How do you teach a young soldier the intangible skill of winning hearts and minds in a peacekeeping mission? “I don’t believe we actually ‘teach’ it as such. We grow it,” says Lieutenant Colonel John Howard, an Army Infantry Officer and veteran of missions to Bosnia, Bougainville and East Timor.
Lt Col Howard led the first combat team ashore in East Timor in September 1999, and was also one of the first NZDF personnel to enter Bosnia and Bougainville. “We take soldiers and teach them skills that will keep them alive and functioning on a battlefield, on top of those basic skills we train them how to survive physically and mentally. To train a large group in all the skills needed for peacekeeping missions takes time, so we build those skills in the individual then collectively in the section, the platoon, the company and the battalion.” The NZDF, he says, tries to ensure its training is challenging, progressive, developmental and constructive.’
“We don’t go out there and harass - yell, scream and bully - our young Defence personnel under training. That is just the stuff of movies. It doesn’t grow people, it just turns a person into physically hard product and in the process erodes the moral fibre of an organisation.” Effective and strong leadership as a training tool is vital, he believes.
“Our success is due to strong leadership, in every rank. People learn from watching others, from watching leaders and from being well led in demanding situations.
In the NZDF we try to encourage leadership across the board. How? There are many different ways, but two of the main ones are by doing a lot of internal selection and vetting to make sure the right people are in the right jobs, and by conducting a variety of exercises, exchanges and attachments so that our personnel become experienced in as wide a range of situations and skills as possible.”