Episode 43 - Leading in the shadows with Sir Alex Younger, Britain's Chief Spy

Welcome to the Centre for Army leadership podcast. Homie your host Lieutenant Colonel Dean Cannon heading up the British Army's Centre of Excellence for Leadership. I'm joined for this episode by the former Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service of Alex Younger. So Alex's right is to the top of MI6 where he spent six years as sea was proceeded by roles as the head of counter-terrorism and operational roles across the world. If I had to join in MI6, he was in the army as a private soldier and then as an officer in the Scotscars. So Alex thank you so much for coming to join us at the Centre for Army leadership. We've got a fascinating conversation ahead I'm sure. What we usually do though is start off by asking people about their own personal philosophy or approach to leadership and what they think it might be. Well that puts me on the spot. I'm not sure I have a philosophy available. From the reasons I'm here I should add is I really applaud the effort to take a more scientific and learning and a curious approach to leadership and to step back. I'm fatally not to do that. I've been a practitioner ever since I was at Santos but I think if you asked other people what my approach to leadership would be they would say it is fundamentally if you're to be positive in powering and if they're being negative they would say lazy. So I think economy of effort, a principle of war has been something that's very much informed my approach to leadership. Yeah and do you think that you're approach the one that you have now, when you had a various stages of your career was that forged all the way back from childhood, family, upbringing or is it something which is still developing? No absolutely and so intrinsic to my leadership is a capacity to trust people. So I got where I got to through presuming nobility of intent. Now on occasions you are disappointed but in the vast majority of cases the people you work for want to do the right thing. And if you assume that in the first instance obviously if evidence arises the contrary you should act. If you assume that in the first instance that's the key to enabling leadership because it enables you to delegate and in power and put the power next to the information and that obviates the effects of hierarchy and makes us all more effective. Yeah, I apologise for reminding you but it was over 40 years ago when your first military experience started to take place. You actually joined the army as a private soldier in the Green Howard's now in the Yorkshire regiment and then went on to more focused leadership training at Sandhurst after that. You've obviously done a huge amount since then. What do you remember being your main memories of officer training here or any of the leadership training you got prior to that and the second part of that question I guess is did you think that you were ready by the time you left Sandhurst went to the Scots guards and onto operations and leading soldiers? Well look it was a great course and I learnt some really important stuff about how to be an infantry officer in the British army. So what was really going on and to the leadership thing was a bit of a game if I'm to be honest and I don't know if this is still the situation but basically at the beginning of your time at Sandhurst stuff happens to you and if the course has been successful and you have developed as a leader by the end you are happening to stuff. So you start with no agency at all and as you are in a bewildering environment are you getting up really early there's weird stuff going on you have to touch your head every time you talk to someone important and gradually slowly you gain control of your environment and you gain a sense of your power and your agency and I think it is really effective in that respect and it gives you an extraordinary degree of confidence in the context also of understanding of the need to lead and a humility in the face of everybody else and the talents that they have. So I thought it equipped me well I mean the British army certainly the lie joined though was pretty tribal so it was very intimidating going to a proud infantry regiment like the Scots Guards you know everybody seems to know each other really well, super confident for sad. It is an intimidating environment and it takes you a while to get into the inside but once a day of course it feels like home. And how did you find the relationship with your NCOs particularly your tune sergeant I'd imagine first up that the delineation of responsibilities within the platoon how you saw happening around the Western Italian when that worked well or did the different characters. Well at Santos I had a remarkable colour sergeant and in a sense I was lucky because he was an extraordinary man I was unlucky because he was from the regiment that I aspired to join which meant in practice that I was picked on at the beginning and favoured at the end so it was a different experience and then and then in the regiment I mean trying to explain this to outsiders how it worked that you were in charge when when the person who reported to you directly was the one who actually knew what they were doing struck people as ecoteric but we'll come on to this deal I'm sure and actually by dint of Santos and the whole served the lead ethos understand leadership explicitly and cultural terms and so you may be inexperienced in the ways of the army but you've been selected to someone who is an effective steward and propagator of the right culture and even then I understood that as my job as an officer so whilst it was intimidating it is really strange to know the least and have the most authority it's bizarre stuff I think I was pretty clear about what I was for yeah will we visit all the stuff in between as we go through this chapter of course you ended up as head of MI6 the secret intelligence service do you think that you would have ever done that if you hadn't joined the army do you think you can draw a line between early leadership experiences and where you got to and I am fatigued you do not think I would have been chief of MI6 had I not been a platoon commander in in the army I want to be really clear that is absolutely not the only route to the top in SIS thorough myriad and diverse ways of achieving what I achieved I'm just talking about my case yeah but in my case I think an early experience of leadership specifically the need to take responsibility and have agency and the habituation to the idea that stuff happens when you want it to happen it's extraordinary and at a really young age 22 23 that actually sets you out from your peers and then there's a very old fashioned phrase as well you know if you want to lead you need to be able to lead yourself effectively I was a student when I came here feckless frankly and you know it sounds present but the whole business of getting up early was was somewhat alien and the implication of self-discipline was central but to be clear I put a different construct on what self-discipline consists of so it sounds like getting up early in the morning and ironing your shirt and it is I suppose those things but for me it's about it's about equality of alertness it's a sense of your environment and what is going on and an alertness to what you need to do next yeah and that and that is a thing you definitely get while you are here and that's a skill I had imagined that you relied on then in the early stages of your career in secret intelligence completely and in fact this game you play at Santa is trying to sort of get agency it's largely about being hyper alert to your surroundings and working out what's going to happen next because that's the key to economy of effort you want to be preparing for the next thing not the last thing and in an environment that's unfamiliar and SIS is nothing if it if not a place where you have consistent highly unfamiliar experiences it is all about your level of ambient alertness or a blue to understand what's going on around you that the human geography in particular and get ahead of it so if that's the sample of the really useful transferable skills there's anything that really struck you you did a couple of bits in between but from leaving the army as a junior leader to then moving across into SIS is there anything that you thought that strikes me as having to really needing me to adapt my approach yeah I mean it's okay as long as you understand that isn't the only version of leadership in town I mean I think it's really important but it's it's what we were broadly called sort of Nelsonian crisis top down hierarchical leadership where you've got the authority and the stuff you're trying to move around is stuff that you're in charge of and where there's a relatively clear objective now that is important but arguably in that environment it's more important to make a decision to make the right decision it's a confidence thing there's another form of leadership which essentially complex leadership which is about sort of program management essentially and working your way towards an outcome in a methodical planned way which I think comes to you later in the army and it's certainly a big part of civilian life and frankly it is not my strong point I will be honest with you the bit in the middle is where SIS officers live which is the ambiguous zone the wicked problem work to which there is no real solution to where most of the options you've got are mutually canceling and contradictory and yet you really have to pursue all of them and where you've you've got to rely on the essentially you know the right hemisphere of the brain as much as the as much as the left and where crucially you have no power so it's SIS officer you're behind the lines you are are in the most vulnerable position you can imagine. You don't have the opportunity to tell anybody what to do. You don't even have the opportunity to tell anyone who you are. It's completely different. But in so far as a career as an SIS officer, as fundamentally contingent on your understanding of human nature and your ability to build relationships, different environment, but I found my experience in a military also to be invaluable in that respect. And noting that you won't be able to share details of your operational experiences I should imagine that having a sense of perhaps being led when you might be isolated and feeling a bit vulnerable and under pressure. And then when you're at the other end of the organisation trying to lead people who are dispersed across the world and doing very difficult things, having to make decisions without perhaps direction all the time, that that's a unique set of leadership interactions up and down in itself. Yeah, but there was a really important commonality. So my understanding of what I was taught here was essentially what we've now called values driven leadership. So a set of principles designed to allow you to operate in highly stressful and ambiguous circumstances, albeit in a military context. But we spend a lot of time here and I'm sure it happens now talking about essentially the cultural responsibilities as an officer and the way in which you are responsible for inculcating that more broadly, recognising that ambiguous and isolated circumstances of decision making that spot's going to keep the show on the road, that's what keep people safe. When I became chief of SIS, my principal task to be clear was to transform the service so that technology was more advantage to us than to our opponents. But it was really important, an environment of dynamic change to remember what stays the same. And for me, it was the culture piece. And furthermore, we operate in an extraordinarily high risk environment, the things that trip you up on, not things that happened before, they're the new things, they're the unexpected things. So whilst we are democratically accountable, we obey the law, we're rigorously overseen. The reality is that the thing that's going to trip you up will be a thing for which there isn't a law or a rule. And at that point, you need to rely on individual people's capacity to make the right decision in the context of a common moral framework. And I find which we call values, which I find you just cannot talk about enough. Now the first place that I spoke about that a lot was here. And the army values are absolutely prevalent in the leadership doctrine which we ask people to lead now. Yes, I mean, I think the values are specific to the mission. So we had a big conversation about what they should be. I suppose the key issue for us specifically in SIS and MI6, even as opposed to our colleagues in the other parts of the UK intelligence communities, we don't have the power of the state behind us. And you know, you're on your own, effectively. And specifically, therefore, we're never going to succeed through might or muscle. We're going to succeed through guile and by outthinking our opponents. And so that was the key value that I sought to get belongs down to. Essentially, it was our creativity that was going to achieve our mission, not our masculinity. And I'd imagine that at the most senior level, you were probably perhaps quietly, perhaps publicly challenged on the morality and the ethics of a lot of the work that the agency was doing. Yes, so there was a sort of deliberate tension. I mean, you don't, as chief, speak publicly very often, but I mean, ironically, you're the only of our member of the service. So it does fall on you. There was a problem for me, which is that I come from a community that that has dominated the service, but where we are, as you've said, intent on broadening it out as quickly as possible. And I had to have a go at displaying what we are, which is human humans. And to talk about our human qualities and try and give a sense that the people who act in the public's name possess those qualities. So more than you would expect in the public pronouncements of a spy, I spoke about our values, but I was super keen. And I generally said this explicitly that our enemies should under no circumstances, mistake that for weakness on the contrary, I regard that as a source of strength. And I was very clear, and my successor is to that, you know, we will, we are mission focused people will be implacable in pursuit of those who mean our country harm, but we're not the same as our enemies. And on that point, about people who would wish to harm the nation, the UK, you were before being ahead of my six, you had director of counterterrorism for a number of years. What sort of particular pressures does that induce on you as a leader and those that you're leading where even the smallest mistake on an individual's part could have catastrophic consequences, but where all of the successes you're having, nobody ever find out. Well, that is by the way, the downer of the whole job we're only known through our failures. And I warn anyone contemplating the career that that is the downside, but there are many positives upon which I would want to dwell on. I would unhesterly recommend a career with us, but you're absolutely right. And terrorism was in some ways, panicious and difficult because it is so personal. It's not actually a strategic threat in the sense that Putin with his nuclear weapons is, but it's a very fundamental challenge to the fabric of our society. And it's incredibly close to home. And of course, the fascinating thing for us was that the battle was being fought on the streets of Miriam Shah or Kabul, but also in the UK. So it puts a huge premium on partnership and ensuring that ego does not get in the way of effective operational collaboration. And I have seen opportunities for ego's to kill people and that is not acceptable. But to your question, it feels incredibly personal. It's your home. They're trying to kill your friends and your family and you, and people worry about it. When I was appointed as chief, I was watching a rugby match and my son's school. And I was with the other parents and they said, congratulations. And I slightly laughed it off and said something self-deprecating or can't remember what it was. But they just looked at me and said, no, we need you to succeed. And you feel a huge way to personal expectation. There is slightly crazily zero appetite for risk. And that's actually not, it's not possible to generate that in a democracy. And there are huge sort of societal issues around how we don't become terrorists ourselves and make the problem worse, which is what terrorists are seeking, seeking to achieve. And then there's a huge premium on personal resilience because it can just really get to you this stuff. I mean, you will have enjoyed the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in 2012. It was a great spectacle. I have my head under the duvet. Nothing is quite the same in those circumstances. I was there actually. I found myself running the security angle from a match you've expected at the All England club for the period of the Olympics. I was at the end of your work without even knowing it. I'm sure. You spoke there about resilience and the pressures that you would have been under in various roles. How do you manage that yourself to get through the really high pressure periods, which might be quite acute, but then also the cumulative pressure over the number of years that you've been operating that world? Well, I'm asked this a lot and I talk to the young people and when I was a chief, I would always include when I spoke to them, my view, that is about diverse sources of self-esteem. And this is a complicated and difficult message because we're a vocation and we expect dedication and mission focus. And on some occasions, we expect people to go the extra mile. But if you invest your entire ego and self-esteem in your professional identity, you're making yourself brittle and you're diminishing your resilience. And as humans, what we do is only one part of us, that's even true of army offices. There is lots of other stuff going on. There are relationships and there are interests and there are curiosities and there is the whole gamut. And if you want to be resilient, you need your personality to cross all of those factors. And I have actively worked during my time, even at times of extraordinary stress to make sure that I'm doing all of those bits and that my family is there and that I'm talking to the dog and that I'm going sailing and I'm doing all of those things. And apart from the OCEO, you're a better decision maker and you're more independent. You are you, primarily, even as you strive to serve. And that makes you a more objective and independent decision maker. And given I imagine there is an endless amount of work and decisions that people would like you to make that trust in your senior team around you, delegation, mission command, telling people, this is my intent, go and get on with it. You don't need me to. Yeah, so this is how it works as a senior leader, right? So everybody's got a problem and there are two ways that they can solve the problem. They can solve the problem or they can give it to the boss, right? And at the beginning, you have a queue of people outside the door and this is particularly true on Friday afternoon, experience. They would put their problem on your desk. They'll go away with a spring in their step thinking you're a wonderful leader and you'll have a miserable weekend. Now, there are some things that only the chief can do, but they are extremely limited. my job in 99% of those interactions was to talk sympathetically, make it clear that I trusted the people and that I would back them whatever their decision was, but make sure they left my office with the problem. And indeed more than that, I think the key to surviving in a dynamic environment was to, as I think I've already said, to mitigate the effects of hierarchy as much as possible to delegate power as assertively as you possibly could. And then I reflect on my experience, which is that there are remarkably few things that only the top leader can do. I thought when I became the chief, there would be loads of flashing lights and levers to pull in the cockpit. Now, I'd been ahead of operations and broadly speaking, there were quite a lot of flashing lights and levers to pull. If you define a lever, though, as the thing that only you can do, when I became chief, there were only three levers. And they broadly speaking were our vision. So telling the story of what the service is going to be like in five years time, so that people understand and smell the prospect of enduring success. And I've prepared to put up with the disruption of change, our values, which is a common set of moral expectations of each other, which it's incumbent on you, personally, to live up to. And our people, and if you make decisions about people that contribute those other two things, your toast. So those three levers are vision and our values and our people. Now, actually, that means you can delegate quite a lot because most stuff sits underneath those strategic considerations. And there are one or two operational moments that really sticking in mind, they might have been in the army more likely, probably in your operational service as a spy that you think on reflection. That was a really good example of where I made a difference in leadership terms. I've had a really impact on either a situation or some individuals. And that was a really commendable effort on my part. And then perhaps the more interesting flip side where it might have gone a bit wrong and you learn from your failure. Well, plenty of the, plenty of the latter. And if I'm to be honest, whilst I was a, you know, I thought of myself as a leader in the army. When I joined SIS, I really didn't. It's a, at that stage, it's very different now. It was quite a lonely experience in a good way, by which I mean, you know, when I joined, I was working on the wars in Yugoslavia and all the horrors that today we were trying to find the people responsible for the terrible crimes that had taken place. And in a way that was wonderful. And I think still broadly is the case, you would just given the task and allow it effectively to design the correct operational approach and to get on with it. And of course, you had already been steeped in the whole business of human relationships. That's what we do. You know, you're trained for that for almost as long as you're trained at Santos. But it's very much this interaction. It's one to one. And you're operating in an environment we have no power other than basically guile. And you learn a huge amount in those circumstances. Now some stuff happened to me during that period, which was completely fundamental to my future leadership. But it was really around the content of that leadership, because we basically got disrupted by the invention of the internet. And there was a very bumpy period when we fundamentally realised that that change the rules completely. And there was a sort of shock of adaptation. And the thing about that, which is pretty useful, is it inculcated in me the need always to be learning, including from our enemies. And a fundamental sense that however successful we were, we have to change radically to stay ahead. Now that became my leadership. But I went on just being an operational officer. You know, I thought of myself as a spy. I thought of management as something else. Very, very different, therefore, to being an army officer. Probably the end of that period was I ended up in charge in Afghanistan, which did entail a big chunk of stuff. So I was already in the more traditional sense in charge. And then I went and sat down in my boss's office when I came home. And he said, you could do my job. And I know this sounds ridiculous to him, but that had simply not occurred to me. So a lesson I have when you're developing your talent is for God's sake tell them because it was a surprise to me. And then it becomes different. And I actually went to do a number of civil service leadership development courses and opportunities. And that was a massive wake up call because I was director of counterterrorism at the time. I thought of myself as really special doing a really cool job. And indeed, what we do was serious and important. But when I saw what other colleagues in government are up to, you know, stewating primary education, building the transport network, arranging the budget, it puts stuff in perspective, actually. And it's a very useful mind broadening experience. All things which are equally fundamental to the lives of people in the UK. It's exactly the point. And we're sort of special in some ways and incredibly proud of our culture and what we do. But it's quite important to remember that there are a lot of people doing important and ecstatic things. Yeah. You mentioned technology a couple of times and how the internet changed your role. And you write and talk often about technology, cybersecurity, et cetera at the moment. Do you think that technological advances as they continue will benefit leaders in their leadership? Or do you think it's a distraction or a hindrance to what remains essentially a human centred phenomenon? I really think that's a false choice. And people spend the whole time going, oh, when I say this is going to get out of business because it's all digital these days, I point out somewhat forcefully that cyber is the interaction of man and machine. It's a human technological phenomenon. Many of the weaknesses in cyberspace, a human derive many of the opportunities that technically derived. Success is absolutely working in the middle. So my principal experience of technology is that it imposes a huge premium on partnership that didn't exist before. So I talked about what a kind of oddly lonely life it was to be a young spy. That isn't the case anymore because now the business is far more complex to rely on a whole set of stuff. Because what does technology do? It just destroys boundaries. You know, we used to make a distinction between domestic and international or peace and war. Our law is written on that. NATO is Article 5 is founded on it. But all these concepts are fundamentally rendered moot by tech. Now, leadership to a large degree, if you're not thinking about it very hard relies on boundaries. I think there's, you know, in military terms, there's an area of operations. All of you might call it, you know, to keep things simple. But I think inconveniently tech crosses all those boundaries. And that hit us first in the covert world because it cuts the Russians. We saw that the hybrid war on the gray space were decisive in mediating a lot of our security stuff before you ever got to fighting a war. And if you sat around arguing about whether this was a home or foreign thing or a cyber or real thing or a war or peace thing, as does happen, by the way, the enemy going to win. So leadership suddenly becomes about giving power to other people. And that isn't what it traditionally is supposed to feel like. It's about putting a premium on people who demonstrate the capacity to subordinate their ego to the broader endeavor. It's about remaining incredibly proud of what you do and keeping a collective ethos whilst, as you've said, reminding everyone, they actually work for the king, not for the chief. And these are, to my mind, extraordinary different leadership responsibilities. But it's why I go about to values. They don't change that stuff. The reason I was so keen to transform us was so that we could stay the same ironically. So back to values, ethics and morality. Are we edge and towards the point we will ever get to the point where technology is taking over ethical, mobile decisions that humans might otherwise have made previously? Well, I mean, that is obviously the big question. Whereas human agency left for the increasing capacity of autonomous machines, specifically artificial intelligence to act in a human light way, you know, they're not humans. This is pattern recognition. They're mimicking humans. Good AI is AI that fundamentally compliments the human condition and helps us do the things we're better at and taking away the stuff. We're not bad AI. Essentially, substitutes for humans. And we should be very cautious about it. So there is definitely a risk, particularly when it comes to military technology, that the demands of autonomy ultimately undermine the framework in which we apply for. So we should already be alive to. But then there's actually some really good conversations going on, for instance, about keeping humans in the nuclear loop, which have which include the Chinese interestingly. So, you know, we, I think everybody understands the risks of going there. And my view on this is we've absolutely got agency in the space. The idea of robots taking over the world. There are some choices in there, which we can really make one way or the other. So perhaps that's a good link to talking about robots taking over the world. You would have had experiences all the time working with, talking to briefing very senior people, particularly across UK government, and you would have watched them having to make very difficult decisions based on the information that you're giving them or the recommendations, perhaps. Do you think that the pressures of leadership, not necessarily just political, but across other governments. departments, people are well prepared for and you think that leadership specifically, not just in terms of heading departments or parties, but the skill and the art of leadership is something which the public still really value and recognise. It's a very good question because I'm sure if you look to it technically the amount of money spent on management training specifically has probably gone up a lot and I by the way really welcome that I think that's great and I think if you're much more purposeful and thoughtful. If it's in the paradigm, the rather old fashion paradigm that I'm implying which actually sort of explicitly centers around the moral responsibility that you carry, that's a message you've got to project very carefully. I think it can sound like an attempt to entrench an existing approach and existing power structure and existing carda, which it shouldn't be. I think you know essentially the expectations of each other are universal but I think it's important for us to be able to speak about it in a way that people are going to be able to relate to but I don't resolve from it and I mean at the very heart of this when you look at the future of our country and our value system, the stuff that we do, there's a way that we do things that I think is good. So I'm not a relativist, you can't be a successful spy or I think a successful soldier without being a relativist. I think the fact that our government is accountable to its people is a good thing and you know say there's some quite hard stuff in the middle. That probably needs to stay there even as you talk about the learning and empowering you know fundamentally humble approach. I think there's some things that we just need to remember we've got and we need to hold on to and we should be proud of. I'm sure there would probably conflict perhaps either outwardly or just in your own mind when you disagreed with senior people around government and that was a particular leadership challenge for yourselves to go back to the building and brief your people and say actually they're not doing what we've recommended the change and do this instead. Yeah although it's a bit asymmetry with us. I mean the beauty of being spy is this isn't so much dealing with our own government where everything's written down and formal but of course often you're dealing with other countries and you're a way of having a conversation in a way that won't be reflected in the formal political discourse and you can be extraordinarily frank in those circumstances. Chief of MISIX you can be used to just say stuff to people in a way that you wouldn't normally get away with. And when it comes to government look I've talked talked about the value of creativity which we hold here. Another one is courage and that isn't just about being brave and difficult at circumstances but the most important element of courage in my business is speaking truth to power and in intelligence services useless. Unless it's prepared to do that and most intelligence failures derive from that so that is central to our interaction and you ask me whether I flunk things in my career. The ones I can remember is where I've fallen short there and the thing to do then is to bottle it and remember what it feels like because you know inside that you have not really thumped home the message that the politician does not want to hear because you want that person to like you. And the great thing about having a set of values that are very explicit is that it makes you much harder to flunk it and there'll be a few you're sitting across the Prime Minister in the National Security Table you every fiber in your being wants to say something that makes them feel happy and you can't do that. And it's a much easier if you've sort of had a conversation with everybody about the fact that that just makes an intelligence service useless if you do that and that you the space for you to fail that test is reduced. So probably less often now you'll find yourself in those very high-pressured difficult briefings and situations and you can perhaps take a slightly more blackest elevated view of the world. What do you think of the real challenges perhaps particularly in terms of leadership that more generally for the nation at the moment? Well I think this is a truism and it sounds platitudinous but but we are there's a shift going on and we're moving to a truly multi-polar world where the last 30 years are a particularly unralovable guide to the future. The last 30 years were essentially the uni polar moment based on the broad application of US power allowing the international rules-based system as we called it to prosper and increasingly that's going to be contested. Are we going to be in an environment where we're either in active competition with implacably opposed countries like Russia or reasonably and out for global south that is pretty well determined to plow its own course. In short it's a much more complicated and contested environment where what we think of as the default which is basically western values aren't going to apply automatically. And as the UK of course you know we've got an incredibly resilient and extraordinary capacity to adapt and our history shows you know small island in Northversteera we can achieve extraordinary things if we properly understand what's going on around us. And I think that's the challenge we face as a country because we're a status quo power. It's hard for us to accept that the rules have changed but they fundamentally have and it's that kind of smelling the coffee moment that I think needs that you know that's what will make us successful. We will be fine if we recognise the world we work in and live in is profoundly different. And MI6 will need great people to steer us through those difficult times as the army will as well and you've alluded to it very that it's much broader in its intake of individuals skills and diversity. What are the sort of top tips or steering points you would give to anyone who's listening to this and thinking oh maybe that's for me. Don't believe the fiction for us start so the fiction is designed to create an image of a place where nobody in their right mind would think that they would feel at home and the absolute opposite is true. In my experience in television communities full of members of the public doing extraordinary things and so anybody who's sitting at home not being able to imagine themselves in that world should think again. It is an extraordinary mission and secrecy makes for a different place but actually it's kind of the best of what's all around us condensed into that environment and speaking personally has been a hugely satisfying career. There's a shorter distance between what you do and stuff happening in the business of intelligence than almost anywhere else and if you're someone who is supposed to make a difference it's pretty extraordinary place to be. And you miss it? No. No I really don't. I really don't. I really loved it. I'm proud of what it did. I made mistakes. I did some things right. It was 30 years but it's also liberating to be out to be not subject to the discipline and burden of secrecy to be able to think about other stuff but also I enjoyed talking about the way the world is not based on any secrets that I know but based on my experience of the reality of how states and individuals behave in these sort of extreme extreme circumstances so I feel like I've got plenty to do. Yeah and what sort of things are you falling back into now that you wouldn't have had the time or capacity to do previously? That's a very good it's a very good question I mean my sort of obsession is around technology and that being more of advantage to kind of democracy than all toxicities. I'm quite heavily involved in tech companies and non-profits that sort of lobby to that end but I've also followed the advice that I gave our young officers and created space in my life and it is remarkable I suppose and this is a leadership lesson what original thinking can do and with hindsight when I was in office particularly senior office original thinking was hard because it just so busy and I've probably had more original thoughts since I left unfortunately than I managed while I was there because you've had the the time in space to actually think about it. So as we start to just draw to a conclusion a few potentially quick five questions that you can answer them as quickly as long as you like who's the the best leader that you've actually worked with or alongside? Well I think I'm a knight what I was thinking about is I'm a nightmare employee so basically the best leader's I ever worked for with people who who let me do what I wanted to do and back me up when I went wrong. Okay and is there somebody you would read about or a character from history that you would identify as a leader that you respected? No absolutely not and that's another reason why I commend what's going on here. I think I've already explained I kind of came into leadership from the bottom up and I didn't have the chance to take a kind of a holistic view and to learn and when I when I joined the Scots Guards we had a rather extraordinary slightly terrifying commanding officer who fought in the Fortlands called John Kisley and he J. U. for all a copy of a defeat into victory by Bill Slim which I was thinking of claiming has been my principal guy but I confess I never actually got to the end of it but I can see where he's coming from I'm also. Okay and media wise Now do you draw on more traditional or I suspect perhaps more? modern sources for interest, personal development. No, I mean, I, again, I now love having not really taken much interest in it, delving into the history of the sort of stuff that I was involved in. You know, we were kind of making the history, yeah, and fascinating to sort of turn it around. I, um, I keep myself current now with just following a whole set of people, yeah, and these silly chronic conversations you can get engaged in now are absolutely fascinating. And, um, you can sort of feed your curiosity in this environment in a way that's extraordinary. And I love doing that and it drives my wife mad because she thinks I'm not doing anything. Yeah. But I promise her I am. Final question then looking back. What's the one bit of advice you would give to a young Alex as he set off on his leadership journey? Now, it's just a problem. So I did do a bit of leadership education and I was taught the importance of learning and humility and, um, empathy and authenticity. And those are all really important things. But to slightly go against that, the advice that we give the young Alex is, if you're right, if you think you're right, you probably are. And there's a, there's a horrible weakness, particularly in Britain with our hierarchies. That completes seniority with knowledge. And actually, most of my experience, people really understand what's happening, other people with the least power, the most tuning in. So if you're at that level, you're the person who knows what's happening, you're probably right. So please say so. So Alex, it's been a fascinating conversation, which we could extend for hours and hours, but I know that the listeners will really appreciate it. Thanks very much for coming in and spending time. Well, thank you for inviting me. So Alex is captivating and varied career experiences, give him an almost unique insight into leadership across the vast spectrum of roles and responsibilities. There was a clear theme throughout though, which is his advocacy for values-driven leadership as the foundation for success, particularly in ambiguous situations. And he describes values as a common set of moral expectations. He emphasized that trust between leaders and their teams is fundamental to collective success. And that he enables the necessary delegation of power to those who know a situation best and who are therefore best placed to act on it. So I'll explain about having a bias for action, whereby leaders must generate and use their agency to make things happen. And that self-lead-ship is the foundation on which to be able to do so. He told us that an alertness to the human geography of situations that surround leaders is the best way to identify and act on the most appropriate course of action, especially when there is rarely an obvious right to them. Finally, Alex spoke about the importance of leaders maintaining diverse sources of self-esteem in order to forge their personal resilience. And of generating space for original thinking in their organisations in order to keep them better than this. If you've enjoyed this episode of the podcast, then please share it with colleagues and friends. And add your thoughts to the bait on social media. From worrying information on British Army leadership, or to getting in touch with the team, search for the Centre for Army Leadership websites or find us on all your main social media platforms.