Centre for Army Leadership Conference 2019 – Leading in the Digital Age
Article sponsored by The Sandhurst Trust
On the 23rd of October the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst is set to host the British Army’s largest-yet leadership development conference. Titled Leading in the Digital Age, the Centre for Army Leadership’s third annual conference will look at what it takes to lead teams in an increasingly digital world. The team at the CAL have designed the conference to bring together leaders and academics from across the military and civilian worlds to explore the digital-age leadership, discuss the challenges and consider the implications. It will be hosting an impressive array of speakers from around the world and some pop-up stands from some exciting organisations.
The event is being livestreamed on Defence Connect for serving members of the MOD but, while military tickets are almost fully allocated, there are a limited number of civilian tickets still available.
With a month left until the event, here’s a run-down of four of the speakers and what they have to say.
Jamie Wheal, Co-Author of Stealing Fire and CEO of the Flow Genome Project
The most exciting speaker at Leading in the Digital Age is Jamie Wheal. Jamie has worked with the US Navy Seals, Red Bull and a range of big-name companies around the world. His area of expertise? Flow.
Flow, or being ‘in flow’ is the state that elite athletes and soldiers enter when they are utterly focussed on carrying out their task, when time slows down, self vanishes and action and awareness merge. If you have ever been in a state of peak attention where time seemed to stop and you suddenly remember coming ‘back in the room’, you have probably experienced it. There is a good chance that if you have been in combat you have experienced the feeling too.
Jamie’s book, Stealing Fire, asks how we can track the neurological and biological feeds that put people into flow. His life’s work is discovering out how people can unlock their flow and how a leader can unlock the flow in others. And, as CEO of the Flow Genome Project, he is leading a team of top scientists, athletes, and artists who are dedicated to mapping the genome of this peak-performance state.
Flow is a fascinating concept and a state of peak performance that many people have felt at some time in their life. Jamie is flying over from the US specifically to speak at the conference and promises to be an outstanding speaker. You can hear him explain more about flow in his TEDx talk, Hacking the GENOME of Flow.
Frank Dick OBE, former UK and international athletics coach
Frank Dick is another outstanding leader and coach. Although from the UK, his experience comes from coaching sport around the world. Frank oversaw the 80s and 90s golden period of UK athletics, coaching stars like Sally Gunnell, Seb Coe, Daley Thompson and Colin Jackson. Since then he has head-coached the South African Olympic Team, been President of the European Athletics Coaches Association and is a strategic planning consultant for the England Rugby leadership team in the run up to the World Cup.
If Frank’s resume is impressive, he is even more impressive in person. His expertise and knowledge are inspiring. At the conference Frank will be sitting on the afternoon Q&A panel alongside two equally impressive international leaders and academics, Jaya Baloo of Singularity University and Mareike Möhlmann of Warwick Business School.
Frank has spent his career improving performance through coaching. Even if you are not interested sport, I can guarantee Frank will deliver some insights you can take home and use the day after.
Dr Pippa Malmgren, CEO, Author and former Presidential Advisor
Another impressive speaker is Dr Pippa Malmgren. Pippa served President George W. Bush in the White House and on The National Economic Council where she handled financial market issues and terrorism risks to the economy after 9/11. She is also co-founder of H Robotics, a British firm that makes commercial UAV systems for aerial intelligence, situational awareness and data analytics.
As well as having years of leadership experience in business and technology, she’s also the co-author (with Chris Lewis) of the 2018 book The Leadership Lab. Earlier this year The Leadership Lab was named Business Book of the Year and Best Book on Leadership 2019. In it she looks at leadership in a changing technological age and how changing environments blindside leaders – one of the subjects she’ll be talking about at the conference.
You can follow Pippa on Twitter at @DrPippaM (Forbes put her on their “Must Follow” Twitter list in 2015).
Jochen Menges, Lecturer in Organisational Behaviour at Judge Business School
Jochen Menges is a Lecturer in Organisational Behaviour at Judge Business School, part of the University of Cambridge. His research centres on charismatic leaders – what makes them charismatic and why we seem to fall for them. Jochen has spent over a decade researching the social dynamics between leaders and followers and the role of emotions and motivation in organisational life. For him, the secret to charismatic leadership is in emotional intelligence.
In his talk Jochen is going to examine what makes leaders charismatic, how charismatic leaders affect followers, how leaders infuse emotions in those who look up to them and how leaders develop and use emotional intelligence.
It will be a great opportunity to hear from someone who has been dispassionately studying how leaders create passion and awe. He might also help you understand how leaders can use emotional intelligence in the digital age, where face to face communication is less common.
And the others…
As well as these speakers and panel members, the conference will be opened by the Deputy Chief of the General Staff and will include three pop-up stands during the day.
The Wavell Room will be there, ready to talk about their work and encourage you to get involved in delivering fresh thinking about the digital age. Bellingcat will host a short session on open source intelligence and the role of leaders in ensuring their people maintain Opsec and Persec – stand by to brief your followers on their work when you get back home. Finally, the Army Sergeant Major will be there to talk about leadership at the tactical level and answer your questions (especially about beards in the Army!)
In all, the Centre for Army Leadership Conference 2019 promises to be an outstanding event with some exceptional speakers. If you want to learn about leadership, information flow, the role of power and authority, problem-solving, digital decision-making, personal development and emotional control the it is well worth your time.
You can find more details about the conference on their website. For military members, you can book military tickets on the Centre for Army Leadership’s sharepoint site. Non-military tickets are available from the Sandhurst Trust, here.
If you want to know more about the Centre for Army Leadership’s previous conference, Leading Successfully Through Change, you can read our post-event article here. You can also get the proceedings of the 2018 conference here and the 2017 conference, The Role of Leaders in Building a Culture of Moral Courage, here.
This article has been sponsored by the Sandhurst Trust, the charity of the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. Sponsored posts help contribute towards the running costs of The Army Leader and we only accept sponsorship from organisations that can provide value to our readers and who match our aims and values.
