Abstract
<jats:p>Modern military actions are predominantly conducted with small units and groups, which often autonomously fight in hostile environment and in conditions isolated from the so called main forces. That’s why great significance is attached to the cohesion of the personnel, so is the junior commanders’ initiative, which, nonetheless, should be exercised in the framework of the senior commander’s overall concept and intent. The cohesion of the military collective is one of the most important social and psychological characteristics, which provide its members’ interoperability of actions, which is mutually conditioned by the conformity of their motivations, value orientations, views and perceptions. The article highlights the following indicators of personnel cohesion: clarity and certainty of group goals; interdependence of members of a military collective during joint activities; level of mutual sympathy and absence of destructive conflicts in interpersonal relations; optimal leadership (command) style; group authority and traditions, consistent with legal norms, etc. The command staff provides for these indicators at the expense of effective organization of daily work placing constant value at the moral and psychological climate being developed in the collective. The article accentuates the importance of creating prerequisites in the military collective for the formation of a group leadership, if necessary, with distributed balanced authority in order to exclude the possibility of establishing a personalist dictatorship.</jats:p>