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.
If you wanted the latest leadership advice, written by Army leaders like you, then subscribe to The Army Leader and you’ll get it straight into your inbox.
Subscribe To The Army Leader
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…
Details
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…
Details
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…
Details
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…
Details
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…
Details
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…
Details
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…
Details
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…
Details
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…
Details
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…
Details
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…
Details
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…
Details
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…
Details
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…
Details
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…
Details
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…
Details
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…
Details
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…
Details
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…
Details
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…
Details