Chapter 6 – Self-regulation: The Engine of Adaptation
Section 6.1 – Sustaining the Profession
Sustaining and evolving the profession demands a significant level of accountability and fighting spirit from military professionals. This fighting spirit is demonstrated primarily through a commitment to individual and collective self-regulation. Individual self-regulation refers to the degree to which military professionals hold each other to account in pursuing the highest standards of professionalism, while collective self-regulation refers to the institution’s ability to regulate the profession to sustain military effectiveness in line with the societal imperative. Both require consistent oversight to determine when self-regulation areas need to adapt or evolve to meet a threat, or to remain relevant to society and to those military professionals that serve. Ultimately, the profession of arms remains under the control of the Government of Canada and may also be subject to scrutiny by external bodies to ensure that it is fulfilling its self-regulation responsibilities. The degree to which government allows the profession the autonomy to self-regulate depends upon the Government’s perception of the military’s level of trustworthiness in the fulfillment of its responsibility to society.
Section 6.2 – Our People
The self-regulation that sustains the profession involves several processes, encompassing compliance-based, values-based and evolutionary-based frameworks. Compliance-based self-regulation is established through policies, procedures and legislation. Values-based self-regulation is expressed through statements of ethos and codes of values and ethics. Compliance-based frameworks require policing and enforcement. Values-based frameworks must be continuously socialized and supported within the organization. While both forms of self-regulation are required, values-based self-regulation ensures positive adaptability under conditions of uncertainty, whereas compliance-based policies may struggle to forecast every possible situation. Moreover, a values-based approach to self-regulation results in improved commitment and trust as the motivation for self-improvement comes from within. Evolutionary-based frameworks are dynamic, adaptive approaches designed to evolve in response to changing conditions and threats, much like the natural evolutionary process. It incorporates principles of flexibility, foresight and learning from experience and experimentation, allowing for iterations and refinements based on feedback. The goal is to create a resilient structure that effectively navigates challenges and opportunities in its environment.
Within the profession of arms, self-regulation acts as the driving force that sustains professionalism and propels military adaptation in response to challenges. Self-regulation works across, but is not limited to, five broad areas: personnel management, leadership, professional development, policies and programs, and history and heritage.
Personnel Management
A fundamental form of self-regulation is through the recruitment and the management of personnel. Admission, progression and exit from the profession are regulated with due regard for the applicable human rights and employment equity laws, and the principle of merit adopted by Canada’s democratic society. This ensures that suitable candidates become members and those who fall short of the standards are removed lawfully, pursuant to the organizational responsibility to respect applicable Canadian law.
The profession is managed on an ongoing basis largely according to the National Defence Act, its subordinate legislation and a wide variety of orders, directives, policies and doctrine. Progression, status, awards and rank are normally internal matters subject to review by the senior leadership of the profession. As a product of self-regulation, greater emphasis has been placed upon assessing character in addition to competence in a merit-based approach to career progression and status. This reflects a better understanding of the importance of our ethos and leadership approaches to the profession in enhancing well-being and sustaining military effectiveness.
The profession’s Code of Service Discipline enables good order and discipline. This code provides the legal basis for the profession to address breaches of discipline by service tribunals (Summary Hearings and Courts Martial). Beyond these formal mechanisms, military professionals must act with a high degree of self-discipline in living our ethos and employing positive leadership, minimizing the need to resort to these compliance-based instruments to ensure good order and military effectiveness.
In addition, a variety of other investigative instruments internal to the profession, such as Summary Investigations and Boards of Inquiry, support the administration of the CAF and its members. The CDS also provides for the regulation of the profession by issuing orders and instructions such as the CDS Guidance to Commanding Officers and Their Leadership Teams, as well as establishing and controlling rules of engagement for operations. The CDS may also from time to time call for special boards and committees to report on matters subject to professional regulation. The Chief of Review Services (CRS) carries out program evaluations and conducts independent internal audits. The Chief of Professional Conduct and Culture (CPCC) is concerned with professional ethics and conflicts of interest, and the Canadian Defence Academy (CDA) provides a focus for the military ethos and the profession of arms. All these mechanisms contribute to ensuring collective self-regulation and accountability towards pursuing the highest standards of professionalism within our people.
Leadership
Leadership plays a critical role in self-regulation. Inclusive leaders are exemplars at the heart of military professionalism. Adherence to the military ethos as a professional practice, and helping others to do the same, minimizes the need to use regulatory frameworks to ensure good order and discipline, and, ultimately, uphold professionalism. Leaders are most effective when they live a professional and personal life of integrity. Such a life entails steadfast adherence to leadership built upon military values, Canadian values and universal virtues in such a way that no gap exists between the leader’s thought, word and deed. Such leaders uphold high professional standards, setting the example themselves by striving for professional mastery while inspiring and supporting the same for their team members. They actively advocate for and support lifelong continuous learning across various facets of education, training, work experience and personal growth throughout a professional career. This is leadership by example.
CAF leadership doctrine is based on a competing values framework.Footnote 89 This means that leaders must use values to balance competing demands. Often, however, these demands are rooted in values that collide. A prime example is the value of caring for one’s subordinates while, at the same time, ordering them into harm’s way to achieve a mission. Leadership is about successfully balancing competing values. Trusted to Serve introduces the concept of character to refocus CAF leadership on a more extensive set of values and virtues which need to inform military decision making.
The concept of strength of character is founded in Aristotle’s golden mean approach to virtue ethics.Footnote 90 The premise is that virtuous (positive) behaviour can become vice-like (toxic) when taken to the extremes of excess and deficiency. Courage – as a character strength or virtue – can become recklessness (dangerous) in excess, or cowardice (negative) in deficiency. Strength of character comes from intentionally developing character, with the help of others, away from the vices and towards virtue so that leader judgement, team well-being and performance improve.Footnote 91 Leading with strength of character ensures the necessary positive approaches required to lead more diverse teams in increasingly complex environments.
Professional Development
Professional development entails learning and the pursuit of excellence in one’s occupation and, more widely, in one’s profession. Professional development is a central requirement of a healthy profession, and it is achieved through education, training, employment experience and self-development learning.
Citizens and permanent residents are recruited and socialized into the profession through a process of internalizing the military ethos and its philosophy of selfless service. As members take on the daily habit of living the ethos, they more fully embrace the military identity and accept the serious nature of their responsibility to Canada. Embracing the military ethos contributes to a heightened capacity for members to acquire the expertise essential for the fulfillment of their duties.
The initial stages of professional development are primarily centered upon rules and obedience. New members develop professional skills in tandem with the gradual cultivation of sound judgement. As professional development advances, a transition to a principles- and values-based approach occurs, fostering an environment that encourages heightened critical thinking, innovative perspectives and a growth mindset. This approach is aimed at enhancing the development of sound professional judgement to prepare the military professionals for the intellectual and moral dilemmas they will face in military service.
Members develop the minimum levels of expertise through education and individual training, then hone their professional competencies to higher levels of proficiency with the help of their team. The core military knowledge serves as a starting point, expanding and evolving as military professionals progress in military service. The ever-deepening significance of this core becomes evident with each new role, responsibility and mission.
Military education, training and self-development can only take the military professional so far in the attainment of the highest standards of professionalism in the CAF. Members need to reinforce their competencies learned at formal institutions in the workplace, through organic and informal social learning processes. Such reinforcement and the addition of new competencies through experiential learning serves to shorten the pathway to achieving professional mastery and enhancing military effectiveness. For this reason, professional development is a progressive and cumulative learning process that must pervade military life. The need for experience to enhance judgement is also the reason why members of the profession of arms need to spend time at each successive level within the profession before advancing to more senior duties.
The meaning of this core, supporting and specialized military knowledge changes as each professional member moves to higher levels of responsibility in the use of military force. At each stage of one's journey in military service, the primary goal is the attainment of mastery over the essential knowledge, skills, abilities and other attributes pertinent to one's occupation and position. Concurrently, the leader at all levels has the professional responsibility to develop one’s subordinates to ensure continuity of command. This responsibility is achieved through a sustained effort at developing the necessary competencies in that subordinate through experiential learning, coaching and mentoring.
At the institutional level, the Chief of Military Personnel (CMP) has the functional authority for the complicated task of regulating professional development and its associated knowledge within the CAF. Professional development is centrally coordinated with decentralized execution across all commands. The commands are responsible for the delivery of core environmental military knowledge, primarily at the tactical level, through a combination of education, training and employment experience.
On behalf of the CMP, the Commander of CDA is responsible for all common professional development across the CAF. CDA executes this responsibility primarily through the Canadian military colleges (Royal Military College of Canada at Kingston and Saint-Jean), the Canadian Forces College, the CWO Robert Osside Profession of Arms Institute (Osside Institute), as well as the promulgation of profession of arms doctrine.
The profession is responsible for overseeing the structured, theory-driven knowledge that underpins military character and competence. This knowledge is primarily structured within doctrine, encompassing a diverse array of external fields that contribute to the comprehensive understanding of military expertise and ethos, particularly in contexts involving the application of force. Development of this doctrine is gathered from military experience and debate across the profession at meetings, conferences and related publications, as well as through significant investments in academic and applied research, both within the CAF and in the broader academic community in Canada.
The history of the profession of arms has seen the expansion of military knowledge beyond the domains of maritime, land and air into cyber, space and the information environment to counter potential security threats. With the advent of increasingly effective artificial intelligence, we can see more demands for military knowledge and competencies in the digital environment.
Self-development is required to both broaden one’s perspectives beyond what is offered within the military’s professional development system, as well as deepen one’s level of professional expertise and ethos. Self-development is often at the expense of personal time and should be pursued in a manner that maintains a healthy balance between work and family demands. Pursuing mastery within the profession of arms is demanding. In pursuing mastery, military professionals are casting votes towards the professional identity that they wish to embody and in so doing, inspire other military professionals to do the same.
Section 6.3 – Our Institution
Policies and Programs
Generally, the senior leadership of the profession guides all policies and programs. Above all else, policies and programs must sit within both applicable Canadian and international legal and regulatory frameworks. On a broad scale, they must harmonize with, strengthen and uphold the core military ethos and other integral facets of military professionalism, namely, responsibility, expertise and identity. Each policy and program should actively promote the core ethical principles and military values. Upholding these principles across policies and programs is essential in sustaining the distinct identity and purpose of military professionals.
Policies and programs relating to personnel, ethics, education, training, doctrine and the cultivation of a healthy workplace environment must support the well-being of military professionals and their pursuit of professional excellence. Recent research underscores that leaders can only genuinely support their subordinates in a meaningful manner when the professional institution demonstrates a sincere commitment to the well-being of its people.Footnote 92 This echoes the profound significance and impact of cultivating a culture of care in leading our people and leading our institution.
More specifically, the CMP has the functional authority over military personnel policies and must ensure that they fully support the highest standards of professionalism across the CAF. Such policies and programs need to support military professionals where they are in their careers to ensure that they get the best professional development to master their required expertise, that they are supported by fair, inclusive and transparent career-related developmental opportunities, selection and promotion processes. The institution must also be vigilant in challenging extant policies and programs which may present unnecessary barriers to military service so that all military professionals may pursue meaningful careers in the CAF.
History, Heritage and Traditions
Self-regulation can also be found in the history of the profession of arms itself. Developing a deep understanding of military history, heritage and traditions serves as a foundational anchor, grounding military professionals within a timeless continuum of selfless service that transcends one’s own experience.
The weight of history, heritage and traditions lends reinforcement to our professional identity by vividly demonstrating our appreciation for the sacrifice and service of our predecessors. This is shown by commemorating hard-won victories or conflicts that were prevented and celebrating military traditions and ceremonial practices. Caring for this legacy calls for honouring past accomplishments and celebrating the unique and respectful customs across the CAF.
As Canadian values and culture continually evolve, it is essential for the military to periodically re-examine its customs and traditions. This critical evaluation ensures that these elements persist as positive forces, uniting and nurturing an esprit de corps that sustains professionalism and preserves the best of our rich past.
Section 6.4 – Summary and Conclusions
It is important for the profession of arms to strike a balance between maintaining professional effectiveness and the subordination of the military to civil authority and national values. While the profession is granted a certain latitude for self-regulation, it is nonetheless accountable to the democratically elected Government of Canada. Parliament has an important duty to hold the government to account for matters of defence. Senior military professionals frequently appear before parliamentary committees to report on a wide range of operational, institutional and professional issues. The CAF is subject to scrutiny by external bodies whose arm’s-length review of all departments is essential for accountability and the pursuit of excellence in military effectiveness.
The relationship between the military and government is often coloured by the competing nature of the fundamental imperatives. To be effective, civil-military relations must incorporate an open and transparent collaboration between government and the military that is informed by understanding the perspectives and priorities of each. The legitimacy of the military is measured by how well this balance is achieved, particularly in the eyes of Canadian society. The public's perception of the military's character and competence in executing its roles, especially in complex and dangerous operations, is crucial.
Consistency in showcasing exemplary behavior and conduct in the performance of military duty is a prerequisite for meeting the public's expectations. This underscores the essential emphasis placed on nurturing a culture of trustworthiness among Canadian military professionals through a constant practice of pursuing professionalism in who we are and what we do.
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