TheMaverickSergeant

Having recently been asked an interesting question (on Twitter) by and after a chat via DM to a couple of other Twitter followers; here’s my condensed take on the subject. While the below pasted tweet was intended as leadership-orientated, with the would-be reader as the subject encouraged to think; it was suggested to consider the ‘follower’ angle... and rightly so. The leader could be the best in the world, but without their followers they’re nothing. "Your subordinates do 1 of 4 things when you’re not around: [1] Boast about you to peers in other Depts/Units [2] Correct others when you’re being discussed in a negative way [3] Go quiet when you’re being discussed in a negative way [4] Destroy you behind your back You own this. Fite me" Previously, as Retention SNCO, I was too aware that a common gripe with service leavers was a chronic lack of appreciation. In my honest opinion this permeates across a lot of the organisation. We have to celebrate successes, not always down

This review was first published by the  thearmyleader.co.uk     Published in February 2019, this book is the second volume of Donald Vandergriff and Stephen Webber’s  Mission Command  series, following on from their first edition published in 2017.  Mission Command II: The Who, What, Where, When and Why: An Anthology  (known by its abbreviated title  MC2)  consists of a diverse and complementary collection of essays on the concept of Mission Command. At its core, Mission Command is a philosophy that tells subordinates what to achieve but not how to do it – subordinates control how best to achieve the commanders’ intent. It is an approach used by the UK Armed Forces that decentralises command by empowering subordinates, at every level, to act freely within specified constraints to achieve success. The anthology draws eighteen authors together, many of them serving or retired officers from the USA, Norway and the UK (including one Non-Commissioned Officer), along with historians and logi

This review was first co-published by the  Centre for Army Leadership  and  Wavell Room  in June 2020. To open with a bold statement, of all the thousands of leadership books out there, every single one of them should be supplemented with  Leadership is Language  by L. David Marquet. In spite of some expectations to the contrary, what is leadership if it is not language? A powerful thing about leadership is that if you think about the words you choose to use, as is the focus of this book, you can change the world around you. Leadership is Language drives home the idea that leadership is about people, and the author argues that leaders cannot lead effectively without an appropriately balanced interplay using words. A quick assumption about this book might be that it perpetuates overly soft, sympathetic, sensitive leadership approaches. It does not. Rather, it is about the leader detaching themselves from notions of invulnerability, certainty, coercion, and conformity. In term