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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Personal Development: Tips from a Year in the JHub By James Kuht “If you keep learning all the time, you have a wonderful advantage” Charlie Munger, Berkshire Hathaway. The law of compound interest (that a 1% improvement in your knowledge each day would make you doubly smart within 70 days) makes a compelling case for…
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Leadership: Tips from a Year in the JHub By James Kuht In the previous article on GSD (“Getting Stuff Done”) I talked about the criticality of assembling a small-but-perfectly-formed team – this article explores how you might lead them effectively. Now I am certainly not a born leader, naturally quite introverted in fact, and am…
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Getting Stuff Done: Tips from a Year in the JHub By James Kuht “Ideas are easy, execution is everything” John Doerr, Billionaire Tech Investor & author of “Measure what Matters” “Getting stuff done” (GSD) sounds so simple but is a skill held by remarkably few. I am not talking about simply being given a task to…
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Ideation: Tips from a Year in the JHub By James Kuht This is the first article in a series of four on my experiences of innovation at the jHub/jHubMed – UK Strategic Command’s innovation hub. They are intended for anyone who is interested or actively involved in innovation or entrepreneurship. I have attempted to write…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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,…
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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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