Warrant Officers are the pinnacle of a soldier’s career. A role model to junior soldiers and officers, your influence is deep and wide – for better or worse. A good Warrant Officer will will do their job, teach their junior and senior NCOs, mentor junior officers and (probably) juggle a role in the Warrant Officers’ and Sergeants’ Mess. Its a tough call because Warrant Officer leadership is the point where you transition from team leadership (where you can know the name of everyone in your company, squadron or team) to organisational leadership (where you lead people via intermediates). To make it easier, if you can live by the Regiment’s values, pursue excellence and not rest on your laurels then you’ll wield the greatest of respect and influence.
Gentlemen, my name is RSM J C Lord. J C does not stand for Jesus Christ. He is Lord up there (pointing up to the sky) and I am Lord down here (pointing to the ground)
Regimental Sergeant Major John Lord MVO MBE
If you want to develop your SNCOs’ leadership you can check out these videos with some training suggestions. If you’ve been tasked to run a leadership development session for the battalion or regiment then check out these leadership resources, books and some leadership quotes to spice up your presentations.
To develop you – and you wouldn’t have got this far if you weren’t always growing – the Warrant Officer leadership articles below are for you.
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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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What Got You Here Won’t Get You Further: On Success, Culture and Communication By Maj Will Meddings. If you are soon to take over your sub-unit, I expect you are feeling pretty good about yourself. I know I was. Over the 12 or so years leading up to company command I’d thought a great deal…
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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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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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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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RSM Common Sense By WO1 (RSM) Steve ‘Spud’ Armon It’s 2002. I’m a newly promoted Cpl in the Vikings waiting to go in front of the CO and be read my Section Commanders’ Battle Course report. I am arrogant, overzealous and thirsty to fight any enemy that comes my way. The only thing that matters…
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A Junior Officer’s Thoughts on Staff Leadership By Maj Mark Shercliff We are taught to equate military leadership with the adrenaline and tempo of operations in the field, yet the reality is that many of our opportunities to exercise good leadership are actually in the different (but still challenging) environment of a staff headquarters. Staff…
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Clive Woodward’s Teamship By The Army Leader 22nd of November 2003. In the Telstra stadium the Australian Rugby team faced off England in the Rugby World Cup final. Australia, the hosts, took an early lead in a physically brutal match but England gradually pulled ahead towards the end of the first half. There then followed…
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