Deployment Teambuilding at the Army Management Staff College

Military Police, Sept, 2003 by Mary Ann Hodges

Fifteen soldiers from the 1st Information operations Command at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, attended a first-ever Deployment Teambuilding session at the Army Management Staff College (AMSC) on 24 July 2003. These soldiers will soon deploy for six months to multiple locations in Iraq.

Why teambuilding? An Information Operations planner at 1st Information Operations Command, who was previously deployed to Kosovo and knew the inherent problems that could develop when integrating a small group of subject matter experts into an already existing staff, searched for a resource that could provide actionable skills on group dynamics. He wanted tolls to assist the team members in coordinating, synchronizing, and integrating actions in the information environment of a very diverse group, a multinational coalition, in order to accomplish a common goal.

After finding that there was neither an in-house capability for such training nor a comprehensive Army course catalog, the planner contacted AMSC worked with the staff to develop a course that met 1st Information Operations Command requirements. The chairman saw a great opportunity to support soldiers on the battlefield, a goal he says is part of the charter of the sustaining base program.

According to the chief of the 1st Information Operations Command Field Support Division, it is quite unusual for a large Army educational institution to be flexible enough to react so quickly since the time lapse was a mere ten days from the initial call to the schedule class. If all goes well, 1st Information Command will look into the possibility of adding the AMSC course as a regular part of predeployment training for field support teams deploying from Fort Belvoir to support land component commanders worldwide.