Leadership and Retention — Part 1

Leadership and Retention — and where we have gone wrong

A two part series on leadership and retention, the first one from Dom

Dom is a co-founder of Shipwrekt podcast, a former sailor and army super REMF, and as a civvy
still can’t keep his mouth shut.

“The British soldier is a brute in a red coat. He needs the lash!”

Sir Henry Simmerson

Poor retention. Low recruitment figures. And what sometimes seems like a never-ending succession of scandals hitting the tabloids. Throw in the consequences of decades of the peace dividend, chronic mismanagement by MOD, and often inadequate base infrastructure, and things don’t look great if you’re in HM Forces these days.

Now good leadership can mitigate many of these things, and the military does try to equip you to be a leader, both on ops and day to day routine.

But I think it’s failing.

Badly.

Two carrier CO’s dismissed ship for poor conduct. The First Sea Lord, and champion of zero tolerance to inappropriate behaviour, losing his post for…inappropriate behaviour. The army continues to struggle with frankly dire stories of abuse that female soldiers have been exposed to. And the RAF, when it isn’t being raided by protestors on scooters, has had the Red Arrows in the news over the environment it operates under.

This is a snapshot of recent incidents.

There are many more. We all know it. And that’s just the stuff we know about. MOD has a big rug to sweep things under.

So why?

Well, on SM there have been some great articles about leadership in HM Forces. Some written by serving officers, fewer by serving SNCO’s, and few by junior ranks. There have also been some shocking ones, where the underlying message is hey! We are rooting out bad behaviours!

Ignoring the fact there shouldn’t be any to start.

Right?

I mean, we have been in the war fighting game a long old time. So surely good leadership, decent management, setting the gold standard to which your subordinates aspire, should be second nature, no?

Well…not always.

I’ve had the privilege (and pain) of serving in the Royal Navy as a Junior Rate, and the British Army as a SGT. I’ve been attached to units in the latter, and gone back to the naval environment in a training establishment. So Ive seen the changes that began around 1999. And now I’m a civvy, and have seen how management works in the real world for a couple of companies.

On reflection, where has the military gone wrong?

“Fucking hell, why does everyone think they can do my job better than me?”

Me, every bloody week in the Army

I had a boss in one unit, who told me on promotion to Sgt, that I had to lead by example and retain the moral high ground at all times. Have courage to make hard decisions, set a standard, and look after my people. It was advice that was of far more se than the CLM course that frankly wasted my time. He then showed me an email from HQ berating platoon SNCO’s for the poor standard of literacy in SJARS being submitted to APC Glasgow.

In it, literacy and unacceptable were misspelled.

Yeah, I know, right?

The irony wasn’t lost on me. And a year later, having been written up as A2 on my yearly appraisal, my 2 RO wrote me down a grade in a piece of defence writing breathtaking for its spelling. So angry was I, I entered my comments in the ‘suicide box’ and may have asked why he typed it with his feet.

The following interview was…unpleasant. But I won. And got an A2.

So dear reader, taking the effort to write up your people are essential to give them a feeling of being appreciated. That isn’t woke. It’s pastoral care and maximising growth so they progress and have promising careers. And the point of that little dit is that a commissioned officer was lazy, and allowed personal dislike to influence his document. It still happens today, as does copy and paste report writing (I know of three soldiers who once got the same SJAR but the author forgot to change regimental numbers).

Now if you’re a Sgt, or PO, or Flight Sgt, and you cannot format and create a dispassionate report on one of your people, you’re possibly not going to be that leader they deserve. Or, you have not been taught how to do it. In my opinion, anyway. It’s about giving the team a sense of self-worth, whilst being able to justify that C grade you gave a platoon buffoon. Having the courage to highlight poor standards, and rewarding good performance.

“I don’t know what to do!”

A sailor on HMS Prince of Wales watching a mess deck flood

Cringe.

Double cringe.

Fuck me, I’m embarrassed for the RN cringe.

And all over SM.

But it went deeper than that. The laughing sailor was ships company, and will have kept duties as part of the fire and emergency party. Therefore, if hands stood thumbs up ass watching, then that is a training fail. It’s a leadership fail. It’s a management fail. There are no excuses. And that could be an indicator of a training issue across ships company. And yeah, I can hear it. I’m being judgemental.

But I have found a flood in 7D degaussing space and, after isolations were made, was waist deep in water in the dark. I knew what was needed. And got on with it. If your command isn’t training you, then there is an underlying feeling that they don’t care. That’ll destroy ships efficiency and cohesion, and is utterly against the navy I knew. And it’ll affect retention. Why work for an employer who won’t give you the tools to do the job.

“Ten days Number Nines punishment, but you may split them so you can still go on the holiday you’ve booked”

Unit CO

Yes, you read right.

That was back in 2012, and the AGAI system was rolling out, and we all knew it was going to be abused. Trainees were running rampant round the unit. Training pressures meant a great deal of leeway was given to the kids to maximise output to the fleet, and we churned out great sailors, and some utter dross.

Now, nobody minds discipline. It’s part of being in the military.

But it has to be applied fairly, and implemented by people with the moral authority to. Jump back to the carrier CO’s being dismissed command. Or the boat CO recently. Or the OPV skipper. Imagine being sent to the table and sentenced by a person the ships company KNOW is a wrong ‘un.

Now recall the most recent Army WhatsApp saga where everyone was told to AGAI someone one rank down after everyone failed to supply pre-deployment documentation. Where did nobody think

1. This will be on FYB
2. Maybe it wasn’t an act of mass disobedience, but nobody got the message.

Or how we see threats of AGAI for not paying company subs.

The point of this is badly carried out discipline pisses the boys and girls off. Silly threats on a messaging app are infantile. Cutting plugs off kitchen appliances, remember that? Why put up with it

“Rank doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll have common sense or empathy.”

Me

Remember during COVID-19, When HMS Trenchant came in after being under weeks, and NBC Devonport refused permission to hold a BBQ on the jetty before they went back out? They were isolated, and it was only a brief stop before heading out. So he held it anyway, and lost his command. Fair?

Well, he disobeyed an order, though a stupid order, so I suppose yes. But why are we at the stage when public perception and potential media exposure trumps the welfare of your sailors? Are people in higher command so terrified of potential career stopping publicity that it overrides pastoral care and …common sense?

Of course, not to be outdone, the army packed a load of people, some of whom had COVID-19, into an aircraft to go to Kenya, and anyone who didn’t get ill spent the stay in tents on the perimeter whilst the blocks were used as isolation wards.

I mean, really?

CSG went ahead during the pandemic. Result? A deployment with hardly any runs ashore. Was it necessary? OK, you can argue yes, but the damage to morale to ships companies and enthusiasm to make this a career was manifest. I’d have handed my chit in, I guarantee it.

To say nothing is saying something. You must denounce things you are against or one might believe that you support things you really are not Germany Kent.

So at least the military has mechanisms in place to make complaints, right?

Well yeah.

But complaining about bad leadership in unit / onboard is…well, you must be of stout character. Often it’s easier to suffer in silence and whack your notice in. Now the flip side of that coin is personnel can and do make unwarranted allegations against others, and the good old days of sorting it out round the back of the block are loooong gone, fortunately.

But even a fair complaint could see you Christmas duties forever.

My experience was the best way to avoid such things was to be held decent at the leadership game and try to learn from the early inevitable problems you get on promotion. And unless things have changed, forget a continuous attitude survey.

Many of the most hateful things in military life stem from the unit and bad leadership, and to state that your command is crap is to invite retribution. No, better to suck it up buttercup, get posted or get out. When the Warfare Branch workshop visited Illustrious back in the day, we were told in no uncertain terms to smile and nod and say the new system was working. That was a common theme.

They don’t want to hear about issues onboard, just wider problems.

Yet, as I said, many soul crushing issues ARE at unit level. And leadership, or rather lack of it, will be central. Oh, as it was we all said the Warfare branch was shit, we’d been conned into swapping from source branch, the training course at Collingwood was an utter arse, and the Warrant Officers stormed out.

“You’re leaving because you cannot handle life at sea. The navy is better off without non-handlers”

My divisional officer at my leaving interview, last day, HMS Nelson. She was a non-seagoing Chief Dental Assistant.

Yeah, she said that.

Amazing, huh?

So, how do we fix it? Looks grim, sounds grim, and I’m eagerly awaiting the next scandal (nothing will beat the devil worshipping on a frigate with everyone in white robes with an altar, chanting praise to Gozo The Destroyer though).

Well, the training of officers and SNCO’s etc needs to change. Too many members of the officers mess are getting in the shit, and too many SNCO’s are letting bad behaviours slide. If you think that’s an exaggeration, read the stuff Alfie uncovered a few months ago. It was dire, and it beggars belief that leaders were seeing this and doing nothing. Everyone with rank must understand they ARE the benchmark to which others aspire.

Great leadership breeds respect and the implicit trust needed in combat that your command know what they are doing, and you are not just a brute in a red coat.

I’d have an inspectorate that can visit units and in a non-uniformed capacity talk to the other ranks, especially in units with low morale and retention. No SNCO’s stood in the corner glowering. A mechanism where root causes can be found and, importantly, action taken where leaders fail. Fuck, oh, but you’ll ruin a career. If they are crap, they shouldn’t have a career. I mean, our people are our most valuable asset, right?

When good people stay in the military, they grow and gain rank, and it cascades as they mould others. Soldiers, sailors, and airmen / women deserve nothing less.

But simultaneously, do NOT try to keep implementing civilian workplace ethics into military life.

We can learn from civvy street, and we must adapt to the way kids are brought up.

The raw material is still there. They WANT to be in uniform. And they expect firm, fair, professional command. Yes, there’s a place for shouting, and AGAI I suppose, and all the daily ball ache you expect because hey, if you can’t take a joke you shouldn’t have joined. But senior officers fiddling expenses, banging subordinates, harassing females, rocking up wankered with a KFC is a fail.

Seniors aware that women in accommodation are getting knocks at the door in the middle of the night? We are better than that.

So, a long piece and probably throbbing for you. But ill leave you with one last thought. I hated leadership. It felt at the start I got more wrong than right. I felt unprepared and more than once nearly jacked. However, I learned. I stood my ground for my blokes when I felt there was injustice. I risked my career future to get a soldier and his family out of a mould infested SFA and into a hotel.

I tried to lead by example, and occasionally, it bit me in the ass. But we got there in the end and I finished up with a team where they knew their jobs, and many got promoted.

And when I left, my relief undid everything, sat on his fat rear and screwed up the SJARS. But hey. You’re just a number. Nobody cares when you’ve gone.

Although if you drive out the gate that last time knowing you were a good leader, and with your integrity intact?

That’s a win.

Dom is a co-founder of Shipwrekt podcast, a former sailor and army super REMF, and as a civvy
still can’t keep his mouth shut.

In memory of WO2 Hitchcock. Infantryman, boss, leader, and inspiration.

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