TL&L Summary Notes – Leadership Fundamentals for an Uncertain Future

On 19^th January 2026, CRF hosted an online session for its Talent, Leadership & Learning (TL&L) Community titled Leadership Fundamentals for an Uncertain Future. The session was led by Langley Sharp, former Head of the Centre for Army Leadership, who explored what organisations can learn from the British Army’s approach to developing leadership capability in complex, high-pressure and fast-changing environments. These notes summarise the presentation and the following discussion.

The Context
Leadership is the Army’s principal professional competency. Its importance can be framed through three interlinked elements – the three Ps. The challenge is delivering this consistently in an ever-changing context:

• Purpose: Every organisation or team exists for a reason – its “why”. Delivering on that purpose requires sustained performance.
• Performance: Performance is multifaceted, shaped by strategy, resources, technology, processes and structures. While many factors contribute, the most critical capability is people.
• People: People are the ultimate source of competitive advantage. The leadership challenge is getting the very best from people in order to drive performance that delivers the organisation’s core purpose.

The Army’s Leadership Approach

• The Army has refreshed its leadership doctrine to reflect modern working life, defining leadership as values-based and underpinned by mission command.
• A followership doctrine has also been introduced, recognising leadership as a social relationship between leaders and followers.
• A leadership competency framework codifies the skills and behaviours expected of leaders, supporting the professionalisation of leadership development and ensuring consistent standards across the organisation.

Q&A Summary

In corporate environments, how can leaders influence others without relying on authority?

• Command is more explicit in a military context, but every organisation has some degree of hierarchy and authority. While authority can create legitimacy, leadership is ultimately about influence – building trust and respect so that people choose to follow.
• Leaders need the humility to accept different opinions and create an environment where people feel safe to speak up, as well as the confidence to make decisions when required.

How do you create the conditions to support effective decision-making at speed?

• Alignment enables autonomy and is built through clear purpose, strategy, values and decision-making structures. At a team level, this means being clear about intent (what needs to be achieved and why) without needing to prescribe the how.
• Understanding intent one and two levels up (i.e. a manager and their manager) helps people make better decisions in context. Simple practices such as “read-back” – “Can I just check you’ve asked me to do X, Y and Z?” – help create alignment in the moment.
• Experience and practice build judgement. This includes placing people under pressure in safe training environments and using after-action reviews to reflect on decisions and outcomes.

How do you embed leadership practices in day-to-day work?

• Leaders need to set the right environment, for example by asking people to bring potential solutions to problems and then guiding their thinking, rather than providing answers.
• Clear boundaries matter. When people understand what they can and cannot do, they have greater freedom to act. When boundaries feel unclear, people often restrict themselves.
• Values and behaviours must be reinforced daily, whether things go well or badly. Leaders consistently frame decisions and actions in terms of the behaviours they expect to see.
• Whilst other organisations might not be able to invest the same levels of time in learning and development, most development happens in the everyday. Leaders who can raise self-awareness, ask good questions and listen well can turn day-to-day work into learning. Development does not always require formal courses; it is embedded in daily experience.

How do you create consistency of understanding and application across a large and complex organisation?

• One challenge for central leadership has been translating a five-page doctrine into something that is genuinely accessible and usable. As well as ensuring direct understanding of the doctrine itself, much of the real value lies in embedding it into organisational systems.
• Training and education pathways are one example, as is embedding the leader competency framework into assessment and performance processes. In this way, the doctrine becomes part of the organisation’s DNA. People are not repeatedly asked whether they have read or understood it; it becomes part of the shared language and the system.
• The leadership doctrine is deliberately broad enough to be applied in different contexts. This avoids the need for frequent revision and, therefore, confusion.

Resources
British Army, Army Leadership Doctrine Publications
British Army, Centre for Army Leadership
British Army, Centre for Army Leadership Podcast
CRF. 2022. Making a Paradigm Shift in Leadership Development
CRF. 2024. Summary Notes: High Impact Leadership Development