Leadership & Followership in the British Army – Langley Sharp

Langley Sharp is the former head of the Centre for Army Leadership, responsible for championing leadership excellence across the British Army.  After graduating from Sandhurst two decades ago, his career in the Parachute Regiment, which included operational command at every rank, saw him deployed to Northern Ireland, Macedonia, Afghanistan and Iraq. Among his many varied roles, he led a counter-insurgency Task Force operation, commanded a Parachute Regiment Battalion and delivered the Ministry of Defence’s training programme for the London 2012 Olympics venue security. He is the author of the British Army’s official account of leadership, The Habit of Excellence, distilling over three centuries of the Army's experience in the art, science and practice of leadership. And he is Founder and Director of the consultancy firm Frontier Leadership.

In this episode, Langley shares how and why followership is now becoming more explicit in the Army’s official documentation of itself, and how that articulation will in turn refine the way service members are trained in the future.

"Warfare is not a place for individuals."

“When you have to think about who’s following and who’s leading, there’s probably something wrong in the team”

“You need good followership to have good mission command.”

“Our ability to scale collaboration enables us to do great things when it works well.”

 
Episode References

> Langley Sharp, The Habit of Excellence

> British Army Doctrine Note on Followership

> Centre for Army Leadership Conference 2023 - Creating Effective Followership

“Freedom, however, is not the last word. Freedom is only part of the story and half of the truth. Freedom is but the negative aspect of the whole phenomenon whose positive aspect is responsibleness. In fact, freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsibleness.”
–Frankl. V.E. (1992). Man’s Search for Meaning, 4th edition. Boston: Beacon Press, 134.

Kelley R.E., The Power of Followership: How to Create Leaders People Want to Follow and Followers Who Lead Themselves, New York: Doubleday, 1992

Chaleff, I. (1995). The courageous follower: Standing up to and for our leaders. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

"For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.”
–Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book

Connect with Langley Sharp

https://frontierleadership.co.uk/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/langley-sharp/