Guided Conversations about Leadership: Mentoring with Movies and Interactive Characters

Think Like a Commander – Excellence in Leadership (TLAC-XL) is an application designed for learning leadership skills both from the experiences of others and through a structured dialogue about issues raised in a vignette. The participant watches a movie, interacts with a synthetic mentor and interviews characters in the story. The goal is to enable leaders to learn the human dimensions of leadership, addressing a gap in the training tools currently available to the U.S. Army. The TLAC-XL application employs a number of Artificial Intelligence technologies, including the use of a coordination architecture, a machine learning approach to natural language processing, and an algorithm for the automated animation of rendered human faces. Leadership Development Leadership is difficult to teach, even for people. While there is evidence that some are born with an aptitude for leadership, the traits and skills needed to be an effective leader are often learned only by experience. This holds true across a diverse set of domains, including the corporate world, sports, firefighting and the military, which is the focus of the project described in this paper. Given that the military needs to develop a large number of leaders, it is imperative to find ways to accelerate the development process using whatever means possible. The U.S. Army defines leadership this way: Leadership is influencing people – by providing purpose, direction, and motivation – while operating to accomplish the mission and improving the organization. (FM 22-100, 1999, p 1-4.) To date, most of the Army’s computer-based training systems for leaders use constructive simulations, which create an environment where commanders can practice mission planning and tactics. While these skills are necessary, they focus on the tactical and technical aspects Copyright © 2003, American Association for Artificial Intelligence (www.aaai.org). All rights reserved. of the job. Learning how to influence people, how to provide purpose, direction and motivation is simply not supported by most constructive simulation environments. While recent research on virtual humans and simulation attempts to address these issues, (e.g., Rickel et al., 2002), there are very few technical applications that support the development of a deeper understanding of interpersonal communication, building a positive command climate, motivating subordinates, and the many other human dimension factors that define an effective leader. Furthermore, while the current generation of simulations can be used for modeling conventional warfare, today’s military leaders face some of the most complex and challenging situations imaginable. To a greater degree than ever before, leaders at the tactical level – captains, lieutenants and non-commissioned officers (NCO’s) – are being confronted with situations in the operational environment where their local decisions and actions can have strategic consequences, political and otherwise (McCausland & Martin, 2001). Over the past decade the military has been assigned a new class of missions requiring an expanded set of skills. Whereas the skills needed for war-fighting depend heavily on knowledge of tactics and battle drills, the new missions often have a different set of requirements. Peacekeeping, stability and support operations, humanitarian assistance, and homeland defense requires knowledge of the local culture and politics, as well as skills for dealing with a variety of outside organizations such as non-governmental groups, joint forces (inter-service operations), allied commands, and host nation armed forces. The challenge for the U.S. armed forces is to develop leaders who have not only mastered the tactical and technical skills necessary to be competent commanders, but to be effective they must also develop intellectual flexibility, self-awareness, adaptability, and be able to deal with ambiguity, all under stressful conditions (Klein, 1999; McCausland & Martin, 2001; Ulmer, 1998; TRADOC, 2003). Report Documentation Page Form Approved