Leadership lessons from the Royal Navy
This branch of the British armed services consciously fosters cheerfulness and nourishes its collective memory. Business executives should take note.
Britain’s Royal Navy is a disciplined command-and-control
organization that moves across 140 million square miles of the world’s oceans.
Although few environments are tougher than a ship or submarine, I’ve been
struck, while conducting research on the Royal Navy, by the extent to which
these engines of war run on “soft” leadership skills. For officers leading
small teams in constrained quarters, there’s no substitute for cheerfulness and
effective storytelling. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that naval training is
predicated on the notion that when two groups with equal resources attempt the
same thing, the successful group will be the one whose leaders better
understand how to use the softer skills to maintain effort and motivate.
