The head of the Army has explained his vision for a modern and inclusive Army that takes a no-tolerance approach to bullying.
Founded on the Army's core values and standards the new leadership code, launched on Thursday, draws together and formalises elements of good leadership that have been practised for centuries. Key to the new code is the Army’s ability to tackle unreasonable behaviour, including bullying, harassment and discrimination.
In addressing the Army’s leaders, General Sir Nicholas Carter, Chief of General Staff (CGS) said:
The operating context is very different to the one perhaps we grew up in 25 to 30 years ago. Therefore we feel it is important to lay out what it is we want people to do by way of leadership to help them have the tools that they need.
What we don’t want to see are the values and standards we espouse not being adhered to both in peace time and in war time. And, it’s really important that we live by those values and standards, because they are the basis on which teamwork is built.
Today is essentially about improvement, because we’re not bad at leadership. We just simply want to get better at leadership by recognising the context in which we are going to have to lead in the future and the nature of those that we are going to have to lead.
I wouldn’t say the culture is wrong at the moment particularly. What I would say is it’s a culture that needs to evolve. We’ve got here today every Commanding Officer in the British Army and every Regimental Sergeant Major, and their chain of command above.
The way the Army implements change is it uses the chain of command, particularly of Commanding Officer and unit level, as the mechanism for doing this, and by gathering all these COs and RSMs together today, it’s my expectation that they will understand the importance of the Army as an institution, rise to the challenge and they will go away and they will lead their people as a consequence of this.
Champion of the Army Leadership Code, Army Sergeant Major WO1 Glenn Haughton, said:
CGS wants the army to become a modern employer. The world, society and our country is ever changing and the British Army needs to keep up with the changes. There has been in the past some unacceptable behaviour within the British Army, which we need to stamp out and the Army Leadership Code is a method for us to change our culture over time to prevent these unacceptable behaviours.
There’s already been a series of symposiums to regimental sergeant majors and commanding officers throughout the year letting them know what the code is so they can brief units, so everyone in the army already should be aware of what the code is. But from today, this is when the chain of command of the Army can go out and launch the code within their units.
It’s going to work under guidance of commanding officers, hence why they are here today, supported by regimental sergeant majors who will be the champions within their own units. And how they do it within their unit is up to them, because we are so diverse in the army from one corps to another, that no one knows their regiment or unit better than the commanding officer or regimental sergeant major. So it’s down to them how they implement it. We just give them the methods and the tools to do so.
