In this episode we speak with Doctor Victoria Carr, Primary School Head Teacher, Army Reservist in the Intelligence Corps, and Centre for Army Leadership Senior Research Fellow.

Combining her experience in leading in the education sector and as a military leader, Victoria provides a unique insight into how teams can benefit from leadership skills and experiences that transcend notably different environments. We discuss the importance of personal resilience, and the part it plays in fostering and nurturing emotional and psychological safety among teams. Importantly, we discuss how the display of 'love' by leaders for their teams is not a too strong of a word to use, even in a military context.

In this episode, we speak to Major David Love, Royal Military Police (RMP), in his role as SO2 Army Leadership at the Centre for Army Leadership (CAL).

We discuss how the CAL are developing the concepts and theory of leadership into tools that the Army can use. He focusses on the importance of understanding your people, and how by taking a human-centred approach to leadership enhances unit and team cohesion, as well as drawing upon the strengths of each individual to achieve greater operational outputs. We also discuss the role of unit identity and the importance of creating the feelings of belonging to forge a cohesive team. Underpinning all of this was understanding the role that empathy plays, firstly by reflecting on examples of where he had been led poorly and being able to evaluate that to shape how he would lead when he was given that responsibility.

In this episode we speak to Sir Alex Younger KCMG, the former Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service. Prior to his six-year tenure as ‘C’, Sir Alex was the Head of Counter Terrorism and obtained many operational roles worldwide. His time at MI6 was preceded by a stint in the British Army - first as a private soldier and later as a commissioned officer in the Scots Guards.

We discuss Sir Alex’s captivating and varied career experience, which gives him a unique insight into leadership across a plethora of roles and responsibilities. All of his experiences are underpinned by his advocacy for values-driven leadership as a foundation for success, with his definition of vales being ‘a common set of moral expectations’. He emphasises that trust and empowered delegation, to those that know a situation best, is fundamental to collective success, and he comments on having a bias for action, where leaders must generate and use their agency to make things happen, with self-leadership acting as a foundation to be able to do so. He anticipates a future where a combination of complementary human and technological skill will be required by leaders in order to succeed, and that speaking truth to power is, and will remain, central to the success of the UK’s intelligence agencies.