Relaxation and Mindfulness for Resilient Leaders – lessons from Open Arms
Reading Time: 4 minutes Juggling competing demands and expectations we place on ourselves, or that others place on us, is a natural part of the stress […]
Category: Leadership
Tiny Leadership Tales: ‘If I Care About My People’
Reading Time: 2 minutes Bite sized leadership lessons, featuring reader-submitted stories of no more than 100 words In 2018, I learned the power of authenticity. I […]
Tiny Leadership Tales: ‘When No One Is Watching’
Reading Time: 2 minutes Bite sized leadership lessons, featuring reader-submitted stories of no more than 100 words An SGI at RMC-D, nearing four decades on this […]
Tiny Leadership Tales: ‘You Can Be Right And Be A Jerk’
Reading Time: 2 minutes Bite sized leadership lessons, featuring reader-submitted stories of no more than 100 words To be right, or nice? I have asked myself […]
Tiny Leadership Tales: ‘Leadership KISS’
Reading Time: 2 minutes Bite sized leadership lessons, featuring reader-submitted stories of no more than 100 words I remember once being told by my old corporal […]
Tiny Leadership Tales: ‘No Effect Without Respect’
Reading Time: 2 minutes Bite sized leadership lessons, featuring reader-submitted stories of no more than 100 words Would it help? We have all experienced our fair […]
Tiny Leadership Tales: ‘Elegantly Simple Words’
Reading Time: 2 minutes Bite sized leadership lessons, featuring reader-submitted stories of no more than 100 words Priming is a phenomenon where introduction to a certain […]
Tiny Leadership Tales: ‘I Set My Jaw’
Reading Time: 2 minutes Bite sized leadership lessons, featuring reader-submitted stories of no more than 100 words The Greatest Weapon – Mom I used positional/personal power […]
Tiny Leadership Tales: ‘Right Wheel, Continue The Wheel’
Reading Time: 2 minutes Bite sized leadership lessons, featuring reader-submitted stories of no more than 100 words Most days we pounded the hot pavement seemingly only […]
Tiny Leadership Tales: ‘Delivering Speeches Like General Patton’
Reading Time: 2 minutes Bite sized leadership lessons, featuring reader-submitted stories of no more than 100 words Fatigue will break metal. Fatigue is defined as weakness caused […]
Tiny Leadership Tales
Reading Time: 2 minutes “Be grounded by what we are good at – exceptional leadership and passing on these leadership skills to Army’s next generation.” – […]
Will the Real Army Leaders Please Stand Up?
Reading Time: 4 minutes During a promotion course at Canungra, I recall an instructor posing a simple question to the audience: “How many of you have […]
Why Leadership Means Leaving on Time
Reading Time: 3 minutes An overused- but often cited- definition of leadership is “the art of influencing people to willingly achieve the team or organisational goal”. […]
Finding Your Leadership Identity: Self-Reflection versus Comparison
Reading Time: 3 minutes As a junior commander, I am a recent graduate of training designed to formally instruct me in command, leadership and management. In […]
Loneliness: The Other Side of Fatigue Management
Reading Time: 3 minutes 2020 saw increased operational demands for some members of the part time Army. Members were deployed on Operation BUSHFIRE ASSIST, with little notice, […]
Leadership and the Art of Mentoring through Mental Models – Part 2
Reading Time: 4 minutes “The last of human freedoms—the ability to choose one’s attitude in a given set of circumstances.” Victor Frankl So, what if you […]
Leadership and the Art of Mentoring through Mental Models
Reading Time: 6 minutes What if you could build a stronger team by building a shared picture? What if you could increase enthusiasm by reorienting someone’s […]
Leading at Every Level: Contesting the Army Leadership Levels
Reading Time: 3 minutes I must admit to being taken aback by the appearance of the ‘Australian Army Leadership Levels’ (‘the Levels’) as published in Army […]
5 Fiction Books for Leadership Development
Reading Time: 4 minutes Fiction is an important element of every professional military education reading list. However, returning to the same handful of texts can make […]
The Value of Mentoring
Reading Time: 5 minutes Most ADF members don’t realise the value of mentoring until late in their careers – with the common reflection being ‘Why didn’t I do this sooner!?’ Mentoring can change your career and life trajectory. It can open up networks and opportunities beyond your immediate reach, and can give you the tools and confidence to develop and promote yourself.
Leadership and the Art of Smiling – Part 2
Reading Time: 4 minutes So, if you have read Part 1 of this blog, you will know that emotions are transmitted from one person to another […]
Leadership and the Art of Smiling – Part 1
Reading Time: 5 minutes “Magic’s just science that we don’t yet understand” – Arthur C. Clarke How many times have you walked into the morning’s briefing […]
Service and Serendipity – Ten Reflections Prior to Sub Unit Command
Reading Time: 5 minutes I was recently selected for a sub-unit command appointment and as with all significant milestones, this selection made me pause and look […]
Prepare for Day One
Reading Time: 5 minutes ‘Do not confuse Command with Leadership; command is a responsibility to the organisation and leadership is looking after your people so you […]
Mission Command: Competence, Assets and Risk
Reading Time: 2 minutes This article is a junior leader’s framework for mission command and complements Understanding Mission Command. Mission Command is a commander’s assessment of […]
From Infantry Officer to Call Centre Commander
Reading Time: 3 minutes How officer training prepared me for Operation COVID-19 Assist. If you’d told a newly commissioned Lieutenant (LT) what they could expect as […]
What were they thinking? Professional Judgment in the Crozier/Modly Affair
Reading Time: 6 minutes When former acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly announced he was relieving Captain Brett Crozier from command of the USS Theodore Roosevelt, Modly noted […]
Junior Leader Professional Military Education
Reading Time: 7 minutes The following is compiled from our 10in10 series. Those interviewed were asked to recommend accessible content from any medium for the professional development of […]
Understanding Mission Command
Reading Time: 7 minutes Mission command is a philosophy for command and a system for conducting operations that is widely understood within the Australian Army to […]
An Interview with Sean Parkes: The Logic of Good Soldiering
Reading Time: 3 minutes Samuel Cox (SC): Can you give me the BLUF (bottom line up front) of Good Soldiering? Sean Parkes (SP): Good Soldiering promotes an enduring culture […]
An Interview with Grant McFarlane: Regimental Sergeant Major- Army
Reading Time: 2 minutes Chris Sharp (CS): What have you learned from the Chief of Army (CA) in the past year? Grant McFarlane (GM): I’ve learned that the Chief […]
An Interview with Anthony Rawlins: Deputy Chief of Army
Reading Time: 4 minutes Samuel Cox (SC): What does the Deputy Chief of Army (DCA) do? Are there any issues/programs you are taking ownership of addressing/delivering during your […]
Wrap-Up: Army Leadership Seminar 2019
Reading Time: 4 minutes In launching last week’s inaugural Army Leadership Seminar (31 Jul – 01 Aug 19), LTGEN Rick Burr, the Chief of Army, explained […]
My Curious Month – Senior Non-Commissioned Officer Professional Military Education
Reading Time: 3 minutes It’s important, but is it accessible? This month was all about the Senior Non-Commissioned Officer (SNCO), as the professional military education (PME) […]
The Intellectual Senior Non-Commissioned Officer
Reading Time: 4 minutes “There is a lack of consciousness of the importance of professional education in many members of the Army, and consequently it has […]
Part III: Leading a Culture of Innovation
Reading Time: 4 minutes Often when the topic of creating a culture of innovation arises, the discussion seems to focus on running activities such as “hack-a-thons”, […]
Part II: Leading Innovation
Reading Time: 4 minutes There is a profound difference between being an ‘innovative leader’ and being a ‘leader of innovation’. Whereas an innovative leader will drive […]
Mission Command Algorithms: An Evolution of Artificial Intelligence & Combat Leadership
Reading Time: 5 minutes ‘There is no reason to believe that leadership will be spared the impact of Artificial Intelligence’ Anyone in the military who has served […]
Part I: Innovative Leadership
Reading Time: 4 minutes Innovation is the key to success in modern military operations, thus it is imperative that the military commander be innovative if they […]
What is a Warfighting Culture?
Reading Time: 5 minutes For the past 14 months I have been privileged to serve as an exchange officer with the United States Marine Corps. During […]
The Importance of a ‘Failure to Grow’ Culture
Reading Time: 4 minutes I was shocked recently to read a piece by Major General Mick Ryan covering the pretty spectacular failure of his first year in […]
Trusting Imperfection: Getting Mission Command to Succeed
Reading Time: 4 minutes The commander also strikes and accepts compromises in his [or her] command: not all his men and officers will be perfect, and […]
Less is More: The Enabled Combat Brigade Headquarters
Reading Time: 11 minutes Editor’s Note: This is Grounded Curiosity’s 3rd most read article of all time. INTRODUCTION The Army must be a force capable of exerting ‘land […]
Aide Memoire – Advising and Mentoring Foreign Militaries
Reading Time: 11 minutes 60 tips to become a more effective advisor Advising and mentoring foreign militaries has been carried out by the Australian Defence Force […]
Australian Tactical Design: Development and Use of Decisive Events
Reading Time: 21 minutes War is a science covered with shadows in whose obscurity one cannot move with an assured step. Routine and prejudice, the natural […]
Mentoring, Mission Command, and the Value of the Officers’ Mess – Increasing the ‘Speed of Trust’
Reading Time: 3 minutes This blog reflects on the important role of the Army Officers’ Mess in the author’s early regimental service. Traditions of the Army […]
What is Modern Military Leadership? A Primer
Reading Time: 4 minutes The Australian Army senior leadership team has been articulating the need for our Army leadership style to evolve to take on a […]
Command and Leadership – Fit to Fight
Reading Time: 12 minutes “Australian Soldiers identify with their Battalion. It’s indeed their family: it leads, feeds, clothes, directs and exhausts them. Its veins are its […]
Learning How to Learn – The switch from training to education and the life-long learner?
Reading Time: 6 minutes The Army builds its intellectual capital in peace and spends it in war Colonel William L. Hauser [1] Introduction I don’t know […]
Leadership in Focus – Vehicle Craft – Blending Technology and Tactical Acumen
Reading Time: 3 minutes There is much discussion and idea exchange about the ASLAV replacement (CRV) and future Infantry Fighting Vehicles (IFV). These capabilities are a […]
Captain and Coach
Reading Time: 4 minutes Has military thinking or practice seen a separation of two intrinsic command functions: the Commander and the Chief Instructor? This blog expands […]
Leadership in Focus – Listen, Learn and Lead
Reading Time: 4 minutes Last week the Chief of Army came and spoke to the Royal Australian Armoured Corps’ Senior Leadership Group. His opening remarks immediately […]
Enough Talk – How Do We Professionally Develop Our People?
Reading Time: 3 minutes Quick thoughts on practically applying professional development How do we practically implement professional development instead of just talking about it? Having observed and contributed […]
Mindfulness for Military: Improving Human Performance, Cognitive Mastery, Emotional Intelligence and Resilience
Reading Time: 6 minutes As the Australian Army seeks methods to improve human performance, cognitive mastery, emotional intelligence, leadership, resilience and innovation it should consider the […]
Leadership in Focus – Emotional Intelligence, Leadership and Resilience
Reading Time: 6 minutes It was a popular belief in the past that to build a soldier, we must first break the individual down and re-build […]
Leadership in Focus – The Timeless Leadership Question
Reading Time: 3 minutes The frequently asked leadership question, ‘Are great leaders born or created?’ consistently creates vigorous, robust discussion. So what is the answer? Warren […]
The Resilience Adventure
Reading Time: 5 minutes The first occasion a soldier faces real fear must not be on the battlefield. Just like any other skill, managing one’s fear […]
Risky Business: Equipping Junior Leaders to Exploit Risk on the Battlefield
Reading Time: 7 minutes ‘In the art of war, lesser men are schemers, who avoid risk with mediocre results.’[i] Napoleon Bonaparte Introduction To an extent unmatched […]
Social Media in the Military: Opportunities, Perils and a Safe Middle Path
Reading Time: 11 minutes Editor’s Note: This is Grounded Curiosity’s most read article of all time. Knowledge is generated anew from connections that weren’t there before. […]
Junior Leadership in the Australian Army
Reading Time: 4 minutes Do we know why it works or are we doing what we’ve always done? The current Australian Army leadership model is an […]
Time Wasted and Lessons Learnt
Reading Time: 10 minutes It takes considerable knowledge just to recognise the extent of your own ignorance. Thomas Sowell[1] Introduction The leadership, readiness, resilience, mental toughness […]
For junior officers – who cares for your boss?
Reading Time: 4 minutes Junior officers know the ‘hurry up and wait’ phenomenon well. Common conversations during these delays range from the first thing you’ll eat […]
Using Social Media as a Junior Leader
Reading Time: 7 minutes Beginning-of-year mandatory briefs are filled with reminders of ‘what not to do’ from alcohol to safety. The social media brief usually delivers […]
Owning Your Professional Military Development – Junior Leaders
Reading Time: 5 minutes Doctrine Man recently penned the well-known military adage that “no one can manage your career better than yourself”. Deployments, top jobs and […]
Defining the Contemporary Veteran
Reading Time: 6 minutes This post was written on Anzac Day in 2014. It flows from thoughts following an Anzac Day Dawn Service in Townsville. Today […]