Battle Scars and Bouncing Back: How Leaders Build Resilience

Speaker A: Welcome to the Centre for Army Leadership podcast. Today we're joined by Ash Alexander Cooper, a former British army officer with extensive operational experience, a world championship level athlete, an award winning international musician, successful businessman, and now author of Mindful Soldier. Alongside a distinguished military career spanning high pressure environments, Ash has built a reputation for translating those experiences into practical leadership insights. In this episode, we explore how we can strengthen resilience, sharpen decision making and enhance leadership under pressure. Drawing on both his military background and wider experience, from elite sport to business to music, Ash shares lessons on leading with clarity, staying grounded in high stake environments and, and building stronger, more effective teams. Ash, uh, welcome.

Speaker B: Thank you.

Speaker A: So, Ash, Mindful Soldier is a story about overcoming adversity and tackling trauma. And it's a sort of diary of your military making, so to speak. And then a letter to your daughter, obviously. With these in mind, can you just explain to the listeners what inspired you to write Mind for Soldier? And was there a gap that you were trying to fill for soldiers, officers and, you know, leaders across business and, um, within the military?

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. So the book itself is not a military memoir. I was very clear that that's not what I wanted to do. There are many brilliant military memoirs out there and I didn't want to just add to that. So for me it needed to be something different. But I didn't really plan to write a book. It was a bit of an accident. And so the inspiration really to write it was the encouragement and in some cases bullying or strong recommendations from both friends, colleagues and clients that I should write some of those experiences down that I dipped into in some of the leadership work that I'd been doing with them. And they said some of these, some of these lessons or just examples of resilience or trauma or overcoming adversity were valuable to them. So I put pen to paper. It was pretty lengthy process, or it was pretty quick process in terms of writing it because I knew all the stories as it were. But in terms of getting it to become a book, it took a lot longer. Um, but we wanted it to be a practical, useful guide for people or a book that would be both entertaining, inspirational, motivational and hopefully helpful. Uh, but once I'd put pen to paper and dumped sort of a bit of a brain dump, honestly, initially, just to work out whether there was anything worth packaging into a book. Um, I worked with various friends and sort of professionals to package into 12 chapters different thematic examples really of different types of trauma and resilience. But it still felt something was missing. So I was Very lucky to, to be introduced to a friend now friend, Dr. Uh, Jessica Miller, who's a, uh, world renowned neuropsychologist who's worked a lot, particularly in the emergency services and policing space, law enforcement space. And so what it ended up being, hopefully that you'll have seen already, I know you've read it, is a book with a lot of lived experience, authentic lived experience of resilience and trauma and adversity, overcoming adversity, et cetera, but anchored in neuroscience, but in a really accessible way. So at the end of each chapter, Jess takes my examples and explains what's going on in the brain as you are going through those kinds of things and building resilience. And then we finish each of those sections with some practical exercises that anybody can do every day to help build their own resilience.

Speaker A: Great. And early in the book, I think it's in the Bees and Bullets chapter, you describe being in a really high pressure operational environment.1 in fact, when you're in an ambush where you're shot in both legs and that environment where uncertainty, fear and responsibility all collide, can you just reflect on your sort of internal dialogue in that moment and particularly how you think it's shaped your leadership sort of going forward?

Speaker B: My internal dialogue in the moment was probably unbroadcastable, to be honest, uh, because it was all very shocking. Yeah, no, it was probably how many years in after leaving military training? Probably five or six years, I suppose after joining, uh, maybe a few more. But, uh, despite all of the realistic scenarios and training that I'd gone through with bullets flying and explosions, et cetera, when you are actually shot for the first time and people are being wounded around you, that is shocking. I mean there's no way to put it other, uh, than that it's just very, very shocking. And what was going through my brain was what is going on? My brain wasn't able to really compute exactly what had happened. It was all such a surprise. We'd already achieved our mission effectively prior to the ambush by identifying a location where a bomb maker had been preparing devices to ship around within his network to the rest of the country. We'd found a bomb in the back of his car, which was uh, not great hiding place, um, in courtyard. But we, we knew we'd got that guy, so he'd already been detained. And it was only because we had a huge number of assets that had been put in place to support us on that mission that I made the call as the junior commander or the assault commander that we would Clear the rest of the street just to ask questions of the locals. Had you seen anything? Do you know what might be going on? And it wasn't as if we had lowered our guard, but the mission had been complete and we thought the, the greatest period of threat was over. So once we'd broken into this, what seemed like an empty compound and then got hit with a wall of bu, uh, from probably 10 or 15 people on the roof firing at very close range, uh, as well as firing a couple of rocket propelled grenades, I and my colleagues were hit by a couple of those as well. Uh, that was clearly there was a lot going on and my brain struggled to process it in the moment. And that was, as I said, very, very shocking now because I then had that experience and got through it not very long after that with similar experiences later in my career. Rather than things being completely uncomprehensible in my brain at the time, I felt actually I had all the time in the world to make decisions. So it's just, it's a process but, but in the moment it was shocking and I didn't really couldn't piece it all together.

Speaker A: And you talk about your biggest frustration in that particular ambush, um, was you didn't react quick enough and you didn't respond as well as you thought under contact as you expected to. I just wonder again, you've talked about that moment. M. But how did you then build on that particular experience, reflecting on that, to become better as a leader in, you know, future situations that you eventually do find yourself in?

Speaker B: Yeah, good question. I mean, realistic training, putting people under the right kind of pressure is something that both in my professional sort of business life as well as my military life was probably the best thing that we were able to do. And we were lucky that the units and the organizations I was part of, we had resources and the ability to do very realistic training. And I think the moment you can put people out of their comfort zone into a place where it is scary and unknown to be able to allow them to learn and then ultimately grow, that's where I found the most benefit. And I've tried in every team that I've led to do the same thing. And you'll know as well as I that many exercises in the military, if it's a week long exercise, it'll start on a Monday morning early. It'll finish with probably a dawn attack on a Friday. That's what it used to happen. And then you'd all be home for TM medals by Friday afternoon and away for the Weekend. I do remember one training exercise where that didn't happen. And mentally the way that that impacted me and others was quite surprising. But it was a good lesson. We were on our platoon commander's battle course and we'd all expected it to be a big dawn attack. And we did the dawn attack. We'd survived. Everyone got their TM medals, and then they said, right onto the next objective. And people just looked around going, this has got to be a joke, right? We've got to get home for the weekend. Uh, and we had a whole day of advancing to contact to a bunch more things. And that was just not how we'd expected things to happen. And that's reality, the moment you think you're done and you're over. I guess that's what happened on Halloween, that we'd finished our main mission and then just things happened that we hadn't foreseen. And so putting people in realistically unfamiliar situations is the best thing you can do both in business and in the military. But the trouble is in business, and I see this all the time, is that businesses are there to generally make money and value for the shareholders. So taking time out of doing that to do training or even personal development is something that is changing. But many organizations still just say, I don't really have time to spend a few days or a week doing that kind of training with my entire team for crisis management, et cetera. And then they're surprised when there is a crisis that people don't perform or don't really know what to do. So time spent doing that kind of realistic training and putting people under pressure with realistic scenarios is the best thing you can do if you want people to perform when it really does happen.

Speaker A: No. Great. And obviously being comfortable with uncertainty, um, unfamiliar environment is all part of that. And the leadership competency framework, which you talked about before we came in, talks about know yourself and seeking self improvement and being self aware, something you referred to earlier, uh, is really important. How have you had that honest self reflection as you've gone through your military career and then you've transitioned out of the military to improve your decision making when under pressure?

Speaker B: Well, I think the self awareness and humility piece is by surrounding yourselves with brilliant people. They will be the first to ground you and let you know if you're not quite as good as you might think you are. So humility is really important and I think self awareness is one of those skills that is often overlooked until it's not necessarily too late. But if you think about what Gets you promoted in any role, both civilian or military. In the early days as a soldier it's can I shoot straight? Am um, I a good shot? Can I run fast enough? Can I do all those practical things? And it's a very quantifiable metric that will allow you to be the top of your peer group, et cetera. Because you're not in a leadership role early on. Same in business. So making the widget, if you're the best widget maker, you'll become the manager of widget makers, et cetera. Right. Uh, but things like your communication skills, your ability to have self awareness and understand what you are good at, what you're not good at, doesn't necessarily manifest until later when you become a more senior leader and then it is often too late. But the, if you think of it, this is a pie chart of a bunch of leadership skills. The self awareness and the communications are two bits of the pie chart or two pieces of the pie that grow not exponentially but they grow over time and become far more important as a more seasoned leader than some of the your ability to make a widget or shoot straight. And so self awareness and that growth and the learning aspect to leadership is so, so important. And that's probably one of the big things I took away from sand, is that you can always learn. And in every role I've always just been around people who are in my mind far better than many of those skills and therefore being able to be self aware, know what you're good at and more importantly know what you're not good at and then hire for or surround yourself with those people that are going to fill the gaps that you don't bring. Because nobody brings everything generally unless you're an absolute legend. And there are a few legends out there, obviously I'm not one of them. So being able to make sure that you build teams that have all the components to be a high performing team is absolutely critical. And that's a leadership skill in itself. To know how to do that building

Speaker A: and a lot of that building the team revolves around trust. However you find, you know, in an army where we uh, don't have the luxury of having the same people in the same section in the same platoon, people pulled to do other tasks. How do you build that trust and what have you learned as one of the sort of key lessons for trust building in the military and then as you've gone on into business?

Speaker B: Well, trust is as you said, it's absolutely foundational to any close knit high performing elite team. Of any kind, um, in civilian or the military. And grounded in that trust is the, you need to have the understanding that trust is important at very different levels. So you've got the interpersonal trust. Are you a trusting person naturally, or are you not trusting? And it takes time to build that trust. But there's interpersonal trust, there's inter team trust. Are you an intra team trust? Uh, so within your team, do you trust each other and know what the strengths and weaknesses are of each other, that you've got each other's back? There's loyalty, there's all that sort of friendship and camaraderie that will again help you build trust. And then between teams, I've been in so many situations, particularly in the civilian business space, where there are pockets of brilliant teams within an organization. But they would happily see the team to their left and right fail, which ultimately would mean that the organization fails in some cases quite spectacularly, but they will still only have loyalty to their team. So you've got to have inter team trust as well as intra and then organizational trust. You've got to believe that the organization that you are part of will look after you. And in our case in the military, if I was killed or wounded, would look after my family and my dependents to make sure that they are looked after. So trust is a, is a more complicated thing than perhaps people think on the surface. Um, and in terms of building it, it's easy or easier to do if you have real clarity of purpose. And this is something that I certainly learned in particular some of my international work in the military, in NATO and others with some amazing commanders. Many of them were American generals, one of whom a guy called Stanley McChrystal, General Stan McChrystal, who, um, I worked for him when I left the military leading, uh, his elite leadership institute. And with him and the team around him, we built a concept called team of teams. And within the team of teams, the sort of summary, I guess, is that it doesn't matter how successful your team is individually. If you've got skills or capability that could help other teams be successful, which ultimately will mean the whole organization is successful. If you as an individual team is successful, but you let others fail left and right of you, you've all failed. So it's very much a trusting, a collaborative approach to life and leadership and success. But then within that this is baked, uh, built on rather four core competencies or capabilities, the most fundamental of which is trust. But as I was getting to the point about trust, it's a Lot easier to build. If you have common purpose, as we would have said, then the clarity of purpose in your mission, essentially the why, why are we putting ourselves in harm's way in the military's case? Or things that are uncomfortable? I don't like the feeling of not knowing and being in a place where I don't have all the answers. If you've got the clarity of purpose and you understand the bigger, uh, why are we doing this? Why does it matter? It does allow people to coalesce around the mission and around you as the leader and the organization to achieve amazing things. Within that as well is something called shared consciousness, which is a bit of a management consulting phrase of saying, essentially context. Within that clarity of purpose, you've then got to give each team member individually and at every level within section, A, uh, platoon, company, whatever it may be in military parlance, the context to know how do they fit into that bigger picture? What information do they need to know to be successful? And you as a leader need to help identify if there are gaps in that information and context that you could give them to enable them to be more successful. And then those first three things of trust, common purpose, and shared consciousness ultimately allow you to empower. And this is very much in line with certainly British military doctrine of mission command. Yeah. Uh, you know, you've got to give people the skills, the information and the support to be successful and then trust them, let them get on with it. If you try and micromanage, they will miss opportunities and it'll slow down their ability to exercise their own judgment, and then that's when things can go wrong. So the big punchline is you've just got to empower, empower, empower. And I've been surprised and impressed and just blown away by the level of skill and initiative and the difference of thinking from my way of looking at the problem through my lens that others bring. And that's when it gets really exciting when you do empower and you see people really step up.

Speaker A: Yeah. As you say, I think for the military audience, it's mission command, and then it's aligning or just realigning that purpose. So you've made it clear you've communicated the purpose, but you need to keep communicating, communicating. And that came out, you know, um, uh, in a recent cross brief we had with the standing joint command, everyone aligned to that purpose. And you can't just say it once. You've got to keep saying that time and time again and reinforce that message.

Speaker B: I mean, absolutely. And General Stamman, he was leading various organizations that I was part of in NATO, et cetera. He would literally repeat the why, the common purpose. Every single day, every meeting he came to, it would be reinforced because the mission and also the organization was changing. People would post in, post out. And you cannot assume that everybody has heard it the previous 379 times that you've mentioned it. And it was just a really good way of anchoring people and reminding them that this is what matters. Um, so you cannot say it enough. And you've got to think of ways that are going to connect with the people. You can't just send an email or have the strategy sitting on the wall of the NAFI or the mess or whatever saying, this is our mission, our common purpose. It's got to be something that is living and breathing, that you all feel aligned around your values organizationally and personally. And then people will give everything they've got to help achieve that mission.

Speaker A: That's great. Uh, and you mentioned uncertainty, and one of your chapters is called Embracing Uncertainty and there's a great quote in there which says, nothing is sure, everything is possible. Given some of the uncertainties that our senior leadership are facing, whether that be the current lack of a defence investment plan, I can say that because it's been publicly mentioned by Lord Robertson. So I'm not going to forfeit of anything here. And then, um, I hope anyway, uh, and then, you know, some of our junior soldiers, the program is unsettled. They're not sure where they're going to be going in the next week, possibly in the next couple of hours. How can leaders, based on your experience, actively develop resilience in their people and not just expect it?

Speaker B: Yeah, so uncertainty is something that naturally, as humans, we are hardwired to see risk and threat. If we don't have all the answers, we look at the uncertainty, the complexity of not knowing what's coming next, and we naturally default to risk and threat. That is just how we're wired. So it takes a conscious mindset shift to become both comfortable with uncertainty and not hope that it's going to change and come back to being inverted commas normal. Again. The world is as it is. It's not going to get less complex and less uncertain. And once you can accept that mentally, consciously and mentally, and look for the opportunities that exist in that uncertainty, it's quite a liberating moment for you. And again, something that we did within the team of teams model is to analyze sort of different systems. And I'm not a systems theory expert and I Know there'll be plenty listening, I'm sure. Rocket scientists and God knows what. I'm a humble, uh, layman in this space, but in terms of the simplicity of systems, you've got simple systems, complicated, um, systems, complex systems, and chaos is the four main systems. Complicated and complex are often two terms conflated by everybody. You hear it on the news and even the BBC does it. But complicated things are essentially predictable and complex systems and things are unpredictable. So you don't know what is going to happen. You might be able to guess sometimes and get it right and people will think, yeah, I knew what was going to happen. But actually, if it's unpredictable, you can't. But at least with, uh, complexity, you can go back and generally understand why something happened after the fact, but you can't see it in advance. So getting comfortable with complexity and uncertainty is the thing that I. I am now very comfortable with. And so living in that gray space and seeing, rather than risk and threat, opportunity, because what's not been written gives you some freedom. Now, within your leaders at every level, you may decide that Corporal Lance Corporal Smith has come in and is still quite new to the role, but has demonstrated a lot of capacity and capability to be a brilliant leader at that level. You may give them guardrails that are fairly narrow, but you still want to empower them and give them those skills that we've said and the support to be able to exercise judgment. But over time, as they get more comfortable and confident, you can sort of increase those guardrails and just let them exercise judgment. Treat people as adults and, uh, again, go back to the empowerment piece. I think leaders at every level, just try it, just empower your people and accept that none of you have all the answers. But surround yourself with people who might have pieces of the puzzle that can help you have a fuller picture. It's unlikely any leader at any level will have the whole picture. We can see today with all the uncertainty of different, uh, leaders in different countries exerting their influence without necessarily consulting others. That means that we're all being caught on the hop a little bit about what we then have to do in response. But that in itself, I think, in the last 612 months, has certainly shown that the European leaders, let's say, if we're thinking about the us, uh, the way that it's operating currently without necessarily bringing everyone with them all the time, that that's forced in some ways against people's will, but has actually been, I think, a positive thing now for European leaders to realise including the uk, that we should step up and be less reliant on others, because why should they, um, do everything for us or do an outsized, um, play an outsized role for us? That's been quite a positive thing. And that freedom of saying, actually there is a new path, there is a different path, clearly it does need an investment of some kind. But it is something that I think that uncertainty over time, it may not m seem as obvious or as close to us as we look today, but I think over time that will be a very positive thing that we've been forced to do. To look at the opportunity and the freedom that that uncertainty of one action, of one person has created.

Speaker A: You touch on a really sort of problem that you talked about was we were at Google headquarters yesterday as part of the tech terrain walk, and obviously clearly Google has a lot flatter structure than the hierarchical structure of the military. But they are, uh, experts at reaching down to those that are right next to the problem. They call them the knowledge experts, and then bringing those possible answers to these problems up to the fore and then developing them. It's something that the military in certain parts is good at, is reaching down and getting ideas from those at the core face, but also needs to improve. And yes, we do empower, but does that knowledge flow come from the bottom to the top as quickly as we would like it? Uh, there's probably a bit of work for us to do in there.

Speaker B: Yeah. And people often talk about, you either have a hierarchical organization or you have a matrix flat organization. I think that's a little bit binary, honestly. And what we did both in the military, in some organizations and in many of the businesses that I've been in, you can have both. You can take the best bits of a hierarchy that is predictable, it can scale. If you don't lead it correctly or manage it correctly, it can become turgid and slow and, you know, frustrating to work within. And there's some things you want to happen predictably. You don't want your payroll to change every month. And people go, right, this month we're going to shake, we're going to mix it up and you're going to, we're going to pay you in, you know, whatever tokens. Uh, so there's some things just work well in a hierarchy. There's clear levels and accountability and you can see your lines and chains of command. That's a good thing for m. Many people. But if it is, uh, uh, in an environment that is moving faster than the pace of the, the way that organisation operates, then you will always be behind. So I'm not saying that the British army could therefore, or any organization becomes like uh, a terrorist network that is very, very flat and information flows to cells that need the information and not to others. And as you interact with that organization, that network, it's a dynamically changing, evolving thing and one day to the next could be very, very different. We experienced that in many of the environments that UK defence teams have been involved in over the last 20, 30 years. And it took a while in some cases, and I was part of this in some ways as well, that when you are facing a more networked matrix kind of threat, if you are thinking of it as a hierarchical organization, because you might know who the leader of each individual sort of terrorist or enemy network might be and then assuming that they will behave in the same way that you would where take out that leader or detain that leader and then there's going to be a gap while they put that job announcement on LinkedIn to find a replacement. It doesn't work like that. And therefore the faster that you interact with the network and have some success, less the faster that network might evolve. So there's some really good things. Startups behave very much like this. Right. The ability of a startup to move faster than a big organization is well known and understood. And then even within business there are a number of inflection points where a clever, brilliant startup will get to a certain size of people and then people can't understand, suddenly it's lost. The secret source is because when you get bigger, things do change. Right? You can't possibly know what everyone's doing. So my point is very long winded way of getting to it is that you can overlay the matrix network kind of structure on top of a hierarchy if you do it well. Which will allow you, as you said, to be able for the Chief of the General Staff to dip down and speak to a junior soldier, sailor or airman, even in an adjoining environment at the lowest levels of the organization, if they bring something because they are the knowledge expert, you've got to find ways to do that.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And this is something that again, some of the leaders I've worked for that stuck with me have been so brilliant at doing that we would be in large meetings where if you were the knowledge expert in an embassy in Country X and you happened to have the answer, you had the ability to sort of put your hand up effectively electronically and say, I think I can solve this in real time. And then the general would say, Yep. I believe that, you know, Melissa in Buenos Aires has got the answer to that. Being open to not only receiving that information that might solve a whole load of frustration and people wondering where the answer might live, but also the cultural experience of people realizing that it doesn't matter where you are in the organization, no matter how senior or how junior, that you will be listened to. That's a really, really powerful thing as well. And don't underestimate how people realizing that they can still influence positively the shape and the outcomes regardless of where they live is a brilliant thing.

Speaker A: I think culturally we've become much better at that. If you're the subject matter expert or the knowledge expert, you're the one briefing whoever you're briefing, whether that be private soldier, a non commissioned officer, it doesn't matter if you're the expert, you brief the whoever needs briefing. It, it doesn't, it's rank agnostic. So um, that's really useful. I just want to take you back to your childhood where you're very open about, you know, an abusive father, you talk about learning judo to defend yourself, um, at home, but now you're, you know, uh, former international athlete, decorated soldier, published author, uh, I think you had a top hit. Top two or top three? I don't know what you did.

Speaker B: I know you're going to be this top of the pops number three.

Speaker A: Number three, believe it or not. Yeah, but yeah. And in mindful sold you describe moments where resilience isn't just about dramatic action but small consistent mental habits. And I, you know, read the book and flagged couple, you know, the what if stop. There's a whole host of other in there that I found really useful. What are some of the daily practices do you think soldiers and officers could adopt to strengthen their resilience and how a second follow on is how can leaders embed these habits within their teams?

Speaker B: So I first should acknowledge that my experience was not as bad as many have it. You know, it was unpleasant in the moment and I as a child wasn't really able to process. The reason I included the childhood chapter is because I felt that now that I've researched and read a lot more about mental health, resilience and trauma, that everything that we experience in life leaves a mark effectively. And there's some great books on this, including the Body Keeps the Score. And it was only in the process of writing the book and chatting with Jess that I realized more and more that my childhood experiences had more of an impact on me to shape the way that I am Today, as irritating as I am to many, um, but the fact that I can't sit still and I have to do multiple things at a time was because of that uncertainty and not having the safe anchor or the safe harbor of my home, to know that everything was going to be okay and nothing was going to be, uh, sort of temporary or taken away. For me, that was the opposite. If I didn't do many things concurrently, the risk was that I'd run out of time before they were taken away or the opportunity went. So that's kind of. It did shape me. And then while I felt. I don't feel sort of, um, burdened by my childhood trauma, I felt it was important to capture it because it then is cumulative. And before I answer your questions, which you might have to repeat again because I'm a bit senile today, but I think the importance of the cumulative nature of trauma. I think about trauma and resilience as being like a bank account. And over time, when you've gone through something hard and overcome it, you're effectively banking the credit of having got through something hard. And that's the muscle memory, the mental memory of knowing how you did it. And you can get through hard things that you can then draw on that bank account when you need to. So over life, you're building up these, these credits or these deposits, let's say, of, uh, resilience credit, and then you can draw on them. The challenge and the frustrating thing about resilience, as I've learned, particularly chatting with Jess, is that if you never go through adversity or challenge, then your balance is going to be quite low. But the really annoying thing about resilience is you don't know what your balance is. Nobody ever tells you. It's always hidden. So you might have a really big balance without needing to go through very much, and you might have a very load balance. And so you may be successful in going through a lot of things, then suddenly just not know what to do. And that's sort of linked to your, your tolerance of, or your ability, uh, to process and overcome that trauma. So all these things I try and take as a real positive. So although it was unpleasant as a child, being so unsettled and the abuse was, was not great, but actually it forced me to be more independent and less reliant on people. And so there's some positives that have come out of it that have definitely shaped the way that I am. Just remind me of your question. Sorry.

Speaker A: So you sort of answered it to a degree, and in One sense you talk about, we all acknowledge physical injury, and then there's rehab, and you talk about moral injury, which we don't necessarily recognize. And then, you know, if I sort of recognize how I've gone through my military career, we all give ourselves time for physical fitness. But in terms of the mental fitness and some of those habits that are talked about, which is the what ifs and the stops, how do we embed those into a daily ritual? Because we're all doing physical fitness at the gym as part of a program, but some of us neglect that, um, mental fitness and particularly address the moral injury, which you talk about openly in your book.

Speaker B: And I'm as guilty of neglecting some of this stuff as much as everyone else. But you hit the nail on the head that these are habits, and if they become daily habits, then they are easy to do. And you don't see them as tasks that you have to consciously think about. And, you know, slightly different habit. But I remember reading that I think it's Mark Zuckerberg, that one of the things he does every day is he lays his clothes out for the next day. So he doesn't. Or even maybe he just wears the same colored T shirt. So that's just one less thing that he has to think about, but the habit of doing it the night before. I know Stan McChrystal talks about always laying out, and I do this as well. I've sort of copied it, and it works for me, laying out the running clothing the night before. So when you wake up and it's pouring with rain when the weather forecast was supposed to be nice, and you think, no, I just get to roll over. And you look, you roll over and you see that your trainers and you're running. You're like, oh, God, okay, I can get up because I don't have to think about that. It's already there.

Speaker A: It's looking at you saying, put me on, put me on.

Speaker B: Yeah, please take me out and get me wet. Um, so habits are really, really key. What I've learned, again working with Jess, is that so many of these habits seem. And these exercises to help think about preparing you mentally for the day or throughout the day as you are going through challenges in your schedule or your daily life, personally or professionally. They are so simple that you think when you look at them at first reading, they can't possibly help. And some of them might take fewer than 10 seconds to do. But it's not necessarily what's going on that you can see physiologically. There are things going on inside either your head or your um, lungs or your body physiologically that are being reset. Like a bit of not control out, delete necessarily. But it's giving you just a pause where having a breath. I mean, you talked about moral injury. There's a bunch of different things that one can do to overcome the things that you're facing in the moment. You mentioned stop. That's a really easy one. It's a mnemonic for stop, take a breath, observe, proceed. It's just you physically stop. Just take that. Right, okay, I've got this. And that's another one. You got this. Just, just actually consciously saying that to yourself that you've got the situation. Just having that five or ten second pause might be all you need physiologically as well as mentally to just be able to take the next step. But the habit is the key thing that you've got to consciously do it initially, whether you want to or not. And then bake it in and you realize, actually this takes 10 seconds. Why wouldn't I do it? That's silly. And then it becomes something that is just part of your, your day.

Speaker A: And there's a great table in the back which is, you know, breaks down the, the chemicals, the feelings, and just simple examples from everyday life that we could all implement just with a bit of time and a bit of thought.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean there's a, there are 12 exercises. There's clearly many more exercises one could do. And you've got to find those exercises or habits that work for you. It's different for everybody. For me, I, uh, we lost the dog last year, so I haven't been doing as much walking as I'd like. But now I've got back into the habit because we're about to get a new dog of just getting up and going for a walk every morning. And I'll still do running or something in the afternoon, despite being slow and disabled a bit now physically. But just getting outside and doing a thing. I always find when I haven't gone out in the morning and just walked around the field or up, uh, in the local woods, that my brain is sort of almost less willing to accept all the other madness of the day that often comes. But if I can just do that one thing in the morning. The other habit is, um, another funny one that came from a. I mean I've always done it since school, but it's also. There's a book been written about this by Bill McRaven, who I know was on the podcast a while ago when Henry, uh, Llewellyn Usher was in your chair. And Bill's written a book called Always make youe Bed. And I literally, I get up, I make my bed. And his reason for saying is that if you've had the worst day of your life, just when you've made your bed, when you get up, that, you know, at the end of that awful day, you come back and at least you got a nice bed to get into. And it's something so simple, but it actually does make a difference. So I get up, I make the bed, I then go for a walk or go for a run, do something outside in nature is the best start of the day for me if I can. Now, traveling, obviously makes it hard sometimes, but it's a habit that I now have baits in and I don't really even think about it.

Speaker A: But I suppose we're all both well versed in bed making, having been products of, uh, the Royal Military Academy sound test, which is where we're at.

Speaker B: That's another story.

Speaker A: Well, yeah, I've got plenty of stories where my bed has, ah, happened to, uh, come out the window at Sandhurst.

Speaker B: Well, yeah, I got away with that, actually. Just a quick anecdote. Anecdote. So mine was about to go out the window. Um, now this, this. Actually there's a sensible point here as well. I promise that, um, in the first six weeks where you're basically broken down to go through basic things, and that shared pain and frustration and experience is very deliberate, I think, to give you a collective resilience as the platoon that you are part of, that you've all gone through the same thing and you can laugh about it and you need humor. That's really important in all of this. Um, but it was very designed to, very much designed to make everyone suffer in the same way. So you had something to laugh about, joke about, and you could take that with you. And we still talk about it. My platoon, 25 Platoon, the glorious sovereign splatoon of CC953, shout out to the boys. You know, we still talk about it today we have a WhatsApp group where we still give each other as much grief and love and support as we did back then. But, uh, I go into habits. Doing things that can reduce the number of other things you have to think about that might be more stressful or should take more brain capacity is really important. So for me, during those early Sandhurst days where I came in completely green, had no idea about the army, didn't really know anything at all, I could run fast which got me out of a lot of problem or a lot of trouble. But I didn't know anything about the military, so I thought, what can I do? So I learned to iron, you know, well, so that my uniform at least looked decent, even if I didn't know how to put it on. And, uh, the, the bed making bit. I didn't want the hassle or the stress of having to remake my bed every day. So I made it what I thought was perfectly and then all. And I slept on the floor and that was uncomfortable. But I thought for the first six weeks, I can suffer six weeks on the floor, but if all I have to do is get up and iron my bed and maybe dust it, then that'll be one less thing that I have to worry about every single day. And I can then focus on the things that I need to focus on. And I got caught one day on the floor when the color sergeant came in and he said, why are you on the floor? And was about to throw the bed out the window. And because I was a rower back in the day, I said, look, I've slipped to disc and I've got a sore back, so I need to lie on the floor. And he was, you could tell he wasn't convinced. But, um, I got away with it.

Speaker A: No good. And we've mentioned Santos, which is where we're recording the podcast, and we've got, you know, the home of officer training, and we've got a number of soldiers going through, um, either Pirbright, um, Harrogate or Catrick. Is there an important lesson that you learned going through training that you, you know, could pass on to those that are currently going through training and, you know, potentially finding the part of which they're in the training cycle are particularly hard. But there's a light at the end of the tunnel. Is there anything you would, sort of advice you could give them?

Speaker B: I'd say fundamentally that you're not alone. You know, I thought that I was the only person in my platoon and my team who didn't know what the hell was going on. And that was quite lonely and scary thinking, God, I'm really the least capable person here. Like I said, I could run and I could iron, but there's more to it than that, clearly. So taking time to build relationships with your team and, uh, those bonds of trust and camaraderie were so, so important. And regardless of where people in their military careers end up going after they leave training, those bonds of trust, particularly if people do go to different organizations, are really Powerful. And it's not something that is necessarily as easily done in the business space. Although over time, as people get more senior and more seasoned, clearly you're going to bump into people that have moved between different roles. But in the military, knowing that you are, particularly knowing that you are part of a team where every soldier is going to likely go to a different regiment, but they're all going through that collective basic training. Those relationships mean that when you all become sergeants in your respective regiments, that you know that Sergeant Bill Bloggs in, in the Remy was a mate of yours and you went through something hard as, as cadets or, you know, junior soldiers. Those bonds of trust are really, really important. So don't overlook those. Now, you're not alone. Uh, you're part of a team. And make sure that you, you leverage that.

Speaker A: Right. So in your book, you're a, uh, mentor, a former international athlete, you've had a decorated military career, highly successful in business. You've essentially got a career that wouldn't really look out of place in a Tom Cruise, um, Tom Cruise film. But, but you mentioned failure a lot. And there's something powerful. You know, having read the book where you reflect on experiences and you were confident to expose yourself to risk, can you just explain what allowed you to reframe, you know, those experiences of failure as growth and rather than just focus on the negatives?

Speaker B: Yeah, in hindsight, now that you've quantified the number of times I said failure, that was probably a poor choice of words, honestly, because I genuinely think that failing at something or not achieving a particular thing tactically in the moment is all part of the growth journey. And I look back at every failure, of which there have been many, far more than 30, uh, as an opportunity to learn and reflect on the things that I would do differently if I were given an opportunity again. And so I don't see failure necessarily as a negative word, which is probably why I used it so liberally. Others may need to sort of hear that to realize that I'm not trying to be negative by using the word failure. I'm just being honest that I didn't achieve the thing that I tried to achieve or wanted to achieve. But actually, in the course of not achieving that was a far more valuable lesson than had I swanned through it without any challenge. So. And it's part and parcel of growth and learning. But if you think about the main zones of comfort zone, most of us want to stay in a comfort zone because by definition it's comfortable. You've got all Your needs are met and everything is fine. Having to put yourself in a place where you don't have all the answers or you may fail at something is scary. And so in that fear zone, this is where it's uh, the real key point in anybody's growth journey and resilience journey, that many people turn back when they get to the fear zone because it is uncomfortable and scary and then they go back to comfort. I would urge people to embrace the fear, think of it as a positive because if you can get through the fear zone, that's then when you get to the growth or the learning zone and then the growth zone. And that's where the most exciting things happen, both for you individually and for your teams. So this is where adventure training comes in, particularly in the military.

Speaker A: I was going to mention that, yeah,

Speaker B: that actually putting people out of their comfort zone and showing them that there's a different path that they can take and they will be more resilient and more worldly and more interesting actually for it is really, really important. And I took a group of folks on a uh, parachuting course when I was in the military, one of the adventure training things and you could see how scared many of them were. The idea of throwing themselves out of an airplane. I quite enjoy doing it, but then I'm not normal, um, but actually seeing people overcome that. One of the guys that was on the course, a very junior soldier, was terrified and wanted to give up at one point on this trip and then pushed through that and then became quite a competent skydiver and that became their hobby because they realized that this was something they were quite good at and they're so glad that they didn't hit the fear zone and think I don't want to do this and then go back to comfort. So it's a really important part of the journey. So please don't take the fact that I've raised the word failure so many times as a negative thing. It is part and parcel of resilience and growth.

Speaker A: And you mentioned the adventure training. We only uh, two days ago were briefing at the alert conference which with the new ALDP package for all NCOs is going to be a week of adventure training. And that's built on three pillars of leadership, resilience and confidence. And it is all about pushing the boundaries for those individuals, exposing them to risk, self awareness and having those out of body experiences that they can learn from that. In summary, essentially when they come back to the battlefield and operational experience, they're going to been exposed to these higher risk environments and hopefully perform better on the battlefield. So I think it's a great thing.

Speaker B: And that's going back to that Halloween ambush. That's exactly what happened after that with many more gun battles and explosions and sort of busy situations, noisy situations that happened in my career later on I had. It was still as scary as it was the first time because you don't have all the answers. And if there's more enemy than you're expecting and they've got bigger weapons, etc. That is not great. But I had a confidence that I'd got through something pretty unpleasant previously and when I had a more junior team around me that hadn't been through those experiences and for whom this was their first really busy combat experience where effective enemy fire was in play, that actually them looking to me as the leader to give a sense of calm and confidence that I knew at least what was possible and what we could do that was. So it wasn't overconfidence but confidence that I knew that, that I was the right person at the right time in that situation. And many of my colleagues similarly. Um, that's what the military is very good at doing that you bank the experience and then you've got to be that person, that anchor, leadership anchor around which others can coalesce when you face something hard in the future that none of you maybe have experienced before.

Speaker A: We've talked about mission command and empowering our leaders. If our leaders fail, we need to be comfortable to an extent with failure as long as people are learning lessons from that. How have you found that in both your military career, but in the business world as well? Obviously subtly different with finance being a key driver.

Speaker B: I mean, in the military, one of my bugbears was the number of people that were appointed to roles that were lessons, lessons learned. I think the military is brilliant at identifying lessons. What and this hopefully is. I'm sure it's changed since I left. I, um, left ten years ago. What we were less good at when I was in, and I'm as guilty of it as anyone else, was actually learning the right lessons. Yeah, we might identify hundreds or thousands from a particular deployment or an incident. Those that we choose to learn, I think in my experience, have often been those that are easiest to learn or change rather than actually necessarily understanding what do we really, really need to learn and then change the process, procedures, or the way we do business to make sure that as the battlefield of the modern battlefield evolves that we're going to be better able to deal So I think we mustn't fool ourselves that just identifying a bunch of things that we could do better is the end of the process. That's really the very first phase of what we need to do. Ah, in business, I think it is easier in some ways to learn. As you mentioned, people are generally trying to add, um, if it's a public business, obviously derive value for shareholders, but achieve something important that ultimately will lead to profit and then profit allows you to grow, et cetera. Because there is a financial angle to this. If something hasn't gone well, even if it could have been prepared for or done differently in advance, that sort of immaterial. But if something hasn't worked, the speed at which business is able to change sometimes can be better or faster than government because there's a financial imperative to make it better. Um, and they don't have the luxury of know, well, I'm still going to get paid, no one's really going to fire me. You know, the budget's still there because it's an annual budget. Things can move much more quickly in business and so there is maybe sometimes slightly more urgency, which I quite like.

Speaker A: Yeah, no, great. I want to take you to now a chapter in your book. The theme is kindness and you quote Gandhi who says the simple acts of kindness are by far more powerful than a thousand heads bowing in prayer. You highlight moments where understanding what others were going through, often beneath the surface, changed how you led them. And that's a key part of the lieder compse framework. And knowing your team, what did those experience teach you about empathy and the importance of that in leadership?

Speaker B: Well, I think it's incumbent on any leader to know your team, whether that's a 10 person team or a thousand person team or bigger. You've got to do your best as a leader to know and understand what are those things that motivate your team? Intrinsic extrinsic factors and those things that might be just real life issues that are going on in the background that we often because someone's put on a uniform and they've come to work, that you go, right, you're now the soldier today. But actually if there's something really fundamental going on on, it might be a relationship breakdown or challenging parenting journey or an illness in the family, something or financially difficulties, even that if those things remain unsaid or unacknowledged, that can compound the issue for that individual and they will not present at work able to perform in the way that you need them to. So clearly, if it's a 25,000 person organization, it's going to be tough for the leader to know everything, but that's what you pay your leaders at different levels to be able to do for you and then can present to you if there are serious challenges that you need to be aware of. So getting to know your people and them, knowing that they are seen and um, cared about is absolutely fundamental. And those small acts of kindness, just even recognizing that somebody might be going through something tough and just giving them a bit of a break, like knowing that if you gave somebody there's nothing going on in the office, say, look, just take the afternoon to go and sort that thing out. Because I can see that you're distracted. Just those acts can be things that will stay with them as individuals forever and they will be far more loyal to you and know that you care. Because if you have leaders that come in and you can see them only looking up and there's plenty that I've worked for that do this, where you know, they don't really care about you. They want the organization to be successful, but only because they're looking for their next job. And there are some in very senior positions right now who've always, you know, it's to their credit they've succeeded. But that's not something that those underneath you in your chain of command generally like. I certainly didn't like it. So knowing that you would fight for your people regardless is really, really important. Otherwise they won't come with you and give the extra or go the extra mile if they think that you are not in it for them. And I think one thing probably, uh, going back to your question about junior leaders and things they could learn as officers particularly and given that we're at Sandhurst, something that was said many times and perhaps I was slow to learn in some cases, remember that when you join a platoon, some of those people have been in that group for years and years and years. Some maybe more than 10 years or they've been in and out, but they are there and they will be there before you come as your platoon commander role. And there'll be two years of you there maybe and then you're gone, but they will still be there. So just be mindful that when you come in with a bunch of new ideas which are great, just remember that they might be slightly, they've seen this all before. And so just be mindful. Find those people that are, uh, the sage council, your platoon sergeant, particularly the corporals and the leaders at different levels and ask their opinion going back to what we said earlier about there's no limit to where the good ideas must be coming from. It can be at any level. And people will bring different experiences than you will have as the junior commander. So you're there for a hot second of two years. Just remember that when you're in a real hurry to make a difference in two years, they might be jaded from the last bloke or lady, uh, who came in and spent two years running them around ragged to try and make the change. So just be mindful, depending on how

Speaker A: long they've been, they've probably seen the idea three years ago, just recycling it. Three, uh, recycling it through three years after.

Speaker B: Indeed.

Speaker A: I think what you touch on is really important and it comes back to something that's fundamental in the doctrine is balancing the needs of the team, um, the task and the individual and the Adairs model. And I think we have got better at, you know, certainly through training at Sandhurst, where your first exposure to soldiers now is. Isn't just when you arrive in regiment, the Santos training has evolved where soldiers are part of some of the exercises. And I think that's a great step. You're more attuned to working with soldiers before you leave this place, which is always good. I was going to change tack now and just talk about, are there any military leadership tips that the business world would appreciate, and are there any business leadership tips that the military underappreciate?

Speaker B: Yeah, it's a great question for the military. The serve to lead ethos that Sandhurst inculcates in all of us is something that is not necessarily universal in business. The point of putting your team, your mission, your group before you is something that is less common than I would certainly like to see. And that in and of itself means that there's potentially in some cases less trust and less sense that people will have your back and do the right thing by you for the greater good. There's a lot more individual behavior in business than. Than you would see in the military, for sure. So serve to lead is something that I think the business world. I'd love to see more of it, honestly. Um, for the military folks taking lessons from business, I think the speed at which business can move, as evidenced by startups, is something that the military often thinks that it moves super fast. But it's gotta be put in perspective that just realizing there are some really bright ideas from outside that can, particularly in today's, this modern battlefield and the world in which we live, not all of the best ideas are going to be coming from people in uniform. And we need to find a way to better embrace the experts and the brilliance that exists in the commercial space, particularly if they can move and develop faster than the military is able to keep up when it's looking for its own budgets and it's already got fixed structures. Because startups are popping up every single day with ideas, whether it's from the Ukraine battlefield or elsewhere. We've got to be better as a defence group and as government to accept good inputs from business.

Speaker A: And, uh, I suppose, you know, we've got to look over the fence all the time to grow. And, uh, as part of the Centre for Army Leadership, we can't just focus leadership by learning internally. We've got to learn from other public bodies, business, the third sector, the charity sector and also other NATO leadership centers, because you've got to constantly learn. Which comes back to some of the things you mentioned previously, but also real chapter in your book is you build resilience by learning, you know, from experience and from others.

Speaker B: And it's the beginner's mind. And we talk about this in the book, it comes from Buddhism, that. And I remember when I was performing, whether it was Top of the Pops or other things as a kid, I wasn't nervous at all because it wasn't something that my brain was sort of like, well, I'm learning all the time, uh, that beginner's mind, this sort of. What's the right word? Not naivety, but it's just a wholesome. I know that I don't know lots of things because I'm a young kid, therefore everything is possible. And I think over time, particularly when you increase the levels of leadership responsibility, there's a pressure to feel like you need to demonstrate that you know everything. And if you aren't open to remembering that the beginner's mind is where you're far more open to all the inputs that are there that you would have as a child or somebody that really lives this daily, that we've got to just remember that every day we must be learning something from somebody. And that growth mindset and the beginner's mind is something that leaders need to be really honest about the things they do or don't know and say it, you know, I don't know the answer to that. Who has the answer? And again, to my earlier point, that'll bring this kind of feeling of ability to influence and part of a team where you're all pulling together for that common purpose.

Speaker A: And the why, if you were sort of Reflecting now, uh, we've talked a lot about your military career and your business career. Is there anything that you would do differently, you know, your first day having left Sandhurst in your new regiment? And I'm sure both soldiers and officers would be keen to know, is there anything that you would do differently and implement from day one?

Speaker B: I don't think so, honestly, because I approached this very much as a short term career. I didn't realize that I was going to spend 22 years regular service and another six or so years in the reserves. I thought I was going to do a three year job and then get a proper job, whatever a proper job is. Still not sure. And so I approached things that every opportunity that was presented or I saw as being something where I could learn, as being something that I've got to say yes, because I might only be doing this for three years, rather than thinking that I didn't have a plan. And people often thought that I had a plan and misunderstood that I really didn't. I just wanted to do the very best I could in each role, learn something from it and then carry on doing it if I got value from it. So joining the Gurkhas was something that I didn't plan. When I arrived at Sandis, I didn't know half the regiments until I got here and was like, over. I was overwhelmed by the number of regiments one could choose from, particularly in the infantry. And I was lucky enough to be selected for the Gurkhas, who at the time I'd obviously had to learn to speak, read and write Nepali. We were the Jungle Warfare Battalion in Brunei, also in Hong Kong, doing airborne stuff in the uk. There, uh, were so many things that I thought would be an amazing experience. We could still go to Northern Ireland. We could, we did Bosnia. And so that first three years was pretty busy and then there was an opportunity to go flying and I thought, well, why not? I'd been told at school that you'll never be able to be a pilot because your maths wasn't good enough. And I thought, well, let's see. And I managed to do that and that was great fun, and did that for a number of years and then did a bunch of really interesting joint roles. But then outside of the military as well, learning to skydive or free dive or doing all sorts of adventurous training things, always said yes. And that's gets me into trouble with the kind of friends that I've got where they say, would you like to. And I'll say yes before I even know what the Thing is most latest of which is potentially rowing the Atlantic soon. But, um, those experiences I don't regret. So I think I don't regret anything that I did in the military in terms of the way that I approached it, that look at this as an opportunity to learn and grow and in a really honorable mission and sector of business life or working life, to be able to feel like you can give back as part of a really strong team where there's loyalty, respect, you have to live by your values and integrity every day. And by being part of a team where people are similarly as unhinged as you, that you're going to have a lot of fun along the way. So I wouldn't change it for the world. I'm sure people would look and say, well, I wish he'd behaved slightly differently in that leadership role or other. And, uh, we'd be here all day. If I listed all the things I could have probably done better tactically. But in terms of the overall approach to this role, being a military leader at any level, officer or soldier, I think it's one of the best things that we can do to ground ourselves in the things that matter. As a leader and as a human embarking on, you know, a sort of grown up life in business or in uniform.

Speaker A: It's that growth mindset 100% from the start. Is there an aspect of leadership across the army, not rank specific, that you think is a bit of a blind spot currently? And, um, what should the army leaders of the future be focusing on?

Speaker B: That's a good question. I think we can see that the world is evolving faster than any of us could have envisaged even five years ago, let alone 10 years ago. I was part of the army strategy team in 2010 writing the strategic Defense and Security Review back then. So not that many years ago really. And drones weren't a thing. The uk I don't think owned a single drone then Predator or anything else. The Americans had a few, but that was it. I remember when I was in Afghanistan in around 2005 and the Americans had two predators. That was it for the entire country. And now you look at how that world has evolved in terms of drone and autonomous warfare. So the strategic defense review 2010 was still talking about divisions and deployable brigades and tanks. And it was whether the army was going to get tanks, uh, versus other things. You look now at the speed of that evolution, it's just accelerating every year. And Ukraine has just brought that to people's attention perhaps m more than any other conflict in Recent times. So my advice really, or the thing that I would urge, is that it's not necessarily the soldiers or the junior members of any defence team that are not saying the problem is the wrong word. The responsibility is on the leaders at every level, including from the very top down. They are the ones that need to learn and be educated in the ways of warfare and technology and AI and autonomy and robotics. And none of us were hired to be AI autonomy, robotic specialists. Right. That just wasn't a world in which we grew up and that's certainly not how we were educated at school or university. So it's incumbent on the leaders today to be able to adapt and learn and change their own mindsets. I think rather than the soldiers. Soldiers today, sailors and airmen will be joining. Many of them can code because they've been doing it since they were babies, uh, almost. They are far more able to evolve and adapt to the changing nature of the battlefield and defence and the threat than perhaps the senior leaders. So if I was still in, I might be in the same position. But I think it's incumbent on the leadership to make sure that they are fully aware of the possibilities of the modern battlefield and they are educated and learn as much as they can because it's their decisions that are going to determine how successful we are as the more junior leaders come through.

Speaker A: And I think we're getting at that. Whether that be the Leadership Education Development Group, Tech Terrain walks. We had the one, um, yesterday at Google, Pennsulting, been to Oracle and then we're doing a forge course, which is for a mixture of military and business, to a technology course run by the Leadership Education Development Group. So I think we are getting at that. But I totally agree we've got to be at the front end of the technological developments and bringing technology in, um, to our soldiers and officers from the very start. I'm conscious of time, but I do want to finish, uh, on what you think is the most important lesson you want young soldiers and officers listening to. Take away from your book Mindful Soldier.

Speaker B: Embrace uncertainty and then bank it. When you've got through something that was scary, push through that fear zone because you'll be far more resilient as a result and you'll be able to look back on that and know and bank the fact that that was something that you got through. So uncertainty is scary. Accept that up front, um, and push through it and you'll be. As I said, that's what resilience is all about, is the ability to adapt and learn in the face of adversity. And the military provides plenty of that for you.

Speaker A: It does indeed, Ash. It's been, um, a pleasure to speak to you and a challenge to keep on time. Uh, before we finish, though, I would like to finish on our quick. Ah, fire. Uh, leadership questions, so brief as possible. One word answers, if possible. Um, best leadership advice you've ever received.

Speaker B: Empower. Empower. Empower.

Speaker A: And one thing you change about army leadership overnight.

Speaker B: Ooh, I go back to my previous answer, really? That the leaders of today, particularly the most senior leaders, are the ones that need to adapt and learn because they are going to be leading people who have far different skills from those that they possess from when they came through.

Speaker A: And a leadership habit you think everyone should adopt.

Speaker B: Good one. Um, Carl, where to start? Take time to know your team. We're in such a busy world, both militarily and in business, that it's easy to just say, I'm too busy to actually make the time to know your people. But if you don't know your people and know what they bring, you won't be able to get the best out of them. And they will see that. And, yeah, so make time.

Speaker A: Ash, uh, it's been a real pleasure, uh, speaking to you. Thank you so much for giving up your time.

Speaker B: My pleasure. Thank you.

Speaker A: Thank you. A huge thank you to Ash Alexander Cooper for an insightful and uplifting conversation around the mindful soldier. The discussion was a powerful reminder that resilience isn't fixed. It's something we build deliberately. By embracing uncertainty, committing to continuous learning, and adopting a growth mindset, we can strengthen both ourselves and our teams. As Ash highlights, one of the most effective instructors of resilience is ourselves, learning to view experiences objectively and consciously steer our thinking under pressure. Finally, all author profits from the book will be donated to the Royal British Legion Industries and Gurkha Welfare Trusts, two organizations doing vital work to provide mental and physical support to those in need as a result of their service. Thank you for listening.