Quote Originally Posted by JMA View Post
The article The Perfect Officer - by Henrik Bering contains enough to keep an enquiring intellect busy for months.
Thought I would extract some quotes from Bering's article as they apply to officer selection:

...Of all the jobs in the world, then as now, the wartime officer’s is the most dangerous and demanding, physically and emotionally.

...Among the characteristics required in a successful commander are imagination, intuition, and an ability to improvise, all qualities associated with a free and independent mind.

…What further characterizes a great commander is the ability to keep calm under stressful circumstances, the ability to tune out irrelevant information and to keep functioning when things go wrong.

…How do you combine the need for obedience and discipline with the need for imaginative and independent thought?

…as the German 1936 Truppenfuhrung manual put it, “a readiness to assume responsibility is the most important of all qualities of leadership,”…

…In [Israeli] officers’ training, the emphasis is on initiative and self reliance;
Ok, so how do the current initial pre-course officer selection processes (in the various militaries) select for these characteristics? Then how during the actual training course leading to commissioning are situations created where cadets are tested individually for the above characteristics?