Air Force News, news from Iraq - Air Force Times

Academy may test for leadership potential

The Air Force, with its eye on Air Force Academy recruiting, may use standardized tests to gauge prospective cadets’ innate ability to lead.

The Gallup Organization, a Washington, D.C.-based consulting firm best known for its public opinion polling on national issues, is now developing an Air Force-centric take on a leadership aptitude test similar to those used for decades by corporate America. Gallup is expected to deliver a sample test early next year.

If the Air Force decides the test is effective — confirming its hypothesis that leadership abilities can be detected through dozens of multiple-choice questions — the test could have a sweeping effect on recruiting across not only the Air Force but possibly other military branches as well, according to service officials. Still, the test remains little known outside a small circle of Air Force Academy overseers, and its planners caution that development is still in its earliest stages. The test is currently seen as a potential tool in selecting cadets, not a “go or no-go” hurdle, said David French, assistant deputy for officer accessions with Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne’s office.

The idea began, French said, with the Air Force Academy Board of Visitors, a group of 15 civilian monitors appointed by the president, vice president, Senate and House of Representatives. Several members with corporate backgrounds have mentioned that private industry has long used scientific tests to evaluate leadership ability — a valuable quality sought by academy recruiters.

“They said, ‘You guys are way behind what industry does,’” French said.

Academy applicants already are expected to submit lofty SAT scores, show involvement in high-quality extracurricular activities, complete a physical exam and even secure a congressional recommendation.

But the academy also wants “innate” leadership aptitude, French said.

“Some people are brilliant,” he said, “but they don’t have the capacity to lead. That’s the type of characteristic we believe [the Gallup test] can isolate for us.”

The Gallup Organization is now conducting face-to-face interviews, telephone surveys and focus groups with Air Force officers to pinpoint qualities that suggest good military leadership. Gallup isn’t trying to paint a composite picture of current officers and clone more of them, French said. They’re attempting to ascertain a “thought process” that lends itself to military leadership.

“The potential, theoretically, would be there to use it with the entire enlisted force, not just officers,” French said, again emphasizing the test’s speculative nature. “And why just the Air Force?”

But David Segal, a University of Maryland sociologist and director of the Center for Research on Military Organization, is skeptical of the military’s affinity for standardized tests. Asking for an exam to identify as intangible a quality as leadership, he said, is asking too much.

“I would have severe doubts about the possibility of developing a paper-and-pencil test or computerized test that could effectively and efficiently measure leadership potential,” Segal said.

The only way to identify leadership, he said, is to look at a candidate’s history of leading, even if it’s just a student body, school newspaper or high school sports team. The military’s service academies, he said, have already proved their competency at recruiting good leaders.

The test’s premise seems to reflect the adage that good leaders are born, not made, Segal said. And “if that’s true,” he said, “what do we need the academies for, anyway?”

Roughly 1,700 Air Force Academy volunteer liaisons, many of them former students and officers, are now responsible for reaching out to local high schools and steering promising teenagers toward the academy. The liaisons, typically the first gatekeepers a recruit will meet, are instructed to interview with leadership potential in mind.

But a standardized leadership test could replace the “gut feel,” which liaisons typically rely on, with science, French said.

Detecting higher-quality cadets wouldn’t necessarily be the big payoff, French said, noting that academy recruiters are satisfied with the quality of incoming cadets. The leadership test, he said, would have the additional desired effect of helping to extend recruitment’s reach into places where the academy has poor draw, specifically inner cities and any place with a high concentration of minorities.

For years, the Board of Visitors has sought to increase the 4,000-student academy’s minority figures.

The academy is now 74 percent white, 10 percent Asian, 8 percent Hispanic, 5 percent black, 3 percent American Indian and 2 percent nonresident alien, according to the not-for-profit College Board association. The test, French said, would free liaisons to spend more time recruiting in the most difficult locations.

After the Gallup Organization presents its sample test in January, the Air Force will decide if Gallup proved the concept can work and, if it does, a validation phase would probably last through spring.

The earliest possible rollout of the leadership test, according to French’s best estimate, would be sometime in 2009.