Book Review: Leadership Secrets of the Australian Army: Learn from the Best and Inspire Your Team to Great Results

Leadership Secrets of the Australian Army: Learn from the Best and Inspire Your Team to Great Results

Written by: Brigadier Nicholas Jans (Ret’d) OAM

Allen and Unwin, 2018,

ISBN 9781760631802, 208pp

Reviewed by: Dr Stephen Mugford

There are two kinds of leadership books.1 The first deploys theoretical ideas and research in the socio-psychological sciences to understand and analyse the phenomenon; and the second focuses on gathering experiences and stories which a reader can appreciate and draw guidance from.

Nicholas Jans’ book, based upon his long association with Army, his intellectual and applied work and his experience with the Black Saturday bushfires, falls into the second camp. While it does not ignore the literature, it treads lightly on that terrain, offering readable and interesting examples. If you wanted only one book on leadership to use as a guide, you would do pretty well if you chose this one. It is readable, sensible and engaging.

Jans’ core argument rests on a trio of Rs—Representing (behaviour you expect to see), Relating (positively with team members) and Running the team (to create intrinsic reward and produce extra effort.) Jans argues persuasively that these three are found throughout good Army work and translate well into broader spheres of life. Whether they are ‘secrets’ is a different question (although it makes a good book title), but the point that the trio merit continued attention is well made and offers sage advice to (for example) young officers.

For the reader who would dig deeper, two issues are worth considering. First, all discussions of leadership are internally conflicted: most argue that leadership is a process which produces willing effort over and above mere ‘compliance’, so a leader is a person who generates this effort. Thus, anyone may ‘lead’, and leadership and senior rank are not coterminous. Many writers then revert quickly to talking of the senior folk as leaders: note that Army ‘senior leadership’ is located somewhere around Colonel or Brigadier and above. Jans does better than many on this score but still tends to fall into this trap (notice the idea of ‘your’ team in the title.) Eliding senior rank and leadership is common in hierarchical organisations like Army. This is dangerous—it privileges stability and history over agility and the future. Facing a turbulent 21st century, this is not where Army needs to be. A more uncompromising definition of leadership combined with the sparing use of the word ‘leader’, avoiding it as a synonym for ‘boss’, would mitigate this problem.

Second, the current literature describes a variety of domains and skill sets which would enrich the discussion: analytically separating continuity

leadership (professional/managerial excellence) from generative leadership (creating space for innovation and agility) and from enabling leadership (skills for balancing and integrating the first two) along with communication leadership (advanced skills for creating deep thinking, et cetera, well beyond the Joint Military Appreciation Process. The trio of Rs that Jans identifies traverses these, which is why the book is useful. But, for those who would go deeper, it would be worth considering these more sophisticated concepts.

Endnotes

1 I should declare at the outset that I have known Nicholas Jans for over 40 years through varied connections, from ACT Rugby to co-authoring a book with him in the last few years.