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One common misunderstanding about military leadership is the concept of leading by example. This is not so much about ‘leading from the front’ (although you must be willing to do that which you ask of your subordinates). This is because the practicalities of military operations don’t always translate to literal opportunities to lead from the front.

For example, as an Infantry Platoon Commander, you’re not the lead scout at the front of the formation. In fact, you’re not even part of the lead element at all. In a standard patrol formation you are well back in a position to ‘command’ rather than physically ‘lead’.

Leading by example is more about the standards you tolerate than just the standard you set.

Lieutenant General Morrison (former Chief of Army) was well known for his stance on standards saying that “the standard you walk past is the standard you accept.”

Whilst this was stated in the context of unacceptable behaviour/bullying, it is true for many aspects of leadership.

The point General Morrison was making, is that your example is not only about the standard you set personally, but the standards you tolerate within your team.

At a practical level this means calling something out as wrong – even if it’s uncomfortable or unpopular.

In the officer selection board it is useful to be able to cite examples in your experience that indicate your propensity to do the right thing – even when unpopular.

As the leader and commander you don’t need to have all the answers. In fact, even if you do have all the answers, there is great strength in the ability to allow subordinates to come up with solutions themselves.

Think of it this way. If I ‘tell’ you what to do, you may have one level of motivation.

However, if I can give you just enough information for you to ‘tell me’ how you’re going to do it, then you have a much higher level of motivation for the task.

This is the principle of ‘task ownership’ at play.

Plus as a junior officer, you’re often the least experienced person in the team. Being able to leverage the experience of your team is a critical skill of a good officer, especially early in your career.

In the OSB, make an effort to combine the input of others to create the plan. Give ownership. After all, good ideas have no rank and you’re all working to the same goal!

Part of effective leadership is effective management. One large part of this is the art of delegation. Delegation is the distribution of a task – but NOT the distribution of the responsibility. This is the ONE point I want you to get on this topic.

People can make the mistake of assigning a task to a subordinate and then ‘washing their hands’ of responsibility if the task is incomplete or of a poor standard.

A good officer will seek responsibility, leverage his or her team and then take all reasonable steps to ensure the task is completed well. How is this done? I recommend three steps to delegation:

1. Evaluate

2. Supervise

3. Verify

Evaluate, is the evaluation of both the task and the available resources. It is simply matching up the best person and resources to the required task. Get this right and the job will usually take care of itself.

Supervise, is maintaining interest and also being available for clarification of task. This doesn’t mean standing over people – it just means scheduling reporting and being approachable to amendments or changes to the plan.

Verify, is simply checking in that the task is complete. i.e. if person A gives you (person B) the task, and then you assign the task to person C. Then make sure that person C reports back to you (person B). If you are skipped then you have skipped out on your responsibility.

In the OSB, if there is opportunity for task assignment during an activity, even if you are not the person assigning tasks, it may be worth verifying that others have completed their part.

There are ways of doing this so that you don’t come off as annoying. For example, if you want to check that a ‘scribe’ has correctly taken notes, you could ask one of two ways.

1. “Scribe, have you written everything down?” (annoying)

2. “Jake, did you need anything repeated for the notes?” (courteous)

These subtle differences can translate to a big difference in your result.

Delegation is not absolving responsibility. Take responsibility. Seek responsibility.

Communication is mostly about HOW a message is articulated (not so much WHAT is the message).

In other words, it matters what is heard and understood. Not what is said.

This is a big part of the previous topic of delegation. Have you ever had an argument with someone over what they said versus what they thought they said? Or vice versa?

A good communicator understands that what is said doesn’t matter. It matters only what is heard and understood.

Think of it like a mobile phone conversation on a bad line. If you were talking to someone and the signal kept breaking up, what would you do to make sure they were getting your message?

Chances are you would ask them to say it back to you. This is one of the methods of ensuring excellent communication. It is beyond the scope of this lesson to go through a full treatment of communication skills. However, the main point I want you to take into the OSB is that communication is all about the receiver. So take the extra step to make sure you’re understood and also make an extra effort to make sure you understand others.

An example of how you might show this is that you may notice there is some detail missing during an activity brief. Be the one to speak up and request that information. However, if you get the impression that the extra information is not forthcoming, don’t overstep the mark and turn it into an interrogation. You just want to demonstrate you’re willing to ask questions and seek out relevant information.

Another part of communication skills, as it applies to a military commander, is understanding the concept of relevancy. For example, if you’re delivering a set of orders, you have likely been given the details of the orders from your own commander and you are now distributing this information down to your own troops.

A good leader understands that there are certain information components that are of greater interest at different levels of command. For example, if you’re briefing an Infantry platoon on a coming foot patrol, there is one big question that may not be clear in the orders given to you that is of GREAT interest to the individual soldier. What is it?

“How far will I be walking and when are the likely rest breaks?”

Yes, including this small piece of information can go a long way to earning the respect of your team as it demonstrates that you are thinking about them in relation to the mission.

Again, this is relevant to your Officer Selection Board as you can mention the importance of considering the audience when communicating and anticipating their information needs and requests. The key is that you can show that communication is about the receiver.

As we learned in the very beginning of this section, it is about communicating in a way that ensures the message is received (with a focus on relevant parts) by the listener.

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I’m almost certain that you’ve experienced or observed what ONE WAY loyalty looks like. In the workplace, it is basically when a team leader complains (or simply acts unsupportive) towards their own team in front of their supervisor. Or, more commonly, when they are unsupportive to their supervisor in front of their team.

You must show loyalty to your superiors and loyalty to your subordinates. You cannot complain or excuse one to the other.

This is one of the more challenging aspects of command and leadership, as the interests of both parties don’t always align neatly. That is to say that one will often ask the other to do something the other doesn’t want to.

You will learn much more about this in officer training, however for now it is enough that you consider this challenge and reflect on how you’ve seen this concept manifest in your life experience so far.

It is good reference for questions about your leadership experience. You might also be questioned on what makes a good leader. Talking about this topic shows you have thought deeply on the topic of leadership challenges

Military leadership often involves a higher degree of intimacy than regular corporate leadership. No, not ‘that’ sort of intimacy.

What I mean is, that as a military commander you take on a much greater degree of responsibility for the welfare of your subordinates. This is because military operations often mean that your team is 100% ‘on the job’ for long periods of time. Physically that is.

In a standard workplace, people go home each night.

Yet for military personnel, we might leave home and not come back for several months.

As a leader, we must anticipate the additional challenges this brings to maintaining operational effectiveness. It is not so simple to say that we become ‘family’ in the military because of our extended periods of enduring team challenges etc.

The military ‘family’ is often contrasted to the true family of each individual soldier. What happens in one affects the other. Problems at work lead to problems at home and vice versa.

In practical terms this means that your task delegation and assignments will vary in consideration of the issues facing your soldiers on the home front.

For example, if one of your soldiers is facing relationship troubles at home you might reconsider handing them that particularly challenging or dangerous assignment.

But this sort of decision is impossible if you are not even aware of these challenges beyond your military circle. This translates to the entire purpose of this training topic, which is the importance of your rapport building skills and approachability as a commander.

This is one of the traits being examined in the Officer Selection Board.

Effectively, do you have the potential to develop yourself as a competent and respected commander who also has the approachability to learn the ins and outs of each soldier’s personal challenges?

Consider how your current life experience relates to this matter, and, be prepared to discuss this topic in the context of why leading a team in the military is different to other civilian leadership challenges.

Whether you’re selected into the Army, Navy or Air Force, as an officer you will be under an extremely high workload of personal development and education for your entire career. This is one of the distinguishing factors of the officer stream versus the general entry stream.

Although it is true that all ranks in the Defence Force go through constant and ongoing training and promotion courses, the demands and expectations of officers is much higher in this regard.

If we look at Army Officer training for example, an officer cadet is expected to learn and apply the skills of multiple ‘other ranks’ just within the period of their initial officer training at Royal Military College.

That is that each recruit will be trained as a soldier, section second in command, section leader, platoon sergeant and finally platoon commander. In fact most of this progression occurs within just the first nine months of training!

Contrast this to the ‘other ranks’ progression where these levels of command responsibility progress over a period of years, not weeks.

It is of course noted that an officer is not learning the valuable ‘years of knowledge’ of these ranks, that is only learned by experience – but the fact remains there is an extremely high demand of an officer to consistently improve and challenge themselves.

The Officer Selection Board is looking for evidence that you have a high degree of intrinsic motivation for personal development. This means that you are motivated to learn by the experience of learning itself!

Why? Because there are going to be long periods of instruction on topics that may not exactly thrill you, or you may not even see the value of at first. This means that if you don’t enjoy the process of learning you may not make it through the training – despite your best intentions.

So reflect on your experience so far and how you might articulate why self-improvement and self-development are important to you.

In any organisation there is benefit to knowing the role of your immediate supervisor. This allows you to backfill their position when needed and also prepares you for promotion to that position.

This is particularly applicable in the military, as there is often little practicality in simply re-hiring a new person should someone become ill or worse. There are a few reasons for this that it is useful to understand.

1. The military recruits at ‘recruit’ level. With the exception of civilian positions within the military, there is literally a limited number of people who have the necessary rank and skills to fill any given position. So it is not unusual for a junior officer to have to fill the position of the next rank up for extended periods. For example, until the end of a posting cycle and everyone moves around again. This might be a period of years!

2. Overseas operations and the associated transport limitations mean that even if a suitable replacement (of appropriate rank) is available, they may not physically be able to be on the job for several weeks or months. For example, on certain operations there is significant pre-training required as well as fitting in with planned flights and convoy runs.

3. In both of the above cases, the sudden gap in personnel can come from sudden illness, injury or death. Instant incapacitation of a commander in combat means that someone (usually the next in command) must immediately take command. Not in a few days or a few hours but right now. There is no handover or training at this point. For example, if your own commander is killed, you may be required to step into their role immediately and your own position be filled by your next subordinate.

This is what allows for ongoing decisive action under the associated stress and uncertainty of combat situations.

This last point is here as reassurance to you that this skill is one of the primary outcomes of officer training. So in case you’re a bit overwhelmed by the possible challenges (and we’ve only discussed a few!) of military command, this idea of systems and processes to fall back on is what you will learn during your initial training.

However, it is still useful to reflect on your own life and times that you have made quick decisions and how you arrived at those decisions. What did you learn from this and how has it improved your decision making skills? This is a topic that will likely come up as part of any leadership discussion.

For example something along the lines of “How does a leader make sound decisions?”

Again, you don’t need to have all the answers, but you do need to show you’ve thought about this and are interested in learning this, and all the other aspects of military leadership.