasks may require special types of training to meet the unique demands
presented by these high-stress situations.
We have described three concepts that link military leadership to organizational concepts: extreme situations, response to crisis and resilience, and
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short-term project teams. These concepts are illustrative, rather than exhaustive, and provide connections to making military leadership relevant in civilian organizations. In the next section, we present a model of crisis leadership
that emerged directly from observation of combat troops, and we connect the
model to management concepts.
A Model of Crisis Leadership: Context,

Experience, and Response and Recovery
We present a model that emerged from our research with army officers and
the subsequent teaching that resulted from these studies (see Allen & Kayes,
2012). The research began in 2005, when one member of our research team,
Nate Allen, went to Iraq and conducted in-depth qualitative interviews and
participant observation, observing leaders in action by traveling with soldiers
as they carried out daily missions and engaged with their environment.
Participants were identified for the study through informal and formal networks. Many of those we interviewed had participated in professional
forums designed to improve leadership skills. Additionally, participants were
selected for diversity by functional specialty, amount of time in leadership,
and whether or not they had prior combat experience. From this research, we
developed a model that described how leaders learn to navigate the demands
of combat and what they are learning. Allen returned to the combat theater a
second time, in 2007, to test and clarify the model, relying on the same interview and observation techniques. This second round of data collection
helped refine the model and identify new forms of learning. Self contributed
to this research as a subject matter expert. He had served in Kosovo and Iraq
and had also served as a platoon leader in the U.S. Army Rangers unit in
Afghanistan.
From the research emerged an inductive model of crisis leadership that
served as the basis for training and teaching about crisis leadership. The
model, depicted graphically in Figure 2, considers three dimensions of leading in crisis: the context, the experience, and the response and recovery cycle.
Many of the lessons learned from army officers operating in a combat zone
revealed wider patterns that have proven useful in understanding crisis leadership, as well as leadership more generally, under less hostile conditions.
Context of Crisis
Several management concepts facilitate understanding of a crisis environment. Programmed decision making involves routine situations where actions
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Kayes et al.
Figure 2. Model of crisis leadership.
are predictable and largely quantifiable. In contrast, nonprogrammed decision making involves situations that are in flux, where solutions have not yet
been discovered (for a discussion, see Kahneman & Klein, 2009). Within the
learning and development literature, the concept of an ill-structured problem
is also applicable. Ill-structured problems offer an unclear path to completion
and require meeting multiple standards for success, such that experts will
disagree on the meaning of what actually constitutes success (see King &
Kitchener, 1994). Similar to Reasons (1995) description of the environment
faced by teams of anesthesiologists working in an operating room, our
research captured the decision-making context of crisis. These characteristics
include the following:
A sense that existing routines dont work. One army commander
summed up crisis leadership as a situation where youve been
taught the way to do something your entire career and it just isnt
working.
Constantly shifting information needs and information availability.
Crisis situations are characterized by information oscillationnot
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enough information to make a decision, too much information,

conflicting information, and changing information. As one officer
expressed, I was fighting for information and feeling like Im losing the battle.
Unexpected events. Crisis constitutes a diversity of problems with
competing agendas. It is a situation for which you cannot plan or
predict all contingencies. One officer described it this way: You
conduct a mission [project] expecting one thing and then another
happens. As one illustrative example, a platoon might be on their
way to conduct a ribbon cutting ceremony at a local school and on
the way they are ambushed. The platoon has prepared for community outreach but must shift to combat action. Preparing for the
unexpected is what Fletcher (2004) described as cognitive readiness, where actors prepare not only for the technical aspects of a
task but also the cognitive and emotional demands that they will
face. Cognitive readiness implies that even though leaders cannot
fully prepare for all the contingencies of a crisis, they can prepare
themselves by developing a mindset that helps them accept that they
cant control everything.
Escalating complexity. Crisis leadership involves volatility and
complexity of situations as well as solutions; the emerging circumstances quickly overwhelm the actors. As told by one leader, You
start a mission and you end up with 20 different missions. Under
these conditions, leaders need to be aware of maintaining a priority
focus because the environment responds in unpredictable ways and
new challenges and opportunities will emerge.
Emergent Crisis Experience

When a crisis situation emerged, which occurred on a daily basis for army
officers in Iraq, it created certain internal emotions, reactions, and anxieties
that are often associated with learning (Vince, 1998). Likewise, in the management literature, Bennis and Thomas (2002) have noted the importance of
crucible experiences in developing leaders. Crucible experiences define
the leader in new terms. These are the moments when a leaders identity is
shaped. Within the learning literature, the concept of a disorienting dilemma
(Mezirow, 2000) is instructive. A disorienting dilemma leads a person to
reevaluate his or her old habits, perspectives, and assumptions. Within the
research on transformational leadership, the notion of concern for followers
also applies (Bass, 1998; Burns, 1978). One distinctive characteristic of the
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Kayes et al.
transformational leader, compared with the transactional or bureaucratic

leader, is individualized consideration. It is through emergent experiences
that the leader becomes aware of his or her mission as a leader and the importance of followers in achieving that mission. An emergent crisis experience,
then, had the following characteristics:
Sense of profound responsibility for others. As one officer noted,
My fear is not so much for myself anymore; now I fear more for
those who report to me. Others have a significant stake in leader
decisions. As another officer said, Every decision you make will
impact people and has weight. In combat, there are often situations
where the leader realizes that there is no backstop, the effectiveness
or ineffectiveness of an outcome will depend on decisions that they
themselves need to make.
Intense affect. Crisis also leads to an intense range of emotions. The
emotions ranged from sheer relief, joy, and love, to intense rage,
anger, and despair. Leaders commented: I felt as if my heart was
ripped out of my chest and I knew my direct reports were feeling
the same thing. For many leaders, this is the first time they had
experienced these extreme emotions. As a consequence, they learned
how to manage these intense emotions, both in themselves and in
others. Based on this observation, we argue that any course in crisis
leadership should explicitly address the intense emotional component of crisis leadership.
Moral responsibility. Those experiencing crisis situations sense
that their decisions have implications for their competence and
character. My actions can be a credit or disgrace to my organization or nation. In addition, the leader understands that any one
decision carries an organizational consequence. In this sense, an
action taken by any one soldier can quickly escalate to a national
strategic issue.
Embodied feedback. In a crisis, feedback from decisions leaves a
lasting impression on the soul. Embodied feedback is an unforgiving
and enduring component of crisis leadership. Examples include the
failure of a mission that results in the loss of a life of a soldier, loss
of a critical resource, or the injury of a local. Whereas traditional
feedback might require a small incremental adjustment to behavior,
for example, change the tone and pace of your approach, embodied feedback leaves an enduring impression on ones being. Embodied feedback is never forgotten; its voice is always present.
192
Response and Recovery Cycle

The final insight on leadership emerges from leaders actions that succeeded
in the crisis environment. We called this process the response and recovery
cycle because it mirrors what Kolb (1984) described as the cycle of learning
from experience. The response and recovery cycle requires leaders to move
between two distinct modes of learning. In the response mode, leaders react
to the environment by deploying new routines, taking actions, and updating
assessments of the situation. In the recovery cycle, leaders identify lessons
learned, build resilience through conversation, experience renewal, and
express compassion for others. These phases mirror the abstract conceptualization and reflection components of the experiential learning cycle.
The cycle time between response and recovery might be days, but in some
cases it occurs within hours. Thus, the learning cycle is not a casual, rational
process but involves deep emotions and reflection. Crisis response and recovery require an understanding of and ability to manage the volatility of emotions in this context. The emotions of anger and fear emerge most commonly
and are potentially volatile. Leaders therefore need emotional intelligence to
regulate their responses (see, e.g., Boyatzis, 2009). Properly regulated emotions interweave with cognitive aspects of judgment, enabling leaders to take
action based on their awareness, intuition, and values.
Crisis situations require leaders who not only show the capacity for adaptation but also find new ways to solve problems and take action. The environment demands that leaders facilitate an innovative and ongoing learning
process within their organizations. It is critical in combat to learn and adapt
more quickly than the enemy does. More generally, the lesson revolves around
the nature of decision making for leaders in all situations. Importantly, the lessons learned are not about command and control or hierarchical decision making often associated with military leadership. For example, Croswell and
Yaroslaski (in press) explain how military doctrine has shifted from recognizing leadership as a process that emphasizes the exercise of authority to recognizing it as the interaction of parts and processes. The command and control
model of decision making proved decisive in World War II. It became the
standard organizational and leadership model for the next few decades.
Military and business organizations adopted the command and control models
and trained leaders around their core principles. Today, these models of leadership appear outdated. Command and control models prove less effective in
both military and civilian organizations. They may even prove disastrous.
Rather than simply respond to command and control procedures established in
previous wars, the young leaders in Iraq and Afghanistan adopted a stance of
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Kayes et al.
response and recovery (see Baum, 2005). The response and recovery cycle was
built on a foundation of emergent experiences that looks a lot more like learning and adaptation than simply following orders and establishing routines.
Teaching Approach:
A Case Study of the Battle of Takur Ghar
In light of our objectives for students to understand the crisis environment
leaders face, the experiences associated with a crisis, and the learning needed
to navigate crisis, we developed a case study that illustrates and makes connections between the three areas of crisis leadership (e.g., context, experience, and response and recovery). The case is based on the battle fought at
Takur Ghar in Afghanistan in 2002, which serves as an exemplar for crisis
leadership (March, Sproull, & Tamuz, 1991). We were guided by teaching
from an experiential learning perspective (Reynolds & Vince, 2007). Using
a case allowed us to create a common story and set of events that highlight
patterns of behavior that occur in all organizations. Specifically, we relied on
the case to trigger insights into leadership, teamwork, decision making, and
opportunities for improvement in the students organization; move from asking who made the wrong decision to asking about the circumstances that
prompted the decision; and prompt students to consider the conditions under
which they might need to make these kinds of decisions. We developed a
short teaching module for this case and a series of questions to guide discussion (see Appendices A and B, respectively, which are also available online
at http://jme.sagepub.com/supplemental).
Brief Summary of the Battle of Takur Ghar

The case describes how a group of Navy SEALs and Army Rangers secured
a key strategic mountain, called Takur Ghar (translated as High Mountain).
During the battle, eight U.S. service members were killed. The larger military operation, Operation Anaconda, was intended to kill or capture a group
of terrorists consolidated in valley hideouts in Afghanistan (U.S. Air Force
Headquarters, 2005). The overall operation proved the first successful suppression of Afghanistan forces in the last century by Western forces, challenging conventional wisdom that Afghanistan could not be taken militarily,
something that both Great Britain and the Soviet Union had tried and failed
to do. Details of the events are available in other sources, including an autobiographical account (Self, 2008), journalistic accounts (MacPherson,
2005; Naylor, 2005), and media interviews (Phillips, 2006). (For a list of
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resources, see Appendix C, which is available online at http://jme.sagepub.

com/supplemental.)
The case about the battle at Takur Ghar describes the communication,
logistical, and organizational coordination challenges in a combined effort of
the U.S. Army, Navy, and Air Force. Communication protocols and channels
were an ongoing issue. Command of operations was constantly being handed
back and forth, and chain of command was under constant negotiation. Two
minutes from the target-landing zone, the Army Ranger Quick Reaction Force
lost radio contact with a second helicopter carrying another Ranger team. This
is where the case begins. The remaining elements of the case describe the
challenges associated with crisis leadership, including elements of the environment, the event experience, and the competencies necessary for response.
The situations faced by army leaders in combat, and more specifically the
battle at Takur Ghar, represent the kind of ill-structured problems faced by leaders in a crisis. Captain Nate Self, the platoon leader and focal point of the case,
leads his team in finding one member of the SEAL team, Neil Roberts, who was
jolted out of his helicopter earlier in the night. It was later discovered that
Roberts was killed by enemy forces. Selfs team had not heard that the SEAL
helicopter was shot down, nor had it heard the specifics of Robertss case. The
team faced not only a changing environment but also one that was new to them.
The command structure involved integration of multiple forces and agencies, to include nonmilitary organizations such as the CIA. Not only did this
joint interdependence create communication and logistical challenges, but it
also exposed how current practices prove limited in novel situations. The story
of Captain Self reveals that leading in novel situations requires the leader to
navigate unclear and shifting goals. At first, the mission was to secure the
downed helicopter; then, prior to take-off, the mission was expanded to possibly include a missing American; and then, en route, the mission was
altered again to reinforce a distressed SEAL team.
The events of Takur Ghar are representative of what leaders in the U.S.
Army face in Iraq and Afghanistan. They reveal that leaders seldom operate
with simple, well-structured problems. Instead, most leaders face problems
that are poorly delineated and have no clear outcome. Even when an outcome
is reached, experts will disagree about the success of the events (King &
Kitchener, 1994). Managers facing ill-structured problems need to engage in
learning, because cause-and-effect relationships are more complex and
require constant reevaluation. Most striking of all, perhaps, is that the efforts
on Takur Ghar reveal the significant unintended consequences that confront
leaders. The mission was accomplished, in the sense that the mountaintop
was secured, but at the expense of seven soldiers lives.
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Kayes et al.
Effectiveness of Lessons
We have presented the model and the case to MBA and undergraduate business students, in addition to a variety of leaders working in government,
business, and academia. Participants in executive education sessions viewed
the Rescue on Roberts Ridge (Phillips, 2006) video and engaged in discussion and analysis of the case and the model. About 30 participants responded
in writing to two questions at the end of the session. These two questions,
The subject matter was interesting and The subject matter was relevant to
my position, received average scores of 4.5 or higher on a Likert-type scale
ranging from 1 = completely disagree to 5 = completely agree.
We collected written qualitative evaluations from 35 undergraduate students from two different class sections, an introductory class in Leadership
and an introductory class in Organizational Behavior. We solicited the feedback at the end of one lesson in which we discussed the model and viewed the
Roberts Ridge video (Phillips, 2006). Students expressed generally positive
learning outcomes after viewing and discussing the case. One student noted
how the case illustrated that leadership is not all learned and practiced; some
of the actions seemed innate. This is a common observation and provides the
opportunity to discuss whether students think leadership is learned or innate.
Another student noted the importance of communication and adaptability in
a complex situation. Yet a third student explained that You cant always
plan ahead and As a leader, you can be put in unexpected situations. Other
students made clear connections between crisis and leadership: As a leader
you will be put in unexpected situations and you should be able to cope;
You should always be prepared for the worst. I was shocked and surprised at
how many times the situation changed; and I couldnt believe that they
could think of a plan while under fire. The case also encouraged some participants to reflect on their own leadership: Im not sure that I could handle
[the situation] with the same composure that they did. Others reported that
they were emotionally attached and affected by the video and described
feeling on edge while watching the video of the battle.
Boundary Conditions and Other Considerations

Our purpose in this article was to share our experiences teaching crisis leadership, to review relevant research that has shaped our thinking, and to offer
a framework that guides future thinking on the topic. We now offer some of
the boundary conditions for applying this approach. First, the links between
military combat and some forms of crisis leadership have their limits. Combat
196
often occurs within a compressed time frame, whereas organizational crisis

can unfold over days, months, and years. Second, womens roles in combat
have continued to evolve as the nature of combat and the environment have
changed. Our interest focused specifically on the combat experience of U.S.
Army leaders. Throughout our research and observation, we have worked
with female Army officers who served in combat positions, and several of
their experiences have been integrated into the models and observations. A
third consideration rests in the high-stakes nature of combat, which creates
an environment unlike the typical business environment. Thus, the psychological and physical stress of combat is quite different from that experienced
in a typical office.
Furthermore, some will argue that the use of a case study based on combat
glorifies or romanticizes the military and seeks to reinforce a militaristic
culture in American society. Although we are sympathetic to this concern, we
believe that the case study and the research have the opposite effect: to show
the harsh realities of combat in order to learn lessons not only about how to
become better leaders but also about making tough choices about putting
individuals in harms way in the first place.
We believe the application of our research on army officers and the Takur
Ghar case study provide an informative, interesting, and thought-provoking
tool to improve awareness of the crisis leadership context, experience, and
competencies necessary to be effective in crisis. This article offers management educators a framework for understanding how military leadership,
especially during combat, can provide meaningful insights into leadership
during crisis. Integrating military examples and lessons into management
education can enrich student understanding of the demands and competencies associated with crisis leadership.
Appendix A
Sample Program (2-Hour Session)
Key Topics Covered

Crisis leadership
Leadership decision making and communication
Teams
Crisis planning and response
Innovation and change
Learning and adaptation

197
Kayes et al.
Learning Goals
Participants should be able to
Recognize and explain characteristics of the crisis environment
Discuss concepts and aspects of response to crisis
Illustrate how these concepts can help leaders learn and navigate
crisis
Preassignment
Participants will receive, and be expected to read, the case study and
supporting materials before the session.
Schedule
30 minutes: Introduction
Instructor
provides an overview of the leadership model and

describes the days activities.
50 minutes: Video case study

The class learns what happened at Takur Ghar by watching a video

of the case (see Appendix C for resources).
5 minutes: Instructor initial debrief

Instructor asks for general reactions to this emotional case and provides context for participants.
20 minutes: Team discussion

Students
form teams and discuss questions related to the case

(Appendix B).
15 minutes: Instructor detailed debrief

Instructor describes the case and works through the questions with
the teams.
198
Appendix B
Discussion Questions to Use With Video Case Studies
For use with Rescue on Roberts Ridge (Phillips, 2006) or Roberts Ridge:
Rescue in Afghanistan (Solid Entertainment, 2006)
Describing the Situation

What factors made the situation complex?
What was the goal in Operation Anaconda?
What did the Navy SEALs hope to achieve in their pursuit of Takur
Ghar?
What were some of the unintended consequences of what happened?
What was the situation faced by the Army Rangers Quick Reaction
Force led by Captain Nate Self?
How did the Quick Reaction Force adjust or learn in the
moment?
What was the exit plan for the battle? How did it change over
time?
Application to Leadership and Organizational Behavior

What lessons can be learned about leadership in a complex, novel,
and dynamic environment from the case?
What do the events teach us about our organization?

How can we use these lessons to avoid the mishaps that occurred
on Takur Ghar in our organization?
Identify a situation at work (or former workplace) where the breakdown of learning occurred. Which warning signs did you see?
Based on the case study, what will you do differently at work?
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
199
Kayes et al.
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Teaching Innovations In Crisis Management Education