A Second Soul? Language, Personality, and the Development of Cross-Cultural Expertise

To have another language is to possess a second soul.

- Charlemagne¹

Abstract

The Defence White Paper 2016 and Army’s Professional Military Education Strategy of 2017 make clear that the development of cross-cultural expertise needs to become a key component of how Army trains and educates its personnel. This article examines the use of language training in the Australian Army in light of the challenges identified and goals set in these documents.

It argues that language training should be viewed as an important but resource-intensive part of a larger program to develop deeper cross-cultural expertise in selected personnel. Selecting the right people for language training therefore becomes an increasingly important aspect of achieving the stated goal of higher levels of cross-cultural expertise. This article explores one method by which this might be achieved: the use of psychological measures, including personality and cultural intelligence, as a means to identify those likely to generate the greatest effect from the receipt of language training.

Introduction

Although the spiritual benefits of language learning might be disputed, there is little question that languages are often able to expand horizons much further than the simple act of being able to communicate with another group of people. Despite the potential benefits, it remains a significant investment for both individuals and organisations and requires some careful thought in its application.

The Defence White Paper 2016 (DWP 2016), Army’s Professional Military Education (PME) Strategy of 2017, and the Australian Joint PME (JPME) Continuum of 2018 make clear that the development of cross-cultural expertise needs to become a key component of how Army trains and educates its personnel. At a practical level, the release last year of Land Warfare Doctrine LWD 3.0.5 Security Force Capacity Building (SFCB) provides more specific guidance on what Army’s requirements are, and how language capability fits into current and likely future operational scenarios.

While the need for cross-cultural expertise and the associated language skills extends well beyond SFCB, this article focuses on SFCB and the most recent Australian Defence Force (ADF) ‘Train, Advise, Assist’ missions as the most prominent examples of where Army’s expertise, or lack of it, has come under scrutiny. One senior Australian advisor working in southern Afghanistan in 2014 concluded that ‘Australia and its Coalition partners were largely clueless about building partner capacity in conflict’ and partially attributed this to a lack of adequate preparation of the personnel required to carry out the mission.² The link between success in such missions and the use of language training is nuanced and is explored throughout this article.

Recent research points to language skills being desirable in SFCB-type missions, but not a conclusive predictor of success.³ Despite Charlemagne’s aphorism, it follows that languages cannot be an end in themselves, but merely one component of Army’s efforts to imbue its personnel with greater cross-cultural expertise. If language by itself is not enough, and yet the investment required for language competence is so significant, the question becomes how to use languages as part of a broader effort to develop cross- cultural expertise.

This article examines the use of language training in the Australian Army, in light of Army’s SFCB experiences over the last two decades, and the goals set in DWP 2016 and the two foundation PME documents. It argues that language training should be viewed as an important but resource-intensive part of a larger program to develop deeper cross-cultural expertise in selected personnel. Selecting the right personnel therefore becomes a critically important aspect of Army’s language training. Finally, this article explores one method by which this might be achieved: the use of psychological measures including personality and cultural intelligence (CQ) as a means to identify those likely to generate the greatest effect from language training.

Recent research points to language skills being desirable in Security Force Capacity Building- type missions, but not a conclusive predictor of success. (Image courtesy Defence)

What Is the Requirement?

DWP 2016 identifies the requirement for better training and development of personnel who need to operate across cultures, stating:

Defence will expand cultural and language capabilities to increase its effectiveness in operating in the region and collaborating with international partners. Defence will develop higher levels of cultural understanding of our region, including more intensive training for those who work routinely with regional partners. Defence will increase the number of personnel with intermediate and advanced language skills to support our enhanced international engagement, with a focus on languages in the Indo-Pacific region.⁴

Specific to Army, the PME Strategy of 2017 asserts that ‘a deepened foundation of socio-cultural skills and emotional intelligence will be required’.⁵ Laying out Army’s approach to partnering, the (then) Deputy Chief of Joint Operations, Major General Greg Bilton, argued at the Chief of Army Land Forces Seminar last year that ‘the success of our efforts will be underpinned by our approach, where we respect sovereignty, respect and understand culture and understand the needs and wants of our partners’.⁶

LWD 3.0.5 provides more specific guidance on what Army’s requirements are, and how language proficiency fits into current and likely future operational scenarios. Given the challenges confronted on operations and in international engagement tasks over the last two decades, and the likely continuation of this trend, the requirements outlined in LWD 3.0.5 suggest the need for a more holistic approach to the development of cross-cultural expertise.⁷ In turn this requires a closer examination as to what Army’s PME Strategy and LWD 3.0.5 mean for Army’s approach to the development of linguists.

LWD 3.0.5 nominates language as one of 12 skills required in evaluating and selecting potential personnel needing to interact with host nation forces during SFCB, stating that ‘the approach and attitude to learning the host nation’s language(s) are as important as the knowledge of the language itself’.⁸ This statement affirms the idea that selecting ^who is given language training is important in ultimately achieving this ‘deepened foundation of socio-cultural skills and emotional intelligence’. This article does not claim that language ability is required to operate effectively cross-culturally. It is no shortcut to a second soul. This article does, however, argue that, given the investment required, Army’s linguists should be expected to also possess the traits and qualities necessary to wield their language skills to the greatest effect.

The Role of Language Training

First we need to ask how language training should fit into Army’s development of deeper cross-cultural expertise. First, a point that needs to be acknowledged up front is that the Defence Force School of Languages (DFSL) is a joint organisation that exists to meet the disparate needs of all three services. The requirements articulated in the Army’s PME Strategy and the single-service doctrine of LWD 3.0.5 are specific to Army. A RAAF signals intelligence analyst needs pure language skill, not the ability to advise a foreign counterpart in a combat zone. Each service’s needs differ and there must be a suitable compromise. DFSL therefore rightly focuses almost entirely on the delivery of language skills. For this reason, this article makes no recommendations about the actual delivery of language training.

The resource-intensive nature of language training and the development of true regional expertise has led some to conclude that specialisation in the officer corps, along the lines of the United States Foreign Area Officer program, is the answer.⁹ This has a certain appeal in allowing specialists to develop very high levels of regional expertise and associated language proficiency. In a force the size of the Australian Army, however, this would become difficult to sustain. Opportunities for specialists to progress at middle to senior levels are likely to be limited. The resulting lack of opportunity may end up repelling talented personnel from taking up the training opportunities on offer in the first place—including language training. This dichotomy between career opportunities and specialisation is explored by Cate Carter in her examination of the Foreign Area Officer system and its applicability to the Australian Army.¹⁰

Discounting specialisation as a viable option, what remains is a version of the current system in which language proficiency, outside certain trades in intelligence and signals corps, is treated as an additional qualification alongside someone’s existing role, trade or career stream. The addition of an improved selection model based on psychological measures, as described below, however, would see the establishment of a more substantial link between language training and the development of ‘a deepened foundation of socio-cultural skills and emotional intelligence’.

The next question that arises is how widely to cast the languages net. In attempting to achieve ‘higher levels of cultural understanding of our region, including more intensive training for those who work routinely with regional partners’, it becomes attractive to use greater numbers of language qualifications as a means of doing so. Major General Jim Molan, a linguist himself, cautioned on the impracticality of attempting to achieve ‘widespread … language skills in any military in anticipation of a conflict’ but also acknowledged that ‘languages are indeed the key to cultural understanding’.¹¹ Molan’s seemingly contradictory statements in fact make the argument that true cross-cultural expertise for a specific country or region is an expensive capability to acquire and maintain, and so the application of language training towards this end must be applied very selectively. An improved selection model would go some way towards ensuring this.

This problem of selection is not unique to language training. By necessity Army has in the past had to select people for deployments with no objective assessment of the likely character traits required and no appreciation of the level of preparation required.¹² This is not unique to the Australian Army and has been especially common when large, short-notice missions arise.¹³ In examining the use of military advisors to foreign forces during the 20th and 21st centuries, a consistent theme is that forces rarely have the luxury of carefully selecting and training people for foreign advisor duties, and some of those who find themselves in such a role neither are well suited to it nor feel well prepared.¹⁴ Australia’s most senior advisor to the Afghan National Army in Afghanistan during 2014 later lamented that ‘we weren’t selected or trained to be advisors … I would argue we were not set up for success’.¹⁵

Why Personality Matters

Training can heighten motivation and sharpen skills, but only if the motivation and skills are there to begin with … the most successful advisors tend to be those whom life experience and personality have qualified for the role.¹⁶

In psychology, personality has no single agreed definition, but for the purposes of this article it is best defined as a person’s set of traits, behaviours, cognition and emotions that explain job performance and task success over and above traditional measures of intelligence (intelligence quotient, or IQ).¹⁷ Language training has a significant effect on those who are, in terms of personality, well suited to operating in foreign environments. This is because learning a language, even at a basic level, signals to foreign counterparts a great deal about a willingness to engage and the length to which we will go to understand their point of view.¹⁸ This effect can be maximised by the right individuals. At the other end of the spectrum, Army risks wasting a great deal of time and resources if it delivers language training to those who are not suited to such endeavours.

Whatever our views of colonialism, over the course of 200 years in India, the British produced many highly effective cross-cultural operators.¹⁹ Senior Pakistan Army officers posting to the tribal areas on the Pakistan–Afghan border are still advised to read the books of those British hands of the 19th century in order to understand the area and its people, rather than rely on any contemporary works.²⁰ Those hands, military and civilian alike, were effective not because of their intellect or some training they had received but because they possessed the personality that gave them the ability and willingness to engage deeply with the language, culture and history of the people with whom they worked.²¹

Not all Army personnel who are high performing in traditional roles make good cross-cultural operators. Anecdotally, this has been obvious to many who have served in SFCB roles where it has been observed that otherwise very capable personnel were unable to deal with the peculiar demands of mentoring, partnering and advising.²² Writing in his senior officer debriefing report after commanding a regional assistance command in Vietnam in 1972, Major General John H Cushman argued that ‘a marked empathy with others, an ability to accommodate, a certain unmilitary philosophical or reflective bent, a kind of waywardness or independence … these are often found in outstanding advisors’ (emphasis added).²³

Matthew Carr argues that the positive effects of delivering specific cross- cultural skills (such as languages) are influenced to a large degree by the foundation of generic cultural expertise (such as self-awareness) that precedes them.²⁴ How then to find the right people and put them on the right development path towards wielding language skills most effectively? The challenge is: what exactly are we measuring, and how do we measure it ahead of time in a reliable and scientific manner? The science of personality is becoming increasingly sophisticated and offers some answers to this question.

Selecting the right people for language training becomes an increasingly important aspect of achieving the stated goal of higher levels of cross-cultural expertise. (Image courtesy Defence)

Measuring Personality

The measurement of personality traits by psychologists is well documented, although subject to ongoing academic debate over how well certain measurements predict future behaviour and performance. Nevertheless, the measurement of traits such as extroversion, conscientiousness, agreeableness, openness to experience and neuroticism provides valuable information to inform the selection of candidates for certain roles. Research points towards certain combinations of personality traits and emotional profiles being predictably more effective in particular situations.²⁵ Personality testing can therefore be used to inform a more nuanced and subjective assessment by a selection board or panel.

In the case of language candidates, these personality traits, along with other attributes such as empathy and motivation, will largely determine a person’s ability to adjust to foreign environments and their eventual job performance in such roles.²⁶ That is, a person’s ability to apply the skills they possess, such as a language, towards task success in a foreign environment is dependent on their particular combination of traits and attributes—their personality.²⁷

The United States Peace Corps has employed personality testing extensively as part of selection for overseas service since its inception in 1961, with a high degree of success. In adopting a deliberately amateur or ‘ordinary everyman’ approach to overseas service, the Peace Corps needed to identify and train people who not only could withstand the psychological rigours of such service but also had the necessary personalities to embrace the inevitable ‘culture shock’ as a growth opportunity, and eventually thrive and succeed in such environments.²⁸ In doing so, the Peace Corps turned to observable attributes such as self-mastery and self-awareness as predictors of success and monitored candidates for such attributes throughout selection and training.²⁹

The concept of cultural intelligence (CQ) has gained increasing acceptance in the field of psychology and is now found in Australian Army doctrine.³⁰ It appears throughout LWD 3.0.5, which defines it as ‘the ability to effectively operate across a wide variety of cultural environments’.³¹ Research has further investigated the relationships between the ‘big five’ personality traits listed above and high levels of demonstrated CQ. In particular, there is evidence that the trait of ‘openness to experience’ is correlated with higher levels of all forms of cultural intelligence.³²

LWD 3.0.5 elaborates on CQ, stating:

ADF personnel can prepare … by building their understanding of how the culture operates in general and practicing strategies for more effective cross-cultural engagement. This rests on assessing one’s current level of CQ and committing to building their levels of CQ over time.³³

This implies that CQ is not static but can be deliberately developed. However, it also implies that CQ development is dependent on one’s motivation to do so. This has been characterised by researchers as ‘CQ drive’ and is likely to be the single most important factor in the development of cross-cultural expertise:

Over the last decade, we have surveyed nearly 100,000 professionals from over 100 countries and there’s only one consistent characteristic among every culturally intelligent individual. It’s not where you grew up, how many languages you speak, whether you’re part of an under- represented group or how far you’ve travelled. It’s your curiosity, or something we call your CQ Drive. This is your interest and openness to other ways of doing things. And it’s your confidence and ability to persevere in the midst of intercultural challenges.³⁴

Under the present system of selection, Army has no formal means of assessing the level of CQ or CQ drive among its potential linguists or assessing whether they are intrinsically motivated towards developing the skills demanded by cross-cultural roles. This is a significant vulnerability when seeking to fulfil the goals of DWP 2016 and Army’s PME Strategy. In order to address this deficiency, a comprehensive screening process to inform selection decisions would be beneficial. Such a test, tailored for military use, already exists but, being a proprietary assessment, comes at a financial cost.³⁵ Additional costs include the need for military psychologists to administer and interpret results. The assessment itself could easily be applied alongside the present screening process—language aptitude testing—that occurs routinely throughout Australia on an annual basis.

Critics of structured psychological screening practices may argue that self- selection for language training is good enough. That is, those who volunteer for and pursue language training can be expected to have sufficient CQ Drive. It is logical that people who are not interested in working in cross-cultural environments are hardly likely to want to learn a second language. This, however, ignores two factors. Firstly, people seek courses at DFSL for reasons other than the training or development offered. Courses at DFSL, both short and long, are highly sought after due to its attractive location in Melbourne and regular, predictable work hours. Remuneration in the form of language proficiency allowance is also a potentially distorting incentive. Secondly, most students tend to undergo language training early in their career. This will commonly mean pursuing a language course with their career advisor or chain of command before they have learned their own strengths and weaknesses and come to understand their own particular personality and emotional profile. It does not require blind faith in the science of personality assessment to nevertheless accept that psychology may be able to provide a useful framework for assessing someone’s present and potential CQ.

Conclusion

DWP 2016, the Army PME Strategy of 2017 and the JPME Continuum of 2018 set carefully articulated goals for Army and the joint force in the training and education of personnel that is needed to meet the future demands of service. In particular, a focus on developing improved abilities to operate cross-culturally features in all three documents. The application of language training towards meeting these goals is an important but resource-intensive component that requires careful calibration to ensure the greatest return on investment.

The means of developing improved cross-cultural expertise has been debated extensively, but almost always from a position of what and how much training to provide, rather than to whom to provide it.³⁶ For establishing an organisational base level of competence this may be appropriate, but for the delivery of specialised training and education such an approach is problematic. When linked with understanding of the role that personality and CQ plays in determining the development of cross-cultural expertise, it becomes evident that selecting the right personnel for such an investment becomes of increased importance. Simply put: personality matters, and should be used to inform selection decisions.

The development of cross-cultural expertise needs to become a key component of how Army trains and educates its personnel. (Image courtesy Defence)

This article has explored one method by which such a model might be achieved. The use of personality and CQ measures has gained increasing acceptance in psychology and has now entered the lexicon of Army’s doctrine and policy. A personality and CQ screening model for potential linguists would allow Army to target such a considerable investment in the manner most likely to achieve its stated goal of ‘a deepened foundation of socio-cultural skills and emotional intelligence’.

Endnotes

1. Although this quotation is widely credited to Charlemagne, there is actually no historical record to definitively attribute it as such.
    
2. Mark O’Neill, 2017, ‘Advise Harder: Reflecting on Capacity Building’, in The Long Road: Australia’s Train, Advise and Assist Missions, ed. Tom Frame, Australian Centre for the Study of Armed Conflict and Society Series 4 (Sydney: UNSW Press).
    
3. Deborah Jeppesen, ‘Are We Influential? Examining the Optimal Attributes in Military Advisors for Train-Advise-Assist Roles’, PhD thesis, Australian National University (unpublished).
    
4. Department of Defence, 2016, 2016 Defence White Paper (Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia), 153.
    
5. Australian Army, 2017, ‘Evolving an Intellectual Edge’: Professional Military Education for the Australian Army (Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia).
    
6. Greg Bilton, 2019, ‘Generating Land Power Through Partnering’, Australian Army Journal XIV, no. 3: 97.
    
7. For an overview of these challenges at the strategic and operational level, see Roger Noble, 2009, ‘Beyond Cultural Awareness: Anthropology as an Aid to the Formulation and Execution of Military Strategy in the Twenty-First Century’, Australian Army Journal VI, no. 2: 65–81; and Andrew Maher, 2016, ‘Strategic Planners: A Response to Operational Complexity’, Australian Army Journal XIII, no. 1: 81–100.
    
8. Australian Army, 2018, Land Warfare Doctrine LWD 3.0.5: Security Force Capacity Building, (Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia), 31. The 12 skills identified in LWD 3.0.5 are the result of research by the Australian National University’s Strategic and Defence Studies Centre. See Jeppesen, ‘Are We Influential?’.
    
9. Cate Carter, 2011, ‘Cause for Engagement: Examining the Case for Foreign Area Officers in Army’, Australian Army Journal VIII, no. 2: 115–130; Maher, 2016; Henry Dudley-Warde, ‘Defence Diplomacy and Enhancing the Army’s Language Capability: A More Focused Approach’, The Cove, 9 May 2019, at: https://www.cove.org.au/breakin/ article-defence-diplomacy-and-enhancing-the-armys-language-capability-a-more-focused- approach/
    
10. Carter, 2011, 124–126.
     
11. Jim Molan, 2008, ‘Thoughts of a Practitioner: A Contribution to Australia’s Counterinsurgency Doctrine Drafters’, Australian Army Journal V, no. 2: 225.
     
12. Brett Chaloner, 2017, ‘Advisors for a Generation’, in The Long Road: Australia’s Train, Advise and Assist Missions, ed. Tom Frame, Australian Centre for the Study of Armed Conflict and Society Series 4, (Sydney: UNSW Press), 141–155.
     
13. Edward E Brown, 2018, ‘The Definition of Advisor: Comprehending the Mission to Advise Foreign Security Forces’, Small Wars Journal, at: https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/ definition-advisor-comprehending-mission-advise-foreign-security-forces 
     
14. Robert D Ramsey III, 2006, ‘Advising Indigenous Forces: American Advisors in Korea, Vietnam, and El Salvador’ (Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, Combat Studies Institute Press), at: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/ download?doi=10.1.1.179.2459&rep=rep1&type=pdf]; Jahara Matisek and William Reno, 2019, ‘Getting American Security Force Assistance Right: Political Context Matters’, Joint Force Quarterly 92, at: http://ndupress.ndu.edu/Media/News/News-Article-View/ Article/1738248/getting-american-security-force-assistance-right-political-context-matters/
     
15. UNSW Canberra, ‘Advisors for a Generation: A View from the Ground—Col Brett Chaloner and WO1 Andrew Roberts’, conference presentation, 5 May 2016, at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZEz7jDvum4
     
16. GC Hickey, 1965, The American Military Advisor and His Foreign Counterpart: The Case of Vietnam (Santa Monica, California, RAND Corporation), 28.
     
17. Philip J Corr and Gerald Matthews, eds, 2009, The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press).
     
18. Hickey, 1965, 78.
     
19. For example, the likes of Olaf Caroe, Henry Lawrence, John Nicholson, James Abbott and Frederick Mackeson. See Richard Holmes, 2005, Sahib: The British Soldier in India 1750–1914 (London: HarperCollins).
     
20. Mahsood Aslam, ‘Mainstreaming FATA: Implications and Way Forward’, seminar, 14 March 2019.
     
21. Montgomery McFate, 2018, Military Anthropology: Soldiers, Scholars and Subjects at the Margins of Empire, Kindle edition (Oxford University Press).
     
22. Marshall Lawrence, 2014, ‘The Habits of Highly Effective Mentors’ (unpublished paper).
     
23. Quoted in Ramsey, 2006, 65.
     
24. Matthew Carr, 2013, ‘The Value of Generic Cultural Training’, Australian Army Journal X, no. 4: 78.
     
25. Paul T Bartone et al., 2009, ‘Big Five Personality Factors, Hardiness, and Social Judgment as Predictors of Leader Performance’, Leadership & Organization Development Journal 30, no. 6: 498–521.
     
26. Muhammad Awais Bhatti et al., 2014, ‘Effects of Personality Traits (Big Five) on Expatriates Adjustment and Job Performance’, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal 33, no. 1: 73–96.
     
27. Deborah Jeppesen, 2017, ‘Emotional Intelligence and Military Advisers’, in The Long Road: Australia’s Train, Advise and Assist Missions, ed. Tom Frame, Australian Centre for the Study of Armed Conflict and Society Series 4 (Sydney: UNSW Press), 246–259.
     
28. Rebecca Schein, 2015, ‘Educating Americans for “Overseasmanship”: The Peace Corps and the Invention of Culture Shock’, American Quarterly 67, no. 4: 1109–1136.
     
29. Schein, 2015: 1119.
     
30. Soon Ang, Linn Van Dyne and Thomas Rockstuhl, 2015, ‘Cultural Intelligence: Origins, Conceptualization, Evolution, and Methodological Diversity’, in Handbook of Advances in Culture and Psychology, ed. Michele J Gelfand, Chi-yue Chiu and Ying-yi Hong, vol. 5 (New York: Oxford University Press), 273–323, at: https://www.academia.edu/24972543/ Cultural_Intelligence_Origins_Conceptualization_Evolution_and_Methodological_Diversity
     
31. Australian Army, 2018, ‘Security Force Capacity Building’, 68.
     
32. Soon Ang, Linn Van Dyne and Christine Koh, 2006, ‘Personality Correlates of the Four-Factor Model of Cultural Intelligence’, Group & Organization Management 31, no. 1: 100–123.
     
33. Australian Army, 2018, ‘Security Force Capacity Building’, 68.
     
34. David Livermore, ‘Why You Need to Stop Teaching about Cultural Differences’, Management-Issues.com, 20 December 2018, at: https://www.management-issues.com/ opinion/7332/why-you-need-to-stop-teaching-about-cultural-differences/
     
35. The Cultural Intelligence Scale assessment developed by the Cultural Intelligence Center is presently the only such test specifically tailored for a military population and costs US$70 per individual.
     
36. Carr, 2013