Project Overview
Service: Team coaching
Sector: Defence
Year: 2025
Duration: About 10 days
The Challenge
A brigade headquarters showed clear improvement between two major exercises within a single training year. Its written orders were sharper, its roles were clearer and its communications discipline was stronger than in the earlier activity. My role was to help the team understand why the improvement happened, not just note that it had, so the gains would stick rather than depend on who happened to be on shift.
My Approach
Working alongside the command team, I identified the foundational habits driving the uplift. These were a willing, collegiate team culture and a fast feedback loop between observation and action.
I also surfaced two quieter and harder problems. The first was a reluctance among more junior staff to speak up, even in a team that actively invited it. The second was a headquarters that was largely reactive, responding to immediate requests rather than anticipating what its commander would need next. Both are leadership and posture issues rather than skills gaps, and both needed naming before they could be addressed.
The Outcome
A set of recommendations the command team could act on immediately, plus a clear-eyed diagnosis of the cultural and postural shift still required to move the team from competent to excellent.
