Junior Officer leadership can be bitter sweet. You’ve spent over a year on some of the best leader development courses in the world. You are fit, enthusiastic, driven and have the great privileged of leading the young men and women of the British Army. And yet you lack experience and credibility. As a Junior Officer you must be a sponge for information, yet also able to spot poor advice when you get it. You must be confident enough to inspire, yet sceptical enough to question the limits of your ability.
Developing yourself as a leader doesn’t finish when you leave Sandhurst. Nor does it stop when you become a Captain or even when you reach the heady heights of your unit or brigade headquarters.
This blog was stared because there is a wealth of Junior Officers leadership experience that you should be able to tap into. Check out these leadership videos with some training suggestions, either for you or for your team. There are selected podcasts here. And amongst all the reading you could be doing, don’t forget that every war story is full of leadership reflection if you look for it. If you want more our leadership book thoughts and recommendations are here. The articles below are also here to guide and advise you.
If you wanted the latest leadership advice, written by and for Army leaders like you, then subscribe to The Army Leader and you’ll get it straight into your inbox.
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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Team of Teams: A Leadership Model for a Complex World By Dan Snelson The 21st century is a time unlike any other. Modern technology allows instant global communication for everyone, making the world no longer just highly complicated, but increasingly complex. It is this complexity, argues General Stanley McChrystal in his 2015 book Team of…
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The Three Ks of Leadership – Part 2 By Richard Clark MC In Part 1 I talked about the need to occasionally Kiss your subordinates. Woo them. Make them feel special and valued. To follow on I want to give my take on the second of the 3 Ks – Kuddle. Kuddle is not about…
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The Three Ks of Leadership – Part 1 By Richard Clark MC For 12 years I served with 3 SCOTS – the Black Watch. In my time I served in both Iraq and Afghanistan a couple of times. I decided to leave in 2012 as the Platoon Sergeant of a highly capable platoon, one I was…
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Honesty and Inspiration – An Interview with Maj Gen Paul Nanson By The Army Leader Since 2015 Major General Paul Nanson has been the Commandant of the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and the British Army’s Director Leadership. During his tenure he launched the Army Leadership Code, oversaw the publication of the Army’s first leadership doctrine…
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The ‘Adding Value’ Dilemma: An Interview with Lt Gen Richard Nugee By The Army Leader People are at the heart of a leader’s business. This is something every junior leader gets – you need to understand your people, put their needs before your own, motivate and develop them. It is at the centre of leading…
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Spinning a Dit: Leadership and Storytelling By The Army Leader I remember the afternoon pretty well. Sat in my OC’s office with a brew and a plate of sandwiches. The OC was a military history enthusiast – as we all should be – and we were spending the afternoon examining the battles for Monte Cassino…
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Start With Another Narrative: Leadership for the Information Age By Matt Offord At the end of my presentation, I looked over the rows of young military officers and I realised that I had failed to convince them that I could offer them anything new on the subject of leadership. I had failed to create that…
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Leadership in The Specialised Infantry: An Interview with Brigadier James Roddis The British Army has been training, advising, mentoring and fighting alongside indigenous armies since at least the 18th century. Whether formal or informal, these roles have tended to attract soldiers and officers of a particular temperament and character. Brigadier Ian Gardiner thought so. A…
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Christmas Book List 2018 By The Army Leader With Christmas approaching, The Army Leader has reached out to some respected army leaders, scholars, authors and role models to ask them for a recommendation for our Christmas book list. It includes suggestions from Lieutenant Generals Tye Urch and Richard Nugee, and WO1 Glenn Haughton, the new…
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Leaders: Myth and Reality by Stan McChrystal, Jeff Eggers and Jason Mangone By The Army Leader Team “Leadership is not what you think it is – and it never was” Last week the Army Leader team went to the Emmanuel Centre in London to listen to General McChrystal talk about his latest best-selling book, Leaders: Myth…
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Change and Leadership By The Army Leader Change is coming – and leaders had better be ready. This was the message from the 2018 Army Leadership Conference, where 850 delegates from across the services (and civil service) heard from four speakers on the subject of leading through change. The speakers painted a compelling vision of change…
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Don’t Manage Your Time, Manage Your Tasks By The Army Leader In my early career I was often told I would need improve my time management. “Getting everything done is about managing your time better” was a common response when I asked how others got all their jobs done. I was recently told the same…
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Will your leadership strengths derail you? By The Army Leader There is a leader that I think we all know. They are intelligent; much more so than their peers and subordinates. They are an action person and get things done; in fact, they are the unit’s highest performer. And they are a detail person; nothing…
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Coffee and Clausewitz: Building Organic Leadership Development Communities By Dr Franklin Annis One of the biggest challenges for leaders in both the military and industry is to establish a culture of learning within their organizations. There are packaged programs available and consultants that can be brought in; these approaches often fail to leave lasting results…
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Most Read Army Leader Articles of the First Year One year ago, I launched The Army Leader, based on the view that when peers share their leadership experiences and understanding it improves everyone’s collective leadership ability. Over the last 12 months the site has had almost 90,000 visitors reading 40 articles. Over 1,200 people subscribe…
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Model Exercises and Mission Command By Des Fitzgerald In 2016 I was employed as a contractor on the British Army’s STRIKE concept experiment. The final element of the experiment was a three-week Virtual Environment exercise in the Combined Arms Tactical Trainer (CATT) for a STRIKE Company Group. There were a whole range of approved tactical…
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