Army Leadership Traits

location iconStrategy and Growth

Army leadership traits such as integrity, accountability, selflessness and adaptability are valuable qualities for effective leadership in both the military and business. Adopting these traits can help business leaders build trust, foster teamwork, make better decisions and improve overall performance.

A speaker who has spoken for MD2MD before, Mike Southon, shared numerous ‘simple’ tips about leadership, management and enterprise. As always it’s the simple things that are the best and often the ones we realise we don’t always do.

So here are three army leadership traits which are simple ideas that he attributed to his podcast interview with Sir Philip Trousdell:

He makes a clear distinction between:

  • management, which he says is about getting everything organised properly
  • leadership, which he thinks is about taking people further than they think they can go

He suggests that good leaders have three key characteristics:

  • Clear vision – they know where they are leading people
  • People person – They understand people and the way they behave
  • Consistent – People know what to expect and where they stand

He further suggests there are three things a good leader does:

  • Ask good questions
  • Listen carefully
  • Give clear instructions

Bob Bradley

Bob is a specialist in running high value added service businesses, having run five such businesses as General Manager, Managing Director or Chief Executive. His last employed role was as Chief Executive of a £16M, 200 person family owned business having previously been Chief Executive of an AIM listed company for which he raised £5M funding and which he grew from £4M to £12M in three years through two acquisitions and organic growth, and a corporate PLC subsidiary where he was Managing Director responsible for delivering £10M profit on £45M turnover through 450 staff.

Bob is now following a portfolio career providing entrepreneurial business leaders with mentoring and coaching around business leadership, business growth, merger integration and exit planning.

Core to his portfolio is MD2MD. Having experienced for himself the value of having a strong sounding board of fellow Managing Directors he founded MD2MD in 2004 to provide groups of business leaders with a confidential environment within which they can support and challenge each other to raise their game as leaders and by doing so improve the success of their organisation.

More about Bob

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