Photo By Petty Officer 2nd Class Sophia Bumps | Senior Chaplain Corps leaders pose for a group photo at a Strategic Leadership...... read more read more
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OLYMPIA, Wash. -- Navy Chaplain Corps leaders from around the world gathered in the Washington state capital for the 2023 Chaplain Corps Strategic Leadership Symposium at Capital Lake Olympia Hotel, July 25-27.
The three-day symposium brought senior religious leaders together to learn and apply executive planning tools to build connections within their community and enable spiritual readiness execution plans.
“This whole week is what we call the Strategic Leadership Symposium,” said Capt. Bob Christian, executive assistant to the Chief of Chaplains. “We meet once a year to tackle deep chaplain issues that we’ve been trying to settle or work on. That’s why we use the words ‘strategic leadership’ - we’re focused on leadership.”
The SLS is an event for senior-ranking chaplains and religious program specialists that serves to affirm the strategic vision of the Chief of Chaplains. The program achieves this by planning for vision execution and developing leader competencies intended to strengthen the Professional Naval Chaplaincy.
“Specifically, we would like to walk away with a process to name and screen individuals for key billets in our community,” said Christian. “If we are going to ‘Get Real, Get Better’ in certain areas, we need to make sure the right individuals are in those spots. That is what we are currently working on, trying to find a process because we don’t have one in place.”
The “Get Real, Get Better” mindset is a Navy directive focusing on self-assessment, self-improvement, and continuous learning.
“If you understand where your shortcomings are, then you can seek to get better,” said Senior Chief Religious Program Specialist Ian Wakefield, assigned to 2nd Marine Division in Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. “We are going through the Hogan Assessment and understanding some potentially inherent flaws within the chaplain organization as it is right now.”
The Hogan Assessment is a personality test based on decades of personality-based psychology research and measurement, validated against external criteria such as job performance and peer ratings. The assessment helps organizations by identifying characteristics that may impact an individual’s job performance, as well as their fit within a particular role, team or organizational culture. These test results could help aid in screening best fits for chaplain billets.
“One of the challenges of ‘Get Real, Get Better’ is for senior leaders to rise up and take ownership and responsibility,” said Capt. Ben Sandford, director of strategic communications for the Chaplain Corps. “Through our connections and working together, we’re hoping that we will actually elevate what we do, which is deliver religious ministry more effectively.”
Chaplains are expected to be the voice of encouragement, reason, and hope to thousands of service members.
“When you get a lot of very successful, talented, and intelligent people at this level together, sometimes we struggle to listen, work together, and trust each other,” said Sandford. “We are intentionally working on our ability to trust and connect with one another, which is one of our primary goals this week.”
Wakefield said it’s important for leaders to seek ways to improve themselves and their organization. He believes by refining their roles, chaplains and RPs can better support service members.
“My role here as a senior enlisted member of the RP rating is to gather with other senior chaplains and RPs, coming together from an executive perspective to learn new skillsets,” said Wakefield. “Right now, we are working our way through a problem set, trying to provide actionable solutions to the chaplain corps to make it a better place.”
The SLS supports the priorities of the Secretary of the Navy, the Chief of Naval Operations, the Commandant of the Marine Corps, and the Commandant of the Coast Guard by implementing the Navy’s Strategic Plan for Religious Ministry.
| Date Taken: | 07.26.2023 |
| Date Posted: | 08.04.2023 15:35 |
| Story ID: | 450720 |
| Location: | OLYMPIA, WASHINGTON, US |
| Web Views: | 179 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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