Having spent the last two decades as a Royal Marines Commando and a polar explorer I have faced the harsh realities of leadership and team development on a daily basis. It has been a journey that has jostled me between high temp operational conflicts to skiing across the wastelands of the Arctic Ocean and Antarctica. Environments literally poles apart, however, all sharing familiar leadership and team working challenges.

In the Royal Marines my failure in leadership could result in the death of one or more of the men under my command and whilst the risk of death was less in the polar arena, failure could deliver an equally life changing blow through the loss of limbs through frostbite or polar bear attack. And is has been from passing through these extreme environments that my most informative learning has come.

Leading in the high intensity arena

Operating in such high intensity arenas I have also been able to observe how others operate under these extremes of pressure where the unforgiving polar environment becomes as menacing as an enemy armed with Kalashnikovs. My approach to leadership has thus evolved along the way based on real experiences and real results. I have not only developed greater awareness of my own capacity to lead but have a deeper understanding of my own limitations.

It has been through regular exposure to uncertainty and risk that my ability to lead peak performance has grown and caused my views on leadership to change considerably as my hands-on experience has developed.

The essence of leadership

Having been grounded early in my career on the fundamental principles of command, management and leadership by the Royal Marines I have always sought greater understanding of the essence of leadership. To me the structured principles and qualities of leadership often taught always seemed to be missing an ingredient. It always seemed too rigid, an external manifestation of how a leader should act and be seen by others. Observing some of the inspirational leaders around me, I notied they all shared similar traits but they also shared something else. There was another quality I couldn’t really put my finger on. It was the essence of leadership that is often difficult to articulate.

Leadership at all levels

One of the major contributing factors to the continued success of the Royal Marines on operations is the empowerment and freedom of action to take the initiative that junior commanders are afforded. As a result the Royal Marines have achieved remarkable success on operations and shown great leadership at all levels, from the young marine awarded a Military Cross to the inexperienced young officer awarded a Mention in Dispatches.

Leadership is not a science, it is state of mind.

There are so many schools of thought of leadership as a list of traits that focus on external manifestations, a way a leader should act, the way he should manage a situation. The reality is leadership is about transformation. It’s about people. It’s about turbulence. It’s about personality and character. It is a combination of example, persuasion, compulsion, and much more. It means different things to different people.

Leadership at all levels

As my own skills in leadership evolved and I engaged in increasingly demanding journeys my own perceptions of leadership began to evolve also. Through real experiences I began to increasing experience that peak performance developed when the function of leadership existed everywhere. The ability to know when to lead, when to follow and having the levels of trust within the team that allow leadership to shift from one person to another is a crucial ingredient for any peak performing team.

The Performance Adventure-Leader© Model

By integrating adventure experiences with a variety of development principles the Performance Adventure-Leader© model has been developed, a thought-provoking philosophy on leadership and team development.