LION Culture – A Practical Guide to Unlocking the Potential of Every Soldier. By WO1 (RSM) Joseph Fleming In recent years the Army has spent real time and energy emphasising leadership. The introduction of the Army Leadership Code has been the most obvious example, but the establishment of the Centre for Army Leadership (CAL) and…
Christmas Leadership Book List 2019 By Tim Heck, Book Reviews Editor Each year, with Christmas around the corner and High Street full of holiday sales, The Army Leader reaches out to respected military leaders, scholars, and authors to ask them for a recommendation for our Christmas leadership book list. This year we sought a more…
A Breath of Fresh Air: Project Oxygen and the British Army By Will Meddings It’s a simple question; an often-asked question that seems to have a million answers: what makes a good leader? It is worth asking this simple question, not because there is a simple answer but because asking it might just force you…
We Happy Few: A Call for Inclusion By The Army Leader The 25th of October is St Crispin’s day, a festival that celebrates the martyrdom of Saints Crispin and Crispinian around 286 AD. It is also (and perhaps better) remembered as the anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt, part of the Hundred Years’ War between…
A Veteran’s Perspective on Training and Development By Richard Clark Jocks, NCOs and officers are now far more transparent about their successes and failures than they were in my day (All those years ago!). It is a good thing, too. When I left the Army several years ago it was rare to talk about the…
Why Should I Trust the New Lt? What Platoon Commanders Need to Do to Be Trusted by Their Chain of Command By Will Meddings There are plenty of stereotypes about new platoon and troop commanders. Whatever rank you are, you’ve come across them. Platoon commanders with poor administration. Troop commanders who get lost. Platoon commanders…
Staff Ninja or Staff Monkey? By David Crosbie The British Army, like many other armies, talks openly about being a learning organisation. Review and reflection are actively encouraged, with a view to making the institution and its people better in the long run. We even have an Army Command Standing Order for it (ACSO 1118,…
Summer Book List 2019 Last Christmas we asked a group of senior leaders what books they would recommend a leader has on their Christmas list. Well Christmas is now far behind us. The cold is a distant memory and most of us are looking forward to relaxing in the sun over the summer. And if…
Exclusion and Inclusion: The Inner Ring CS Lewis is probably best known for his books: the Narnia children’s series, his science fiction novels and his Christian allegories. But he was also the Professor of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge University and a keen observer of human nature. One piece of his work is not…
Don’t Be Defined By Failure By Noel When a few mouse clicks on Amazon returns over 100,000 titles on leadership it is clear to see that leadership writing is big business. The articles published on forums such as the Wavell Room, the Military Leader and the Cove all feed a hungry market of professionals desperate…