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Military Instructors - Understanding Motivation and Job Satisfaction Across Two Nations

2019; Rankin, K.; Rounding, K.; Ford, C.

Instructors are recognized as the cornerstone of military training, and enable militaries to produce the highest calibre and most effective members to meet current and future security demands. However, the high demands of training military personnel to meet today’s operational requirements have resulted in militaries in The Technical Cooperation Program (TTCP) engaging in concerted reviews of how to best ensure effective military instructors. Towards this end, TTCP nations’ approaches to select, train, and employ military instructors are discussed prior to the presentation of two theoretical frameworks that contribute to understanding the factors that influence military instructors’ job satisfaction and motivation towards the role. In this report, two nations, Canada and the United Kingdom, present their individual research to provide an overview of instructor satisfaction/motivation issues facing militaries, as well as the theories, methods, and main results of each nation’s study. This culminates in a comparison and discussion of the major satisfaction/motivation factors, the identification of possible interventions to resolve dissatisfiers/ demotivators, and ultimately ways to increase satisfaction/motivation. This collaboration provides a mechanism to capitalize on the strengths, and minimize any weaknesses, in both studies, while expanding our understanding of factors influencing military instructors’ satisfaction/motivation.