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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The Modern Regimental Sergeant Major By WO1 Lee Jones I write this as I reach the end of my non-commissioned career, finishing my time as RSM of the 1st Battalion, The Rifles. Before I left, I wanted to share my thoughts on what I think it means to be an RSM these days. Gone are…
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The Five Dysfunctions of an Army Team How to build a cohesive team using Patrick Lencioni’s Five Dysfunctions of a Team model By Joe Kay, Principal Consultant at The Table Group and former Army Officer When it comes to leadership and team performance training, the Army often leads the way. When I went through Sandhurst…
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Conflicted: Why Arguing is the Right Thing to do. Interviewed by The Army Leader For years Ian Leslie was fascinated by the question of why public and private disagreements go so badly, so often. In public, they descend into acrimony or get stuck in a grinding neutral gear. In private, disagreements should shatter groupthink or…
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An Anti-Fragile Approach to Leadership By Lieutenant-Colonel Alastair Luft, Canadian Armed Forces COVID-19 has exposed the fragility and uncertainty of a complex, modern world. Considering the number of recent geopolitical analyses (such as the latest Global Strategic Trends) that identify uncertainty as a rising threat, the lesson was unnecessary. Unfortunately, despite growing calls to address…
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Locked Up Potential: Thief, Prisoner, Soldier, Priest By The Army Leader Team Does the leadership style or the lessons learned in one institution translate from that organisation to the next? Paul Cowley MBE is a man whose life has been spent working in and around different institutions; he served time in a young offenders’ prison…
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The Acceptable Face of Wargaming: Risk-free, Cost-free Combat Leadership? By Dom Wiejak Wargaming gets a bad rep. Like reading doctrine, or wearing yesterday’s underpants, it is not something you necessarily want to admit to in public. We are coloured by our predjudices; wargaming is either the horror step of Course of Action development or something…
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Get Your AR Right – Every Year By Brig James Cook The Army’s reporting system often gets a tough ride. People do not always get the job they want and we are in a competitive business with high quality people. That said, it is well recognised that, as in any office environment, there are things…
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Leadership Lessons from the past: Operation Market Garden, 1944 By Neil McLennan This week marks the 76th anniversary of Operation Market Garden, a bold plan by British military leader, Field Marshall Bernard Law Montgomery. The military operation could have brought the Second War to an end a year early. The plan was to advance at…
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Do Not Take Leadership for Granted: An Interview with Major General Charlie Collins By The Army Leader Team Major General Charlie Collins commissioned into the Royal Green Jackets in 1995, beginning a career that has seen him deploy around the world for over 25 years, preparing and deploying light combat forces on operations. Between 2012…
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Leading Through Crisis: An Interview with Lt Col Langley Sharp By The Army Leader In June 2020, as part of its mission to develop leadership across the British Army and to work in concert with other parts for the public sector, the Centre for Army Leadership published Leading Through Crisis; A Practitioner’s Guide. The new…
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The Future of Command and Control: Four Models to Provoke Thought By Will Meddings In 2019’s second Agile Warrior Quarterly an article considered the idea of the Conceptual Force (Land) 35, the ‘CF(L)35’. This capstone concept proposes new capabilities, a new way of operating, and a new force design for the period 2030-2035. The same…
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The Reimagining Defence Interview By The Army Leader What are the most important ideas and trends that every military leader must understand? Grey Zone conflict? Information warfare? The evolution of urban conflict in megacities? Right now there are plenty of contenders for ‘most important trend in defence’. Last week I spoke to two military officers…
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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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Imagine, Align, Communicate: How To Provide Vision By Major Paul Cooper “We need to destroy – not attack, not damage, not surround – I want you to destroy the Republican Guard. When you’re done with them, I don’t want them to be an effective fighting force anymore. I don’t want them to exist as a…
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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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