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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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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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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