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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Biff! A Personal Reflection on Supporting the Wounded, Injured and Sick By Andrew Dodson Biff. Let’s face it. It is a word we have all used at some time in our career in the Army. Usually disparaging in nature and frequently preceded by four letter expletives. A word used to describe those on light duties…
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A Call for the Reluctant Leader: How Do You Address Complex Organisational Problems? By Miles Hayman I am a fan of the British Army. I think it is an awesome organisation. I also think it is full of outstanding leaders practising their craft admirably, often in exceptionally difficult conditions. Confront us with crises, especially on…
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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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Failure: A Practioner’s View By Lt Col Fernando Garetto, Some authors say that failure is a key element of learning. Others suggest that leaders should share their failures in order to make their people feel more comfortable with their own mistakes, contributing to the generation of a creative culture. Ed Catmul dedicated a whole chapter…
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Leading Civilian Staff – A Medic’s View By Dr Stephen Carey Life appears to be increasingly complex and Defence is not immune from the challenges this presents. Recruiting and training those with the required skills can be difficult, and drawing upon the capabilities and emotional perspectives of civilians may prove beneficial, especially in niche areas.…
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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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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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Mutual Respect and the Modern Army By WO1 JJ Fraser Recently I observed US Army Command Sergeant Major Crosby asking a few UK soldiers what their achievements were. Almost every reply was based on promotion. As I walked away, I asked myself the same question and found that I could not answer it. Over 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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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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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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