Leadership lessons learnt in the Military!

What makes a a truly great leader?

When I was in the military and I was in the middle of training based in the North Yorkshire moors in the middle of winter, a very bleak place.

We had various leaders in our regiment, training us and putting us all through our paces on a daily basis, some were very good and others you would just try to avoid and stay away from as they were either very nasty or very scary lol.

And now many years later as I think about what really does make a good leader and what is the true definition of Leadership. I have little flashbacks to moments in that training and remember very clearly some of those sergeants or corporals who just simply knew how to move the men, to drive them forward and get everyone to work as a team.

The word leader means to go ahead and to lead and guide. But you can’t always be in front and leading requires you also to have the ability to join your troops, to join the team, that is if you truly want to understand them, support them and help them grow. You need to participate in their pain and success!

Often we would have to do what was called a “forced march” which is a relatively fast march almost a run over a long distance carrying full heavy loads in all our gear. This is a common military exercise during your basic training covering distances of 20 to 30 miles in full gear?which really did sort out the men from the boys...

With your backpack fully loaded, and weapon and in heavy leather boots, this is a super tough exercise to complete, the location and weather can make this an even more of physical challenge, for example we had to run across the North Yorkshire moors in awful wet and windy weather, sometimes up huge hills that went for miles (and you never thought they would end...) and sometimes through thick mud, in the cold, with the rain and wind in your face and you’d have to use everything you had in the tank, physically and mentally to complete this grueling nightmare in an allocated time frame.

And it was our leaders, the sergeants who ran with you (with no backpacks and no weapons and very light running gear with military trousers and I’m sure their boots looked a lot lighter than mine lol) it was these leaders, who had the ability to help us complete this incredible challenge or crush us on the way, leaving us to collapse in the middle of nowhere..

The most successful leaders were very different to the ones who just wanted to put you down or completely destroy you. (In today's terms managers who ignore you, give you little support and are more focused about themselves...)

These successful leaders would know when to run ahead, running in front of the troops and help almost pull them along to success through difficult moments and moments of self doubt, helping to guide us when they we were lost or unsure of which direction to go.

Or rather than running ahead, they would slow their own pace down and run by the side of us, helping everyone to get back in pace and helping to build teamwork. Or they would run by the side of an individual who was really struggling, maybe whispering in their ear words of encouragement or sometimes words of fear (like get your ass in gear now son, lol) but either way it worked and it helped that individual or the whole squad to get to their head back in the game.

Sometimes they would go to the back of the squad, they would follow, and they would observe, they would identify individuals amongst the troops who could become potential leaders in future, you can’t always be in the front as a leader and you can't see success if you are only looking forward! Often you have to follow to lead, allowing your team to decide what to do, how to do it, which direction to go etc. This creates independence and self-confidence to complete challenging tasks either alone or together as a team.

Some of the sergeants would go to the back because they realized the whole team was struggling and they needed a mental push from behind to help drive the men forward. (you knew you were in trouble sometimes when they went behind you, often they would be shouting some pretty interesting things at you and at the top of their voice ??).

If you’re currently a manager now, whether you have been a leader for five minutes or five years, no matter if you’re a team leader or you’re a global vice president I guarantee you, that you often go ahead too much you, with no vision and no direction and expect people to follow you because of your title, because your the boss, because you are the "leader"...

If you truly want to be a successful leader, then you’ve got to know when you have to be out in front, showing your people the way.?And you’ll also need to know when you have to slow the pace down and get close to your team, walk side by side, either helping individuals or helping the team as a whole.

And then they’ll be days when you observe the team from behind, from a distance. You'll look to identify your future replacement in that team, you look how the team has its own ability to make its own decisions and drive their own success even if you aren’t there.

One day some of your employees might be writing a post like this, on LinkedIn about you ??, (most likely not using your name of course lol) writing about how successful and amazing you were as a leader, because you had this "special ability to adapt yourself", to work at different speeds and use different approaches to help make individuals, teams and the whole company successful.

My question is to you, do you want them to write an article that is positive, that talks about their wonderful experiences the things they learnt from you, or write something perhaps not so nice? And maybe you’ll be like one of those nasty sergeants I mention, who was always running ahead and never looking back and was only focused on their own glory? ??

Article written by: Simon Cropper