The anatomy of command: How leadership traits shape climate and operational risk.
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While military units are structured by strict doctrine, the reality of a command climate is defined by the unwritten rules and personality traits of its leaders. In high-stakes operational environments, a leader’s emotional regulation, character, and consistency are the leading indicators of unit cohesion, morale, and mission success.
Military organisations are built on rules by necessity. In the UK and around the world, countless thousands of pages of doctrine and guidelines firmly establish responsibilities, standards, and procedures that enlisted service personnel and officers must adhere to. However, defining the environment these individuals experience day to day is not as easy as using a rulebook.
The military’s culture is instead shaped by leaders, especially when they must make decisions and take action under stressful conditions. Over time, these occasions form what is known as a command environment, a series of unwritten norms that have significant influence on the trust and morale of a unit or organisation.
The command climate as a projection of personality
The British Army Leadership Doctrine contains a quote from Field Marshal Lord Slim: ‘Leadership is that mixture of example, persuasion, and compulsion which makes men do what you want them to do. I would say that it is a projection of personality. It is the most personal thing in the world, because it is just you.’ While he served as Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS) from 1948 to 1952, a time when the army was full of men, his words still ring true for today’s command and unit structures.
The Army Leadership Doctrine also states that leadership is ‘a combination of character, knowledge, and action that inspires others to succeed’. Similarly, the Army Leadership Code says that leaders inspire greatness by ‘being fair, consistent, and showing confidence in others’.
‘You’re allowed to carry 14 different golf clubs in a golf bag’, says Lindsay MacDuff, former UK military officer and host of The Culture Colonel podcast. ‘Each of those golf clubs has a different function. It’s the same with leadership: you can’t just have a single style. You need to be enormously flexible and have a suite of tools for different environments and conditions, down to the individual level. You’ve got to do the thinking so you understand how best to apply each tool.’
Authentic, skilled leaders may thrive within the command environment they build, driving personnel to give their absolute best. Conversely, an unhealthy leader quickly corrodes the culture and causes it to drift away from military values and mission objectives.
The impact of pressure on leadership patterns
A leader’s character is already there; sometimes on display, sometimes just under the surface. Apply pressure, and the core of that character is usually revealed. A leader under stress may be calm, clear, and deliberate, or they might increase control, become defensive, and behave in an emotionally volatile way.
The danger doesn’t lie in whether a leader becomes demanding or assertive. In operational environments, service personnel expect to be pushed hard and held to high standards. As MacDuff notes, ‘it’s what they sign up for’. But when the stakes are high, leaders are not simply issuing orders; they are establishing the emotional and moral conditions of the service personnel around them.
As such, a leader who expects excellence while still communicating clearly, delegating appropriately, and remaining consistent in their behaviour can build trust over time. In contrast, a leader who changes expectations on a whim, micromanages ‘underlings’, or takes credit for other people’s ideas quickly creates an environment rife with distrust, frustration, and hesitant compliance.
‘If you’re telling a plan when you’re in a difficult operating environment, you’re asking people to do stuff they don’t really want to do’, MacDuff says. ‘That also makes it more important for the projection of personality to happen there. I can’t think of any non-operational environment where that is as important or, indeed, fundamental.’
This dynamic creates a distinct risk if poor behaviour is tolerated for the sake of immediate results. In a recent Culture Colonel podcast discussion, General Sir Richard Nugee recalled a highly toxic Major General who was, nonetheless, particularly good at operations. Nugee noted that he warned the Chief of Defence Staff: ‘Until you sack that individual for his toxicity, you will never change the culture of the Army.’
Emotional intelligence should not be an abstract concept
The ability to regulate one’s emotions is often misconstrued as stoicism in military environments, especially given that stoicism is often required in combat or other high-pressure situations. However, the concept of emotional regulation is not meant to remove emotion from leadership. Instead, it is about recognising emotions, managing their impact, and staying aligned with the values and standards upon which the organisation is built.
For MacDuff, emotional intelligence relies heavily on attentiveness and curiosity. ‘It’s about knowing your people and being curious about them’, he says. ‘Maybe it’s knowing that someone’s sister is going through cancer treatment at the moment, and asking about it. It’s about honesty, both in you as a leader and knowing how to elicit that from your team. They have things going on in their life that’re going to affect their performance.’
With this knowledge, leaders gain a more holistic understanding of the factors that affect performance. People operate at different levels based on the real-world conditions they face, and leaders need sufficient emotional intelligence to understand and plan for those variations.
Leaders define the command environment very quickly, whether they intend to or not. Those who can display emotion at the right times generally remain composed under pressure and foster a sense of psychological safety. Those who lash out or react impulsively foster compliance driven by fear rather than trust.
MacDuff refers to a situation in which he had trouble regulating his voice and had moisture in his eyes while informing everyone on a parade square that two soldiers had been killed in Iraq. Later, individual and smaller groups of soldiers thanked him for his display of emotion, because it made them feel safe enough to do the same. He notes that he received some criticism from more traditional peers about the display, but he believes military culture is moving more in this direction.
‘It’s the function of a leader to orchestrate the team in the best possible way, and you can’t do that without emotional intelligence’, MacDuff adds.
The impact of trust on command effectiveness
When a crisis hits, time becomes short, and consequences become instantly more severe. It is in these moments that a leader’s true effectiveness is revealed. The success of a mission command depends heavily on a leader’s ability to trust and delegate, and on the team’s ability to respond with confidence. If poor decisions are made in heated moments or leaders try to micromanage in highly dynamic situations, trust and unit cohesion break down quickly.
That trust may be destroyed quickly on the battlefield, but it is built in smaller moments. Leaders can, for example, institute an open-door policy so personnel feel their opinions matter.
‘But if the door is open and you’re not in the room, there’s no point in having the door open’, MacDuff warns. ‘If you aren’t consistent with that, people will just go somewhere else. If you demonstrate a lack of compassion with even one person, it will have an impact on others. With social media, people communicate much more effectively than before.’
He also notes that trust is damaged when leaders assume everyone else wants what they do. He recalls a time when he was worried about missing the birth of his child due to a deployment. A senior officer informed him that he had specifically arranged to be deployed for the births of his children and didn’t understand why MacDuff would want to be there.
‘Different people want and need different things’, MacDuff says. ‘That understanding should inform your decisions, and it will build trust.’
Assessing the command environment
General Sir Gywn Jenkins, First Sea Lord and Chief of the Naval Staff, recently underscored the critical nature of these assessments at the highest levels: ‘I am absolutely determined that within the Navy—I know fellow chiefs share the same perspective—we must assess our leaders on the climate that they can create for their people.’
For military organisations, understanding the traits of leaders is essential to ensuring effective leadership. Pearson offers evidence-based psychological and behavioural assessments that can drive a better understanding of leadership qualities, such as emotional intelligence, flexibility, self-awareness, and discipline. Having leaders with these qualities is essential for the safety of service personnel and the success of missions. After all, in command environments, people don’t follow the plan; they act within the climate their leaders have created.
To learn more about how psychological and behavioural assessments help support better leadership and build stronger teams in the military, check out Pearson’s Armed Forces & Veterans page.