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…
Failure: A Practioner’s View By Lt Col Fernando Garetto, Some authors say that failure is a key element of learning. Others suggest that leaders should share their failures in order to make their people feel more comfortable with their own mistakes, contributing to the generation of a creative culture. Ed Catmul dedicated a whole chapter…
Leading Civilian Staff – A Medic’s View By Dr Stephen Carey Life appears to be increasingly complex and Defence is not immune from the challenges this presents. Recruiting and training those with the required skills can be difficult, and drawing upon the capabilities and emotional perspectives of civilians may prove beneficial, especially in niche areas.…
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…
Orders and Disorder By Des Fitzgerald ‘Never give orders to your NCOs!’ was the advice a former CO of mine received from his father as he was commissioned. His father had served as a wartime infantry officer, fighting in such delightful battles as El Alamein and Anzio. Now at face value that appears a…
Mutual Respect and the Modern Army By WO1 JJ Fraser Recently I observed US Army Command Sergeant Major Crosby asking a few UK soldiers what their achievements were. Almost every reply was based on promotion. As I walked away, I asked myself the same question and found that I could not answer it. Over a…