Sleep leadership in the army: A group randomized trial

Examine impact of training military leaders in sleep health on leaders and unit members.

Following a baseline survey, two-person platoon leadership teams were randomly assigned by company to a training or waitlist control condition. After training, leadership teams completed a post-training survey. Six weeks later, leaders and unit members completed a final survey.

Classroom-style areas on a US military base.

US soldiers (76 leaders and 448 unit members) from 39 platoons across 14 companies in a brigade combat team.

One-hour training in sleep leadership.

Leaders were surveyed about sleep knowledge, sleep attitudes, sleep training, sleep quantity, sleep quality and sleep problems. Unit members were surveyed about sleep leadership behaviors, sleep hours, sleep quality and sleep problems.

Leaders rated the training highly and most knowledge and some attitudes about sleep improved from the baseline to post-training survey. Fewer leaders in the training condition reported sleep problems at follow-up than those in the waitlist control condition; there were no differences in sleep hours or sleep quality. More unit members with leaders in the training condition reported that their leaders engaged in sleep leadership behaviors at least sometimes and reported sleeping at least 7 hours/24 hours period than did unit members in the waitlist control condition; sleep quality and sleep problems did not differ by condition.

Results suggest a simple training intervention targeting leaders may be able to shift sleep health and the cultural perspective on sleep across an organization.