{"id":8499,"date":"2021-08-24T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-08-24T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/?post_type=article&p=8499"},"modified":"2025-12-15T05:11:45","modified_gmt":"2025-12-15T05:11:45","slug":"six-leadership-lessons-learned-from-a-career-in-the-australian-sas","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/articles\/six-leadership-lessons-learned-from-a-career-in-the-australian-sas\/","title":{"rendered":"Six Leadership Lessons Learned from a Career in the Australian SAS"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
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\n 24 Aug 2021 <\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>Articles<\/a>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t

Six Leadership Lessons Learned from a Career in the Australian SAS<\/h1>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n \n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Category<\/div>\n Leadership & Culture<\/a> <\/div>\n
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Anthony ‘Harry’ Moffitt is a recently retired Australian Special Air Service Regiment [SAS] Team Commander. During a career that spanned almost 30 years he designed, planned, and carried out hundreds of combat missions and lead dozens of sensitive military programs.<\/em><\/h4>\n

Moffitt completed his time in the SAS as its Director of High-Performance. He now practises as a registered psychologist across sports and industry and recently authored his memoir <\/em>Eleven Bats: A story of Combat, Cricket, and the SAS<\/a>. It will be released in the UK on September 11 this year.<\/em><\/p>\n

In an exclusive series for the Leaders Performance Institute, Moffitt explores what his experiences and mistakes have taught him about leadership, the self, and team culture. The focus for part one is the theme of leadership.<\/em><\/p>\n

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By Harry Moffitt<\/h6>\n

There are only a few profound moments in one\u2019s life. A point beyond which our understanding and experience of the world shifts dramatically.<\/h4>\n

About a decade ago, I watched a Noam Chomsky lecture where he asked \u2018is language sound with meaning or meaning with sound?\u2019 Though it has Aristotelian roots, it was a new thought for me which immediately brought clarity to a number of tacit ideas I had about communication and leadership.<\/p>\n

However conceptualised, it is uncontroversial to say that communication is the most significant factor of effective leadership. With this thought in mind, I humbly offer six leadership lessons that I learned during the course of my SAS career.<\/p>\n

1. Transmit \u2260 receive<\/strong><\/p>\n

When issues emerge between leaders and teams, 90 percent of the time they come down to one thing: that many leaders do not understand that transmit \u2260 receive. Just because you say something, and the recipient nods, does not mean it has been received and understood as you intended. It is a leadership trap to assume this.<\/p>\n

You can mitigate this through some basic CBT psychology by asking the receiver to repeat back, in their words, what they think you meant. Or you might circle back later and ensure the message and intent was fully received. The more critical the communication, the more critical this imperative is. Mission critical teams often delineate between routine and critical comms (Preston B. Cline, 2017<\/a>).<\/p>\n

The brevity, codification, and urgency of the latter can often sound disrespectful, but the task or situation necessarily overrides the need for empathy and civility. In those instances, mission critical teams tacitly acknowledge that human emotion and ego get in the way of communication. Further, acknowledging that transmit \u2260 receive can mitigate those receivers who nod in agreeance to save face. We have all done this.<\/p>\n

2. Question, shut-up, listen<\/strong><\/p>\n

I started my career as a signaller, learning Morse code. One trigram we used was QSL which asks the receiver to acknowledge receipt of a transmission, to which they may reply in Morse Q-S-L, which essentially means \u2018I acknowledge receipt\u2019. I have come to adopt this acronym when discussing how the best communicators I have worked with achieve such effective and efficient transfer of information. They ask considered questions, they shut-up to let others speak, and they listen such that they hear, which is the most important part. Many of us are merely waiting, thinking about what we will say next while appearing to listen. This is a fruitless pursuit, as one can\u2019t think in that way and hear at the same time.<\/p>\n

3. Communicate in five directions<\/strong><\/p>\n

Many leaders have a preference, or bias, to communicate in one direction. They therefore become good at it (we perfect what we practise). Some bias communicating \u2018up\u2019 to management in a career first context, or, \u2018down\u2019 to the team where they struggle to make the leap from mate to manager. We must learn, through practice, to communicate in five directions: up to management, down to the team, inwards to peers, outwards to stakeholders, and finally, importantly, within, to yourself. Each needs its requisite attention and nuance and an agility that can take years to develop. This is a key insight for me, an integral element in the art of leadership, and points to how we select and develop our leaders.<\/p>\n

4. Walk the floor<\/strong><\/p>\n

I am old enough to remember the dated notion of the open-door policy. It aims to encourage staff to come into the office and share their thoughts with an \u2018approachable\u2019 leader. Truth is, few did. The open-door-policy was later reimagined to encourage leaders to leave their office to engage with everyone on their ground. Truth is, they didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

I am more deliberate [i.e., put it in your calendar] in coaching leaders to make a daily habit of walking the floor. That is, once a day, pick a team or area you rarely visit and do so. This may be a phone call or even a plane ride. It is so important \u2014 it might be a KPI?! And, while you are walking the floor, work on other leadership characteristics, such as courage. Try asking one of the most challenging questions a leader could ever ask an employee: \u201cAre you happy here?\u201d<\/p>\n

5. Have a plan B<\/strong><\/p>\n

I wrestled with putting this lesson learned here. It is advice to new recruits, but it seems very relevant to leadership. “If there is one piece of advice I hope you take away from this, it is that as a frontline infantry soldier, your career can be taken away from you in an instant. Whether on training or operations, ours is indeed the ultimate contact sport. You are always only seconds or centimetres from losing a leg, an eye, or worse. You must have a plan B and you should start mentally planning for it immediately. Always<\/strong> have a plan B.”<\/em> Contingency planning is as obvious as it is imperative, be it for the team when things go pear-shaped, individuals in preparing for a career, or for yourself as a leader if you go down. Uncertainty is a major generator of stress and pressure. Where uncertainty exists or threatens to emerge, create your own certainty by always having a Plan B.<\/p>\n

6. Leadership arrives<\/strong><\/p>\n

I believe the traditional view of a leader \u2014 born or made \u2014 is self-indulgent and redundant. I am unconvinced that leadership is an internal or innate ability anyway. Rather, like the weather I believe that leadership arrives. I find this conceptualisation inspires a divergent examination of the conventional alchemy of leadership theory. This idea shifts the emphasis away from the trappings of an individual-centred concept. It recognises the randomness and entropy inherent in leadership, that it often arrives without warning, across multiple locations and situations, all at once or bit-by-bit.<\/p>\n

Its amorphous form underlines why we will never seem to be completely prepared or competent. I think it explains why teaching leadership is so slippery and nuanced. Contemplating the idea that \u2018leadership arrives\u2019 promotes a different discussion about how we all share leadership equally. It entertains that the least qualified or least suitable person will variably hold the most power and responsibility when it counts. Perhaps most importantly, thinking of leadership as arriving inspires a deference and an emphasis on preparing everyone, as best we can, for the eventual, inevitable arrival of leadership.<\/p>\n

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Harry Moffitt’s Eleven Bats: A Story of Combat, Cricket and the SAS is available from Allen & Unwin.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n <\/div>\n \n \n \n <\/div>\n

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