Leadership Secrets of the Australian Army: Learn from the best and inspire your team for great results

by Noel Turnbull

Much depends on the trust and support given by your immediate superior. If the boss is focused on things being done ‘by the book’, without allowing you room to stretch yourself and see what you can do, you are likely to develop a protective orientation.

Useful learning is most likely to happen when learning experiences are challenging, allow the learner appropriate autonomy, and are supported by managers and supervisors who give relevant feedback and support. And as shown in the brief discussion below, each of these elements has to be ‘just right’: too much or too little either nullifies or significantly reduces the value of the experience involved.

The important lesson that he learned that day was ‘to stick to my guns when I knew that I was right’. And Gale learned another and equally important lesson that night: ‘The best results are often achieved by sometimes taking risks. Standing still waiting for something to happen is never an option.’

Regard yourself as a leader—in fact, as ‘a leader first’—and work on leadership as your primary professional competence, seeing the world through a leader’s eyes in order to spot opportunities and challenges well before others do, and working through others to get things done. • Use the 3Rs model as a mental ‘app’ for day-to-day self-monitoring, reflection, self-development and self-critiquing. • Never stop learning about and reflecting on leadership, no matter how experienced you become. • Use your team as a personal learning resource. If you want to know how you are performing, ask them. As Australians, it is likely they will treat your honesty and humility with corresponding respect. They will appreciate being asked and they will appreciate having a boss who wants to perform better in order to run the team more effectively.

Sow the leadership seed early, deeply and widely, as part of career and leadership development programs. • Ensure you concentrate on leadership capability at all levels, from leaders of frontline teams to budding executives. • Give those leaders the skills and perspectives that will enable them to see themselves and act as catalysts, rather than as controllers. • Build a sense of common identity. Begin at the team level and work up to the organisation. Make people proud to belong as well as conscious of the organisation’s heritage and values. Never forget the principle of ‘leadership as a team sport’. • Morph this approach into the networked form the military finds so useful: teams of teams, grouped to suit the circumstances and capable of ready reformation as the situation changes.

reasons of space, this book has not discussed two other modes of leadership influence—leading from the shadows and leading from the top. ‘Leading from the shadows’ is my term for a process known as social and political acumen. It comprises the skills needed to make sense of, and influence, people in situations involving multiple stakeholders with diverse and sometimes competing interests. A recent study shows that such skills depend on using personal and interpersonal skills to interact constructively with others, building relationships and networks, reading people and situations, and thinking and acting strategically. Interested readers may find some value in my recent paper in the Australian Defence Force Journal, ‘Social and political acumen: A vital but neglected professional skill set’. Leading from the top—strategic leadership—is essentially about making decisions and establishing plans and capabilities today with the clear intention of them becoming the instruments of performance tomorrow. Effective strategic leadership also depends on the ability to discern and interpret broad longer-term issues and trends, particularly in terms of their implications for intellectual and social capital, as well as for more tangible organisational assets in the form of structural capital. Interested readers may find some value in my recent book on the topic, The Chiefs (2013), which is available for download on the Defence website.

Using the process enables you to systematically: • scope the situation to understand the nature of the problem as clearly as possible; • define the problem in ways that specify the outcomes you want when you want them; • establish the aim, including any assumptions that have been made; • identify the courses open to you, and their respective advantages and disadvantages; • select the preferred course after weighing up the pros and cons of each; and • outline the plan, the final step, to give a sense of how the logic hangs together.

The rule of thumb: if you have 30 minutes to come up with a plan, spend the first ten deciding on your goal. Don’t rush into the first apparently obvious option. It is a process that is drummed into every young officer.

The Army protocol for this is known by its acronym of SMEAC—standing for Situation, Mission, Execution, Administration and Logistics, and Command and Communications. It is both a sequence and an essential-content checklist.

SMEAC A communication protocol based on systematically covering Situation, Mission, Execution, Administration and Logistics, and Command and Communications. It is both a sequence and an essential-content checklist.

3Rs Labels Relevant activities by the leader Typical effects on trust Full-range leadership model Human Synergistics model Affective (heart) Cognition (head) Represent Lead by example Idealised influence Self-actualising Act in ways that inspire emulation ++ +++ Give direction and meaning Inspirational motivation Achievement Establish a purpose that focuses and energises ++ + Relate Treat members as valued colleagues Intellectual stimulation Humanistic-Encouraging Engage and hence build follower contribution, self-esteem and agency ++ ++ Develop individual and group identity Individualised consideration Affiliative Build social bonds that further enhance self-esteem, confidence and group identity + +++ Run the team Use team activities to build skills and work engagement Contingency-reward [Not covered] Establish a system of formal and informal rules of conduct that, directly and indirectly, continuously remind members of appropriate standards +++ ++ Encourage open-mindedness and a spirit of continuous improvement Intellectual stimulation Humanistic-Encouraging Engage and hence build follower contribution, self-esteem and agency ++