The Marine Corps Intelligence Leader Development Program (Ka-Bar) will create a context of learning to better understand personal identify, moral purpose, and individual learning dynamics to support the leader's responsibility to the organization and achieve mission.

The Ka-Bar knife is an important symbol for the Marine Corps. Often, this knife is given as a gift, within the Marine Corps, and it has become a symbol of flexibility and strength, making it an appropriate brand for a Marine Corps Intelligence leader development program.

The purpose of this program was to prepare new supervisors and other emerging leaders to effectively lead their teams, meet the organization's mission, retain staff, and be prepared for leadership development model; and treating leadership as and IC resource.

Marine Corps Intelligence Community leaders have endorsed the design and development of Ka-Bar including BGen Stewart, Col Henry, and Ms. Dolan.  Ms. Dolan stated that "We are committed to providing our organization, leaders, and employees the tools to succeed, and we plan to keep the program dynamic so that, like the Marine Corps itself, we have the leaders we need to succeed today while preparing the emerging leaders of tomorrow."

The Ka-Bar team is interested in applying for accreditation and will pursue this effort as resources are made available. This process can take 6 months or more and requires a significant effort. The Ka-Bar Group is currently addressing the issues with the Command. The Ka-Bar Group  has determined that academic accreditation should not interfere with the intent of the program but believes that there is a good possibility of gaining regional accreditation.

The program design is grounded in the most current and credible research and theory available. It is intentionally distinct from other programs that are currently available throughout the intelligence community and the greater public sector. Even as Marines or Civilian marines, this program will be different than anything you have experienced in traditional leadership training programs. The key distinctions are in the development of both the personal and professional spheres in a holistic approach to leader development. We believe this program will affect leaders in a personal way that will translate to their experience and performance within Marine Corps Intelligence.

Experiential learning is defined as the transformation that occurs through experiences and relationships while asking questions and combining reflection in order to unlearn habits and preferences to learn new attitudes, skills, and abilities to affect behaviors. Experiential learning is fundamental to help participants connect understanding to application in their jobs.

There are three key development areas in Ka-Bar:

• Personal and moral development including:
• Leadership and management skills including competencies development through:
• Focus on the intelligence community developmental needs

Each of the week-long sessions are referred to as learning modules. The curriculum for the learning modules are still being developed.

A cohort is a group of people who move through a program at the same time and speed and therefore experience the assessments and debriefs, challenges and support, and all of the other experiential and social learning activities together.

Ka-Bar is a certification program with course work that requires writing assignments, a mid-program evaluation, self-reflection, and a final team assignment.

A competency is defined as a capability or ability. Ka-Bar integrated competencies that were developed specifically for the Intelligence Community along with those identified as requirements for the Senior Executive Services.