The Army's newest interactive video game teaches young leaders — lieutenants, sergeants and staff sergeants — how to better counsel and interact with their soldiers.
The Emergent Leader Immersive Training Environment, or ELITE, teaches young leaders how to ask the right questions to understand a soldier's problem and how to use the Army's resources to help address that problem.
It is available to soldiers across the Army, and it is in use at West Point, ROTC, the basic officers' leadership course and the Warrior Leader Course.
"Interpersonal skills are very important, no matter what environment you're in," said Marco Conners, chief of the Army's Games for Training Program at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. "What we wanted to do was develop a scenario and a counseling tool that would teach counseling processes. [ELITE] provides you with some resources and some techniques for how to effectively counsel."
The Army also is working on two more versions of the program, Conners said.
One will focus specifically on sexual assault and harassment prevention and response, and it's scheduled to be released next fall. The other will be designed for company-level leaders including captains and first sergeants. There is not yet a timeline for the release of that version, called ELITE Pro, Conners said.
The original ELITE, which can be downloaded onto a computer, starts with an introduction by an avatar that walks a young leader through some effective counseling methods.
"We're trying to show the student what right looks like," Conners said.
This version of ELITE, called ELITE Lite, features five scenarios:
■ A dispute between sergeants.
■ A soldier with financial problems.
■ A soldier with an arrest for drunk driving.
■ A female soldier asking for a transfer after problems with a male noncommissioned officer.
■ A fight between NCOs over one sergeant's comments about a female soldier.
For each scenario, the student is given a menu of questions, and the choices or answers they choose affect how the simulated counseling session unfolds, Conners said.
When they complete the training, students receive a score and an after-action review, he said.
Work to create ELITE Lite began in 2009, said Maj. Greg Pavlichko, chief of the requirements branch for Training and Doctrine Command Capability Manager-Virtual & Gaming.
The program grew out of a request from the Maneuver Center of Excellence at Fort Benning, Georgia, for a program that could teach platoon leaders "soft skills" such as counseling and interpersonal communication.
Lt. Col. Darcy Schnack, an instructor at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, is using ELITE this semester in her military leadership class. She estimates about 1,100 cadets this year will use ELITE during a class designed for soon-to-be officers in their junior year.
"We felt it was really important to bring counseling into that military leadership course. We can all become better counselors, and that helps our leadership," Schnack said.
As more and more people learn about ELITE Lite, the Army is getting more requests, including from operational units, for the program, said Tim Wansbury, a technology transition officer with the Army Research Laboratory.
"That's really encouraging to us," he said. "When commanders start contacting [us] and say, 'how do I get my hands on this software?' "
Michelle Tan is the editor of Army Times and Air Force Times. She has covered the military for Military Times since 2005, and has embedded with U.S. troops in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait, Haiti, Gabon and the Horn of Africa.
