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 know your own mind.
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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Media Credit: Image © Crown Copyright under Open Government Licence v3.0
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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When I’m in charge, I will do things differently By H Halawi Over the years I have been in various positions of responsibility and authority, as well as being on the receiving end of some good, as well as some not-so-good, leaders and managers. I remember always thinking to myself ‘if I was in charge…
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Leadership, The Southgate Way By Maj Colin Oliver. As we get over the disappointment of an England World Cup Semi-Final defeat, one positive everyone is agreed upon is the successful leadership of manager Gareth Southgate. It is he who is credited with the turnaround of the England team from National embarrassment to worthy competitors. It’s…
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The Unpopular Man: Leading as a Lance Corporal By CSgt Aaron Kerin In July 2006 I attended my Potential Junior Non Commissioned Officers’ Cadre. I was still junior. Fresh faced (even, perhaps, baby-faced). I’d arrived in the battalion only 18 months earlier, only 18 years old. But I had completed a tour of Iraq, Operation…
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James Mattis’s Leadership Philosophy By The Army Leader You’d have to have been living in a hole to not have heard of James ‘Mad Dog’ Mattis. The current Secretary of Defense and former United States Marine Corps General has a legendary reputation in the US armed forces. It’s a reputation built on stories of his no-nonsense combat and…
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Counting the Costs of Winning: Doing the Right Thing, on a Difficult Day… When the Whole World is Watching By Martyn Cook. Leaders under pressure must keep themselves absolutely clean morally. The relativism of the social sciences will never do. They must lead by example, must be able to implant high-mindedness to their followers, and…
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The Lord Down Here. Discipline Lessons from RSM John C Lord MVO MBE By Maj Will Meddings RSM John Lord MVO MBE is a legendary character but one that is less recognised these days than he should be. He achieved two notable firsts: the first RSM of 3 PARA (on its formation) and the first…
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JP Morgan’s Guaranteed Formula For Success By The Army Leader Sometimes, in the Army and in our lives, we find ourselves confusing working long hours with working hard. And then we confuse working hard with achieving results. There’s no simple way to avoid this mistake. It requires us to constantly assess which task(s) will best…
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Advising and Inspiring: What I Learned from ‘Bottom-Up Blogging’ By Capt John Bailey I recently instigated an internal monthly blog within my Army Reserve RMP company. It began with me writing an example and publishing it. I then press-ganged others to follow suit. To begin, each month we covered a different aspect of the British Army’s…
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High Morale: Lessons from D-Day to the House of Lords By The Army Leader …Remember Monty’s pep talks to us on the eve of the invasion? Then the emotional feeling as we threaded our way through the English countryside, heading for our embarkation points. I can recall some barracking dockers as we approached Southampton, shouting…
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Breaking the Mould – How to Change, Develop and Improve Instruction By Martyn Cook Recently I witnessed, with a heavy heart, a group of trainees being disciplined by their Corporal instructor. Swearing, derogatory language and general de-motivation – it really was sad to listen to. And thankfully, it’s very rare to see these days. When I took the Platoon Commander, who was watching, aside…
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Crossing the Stress Point By The Army Leader In the 2003 film Falling Down Bill Foster, Michael Douglas’s divorced and unemployed engineer, descends in a stress induced downward spiral, angrily fighting and shooting his way across LA to make it to his daughter’s birthday. “I’ve passed the point of no return. Do you know what…
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Never Off Duty – Are You A Social Role Model Too? By The Army Leader Today I watched Padre Johanna Jepson and Lt Col Nick MacKenzie talk at the Centre for Army Leadership. The talk was livestreamed over Facebook. They talked about the inmate rehabilitation programme at Louisiana State Penitentiary in a talk titled ‘Unexpected…
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Nail Your Meetings! By The Army Leader We’ve all sat through horrible meetings. In the Army and in civvie street, no one looks forward to meetings. In the US the average employee spends 37% of their time in meetings and 47% complain that meetings are the number one waste of time in their job. A recent…
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Trusting Us and Trusting Them – A Leader’s Role – Part 2 By Maj Will Meddings In the first part of this article I mentioned the theory that trust is made up of integrity, intent, capability and proven results. In this part I’ll cover the next three ways to build trust between teams. The first,…
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Trusting Us and Trusting Them – A Leader’s Role – Part 1 By Maj Will Meddings In 2015 the NATO Kabul Security Force created a joint UK-US integrated command battalion to provide security in Kabul. With a UK commander and a US Command Sergeant Major, it was the first integrated unit like this since the…
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The Five ‘Universals’ of Great Leaders? By Maj Russ Lewis MC “You are what you repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit.” Aristotle I left the Army in 2013 having had an incredible twenty year career. During that time I had the opportunity to lead soldiers in a variety of environments…
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Drive The Power Train By The Army Leader One of the seven Leadership Code behaviours is ‘Encourage Confidence in the Team’. The guide to the Code says that leaders should inspire and motivate their team by showing confidence in their abilities and talking enthusiastically about success. Inspirational motivation. Fine words. But what does that actually…
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