I went to the University Job Center and it spat out three options for my future librarian, prison warden, and army officer training. I was living a life where it was fairly week to week and definitely type one fun. I liked the idea of having a team to work with, having a team that I could look after, who I could develop and who I could enable, which is definitely the role of an officer. I identify 12 different reasons why you leave home, and service is one of them. Because you want to go and do something good for somebody other than you. One of the things that's very different about the Army Reserve, you can't really use coercion or discipline. If you discipline someone and they just don't turn up next week, what are you gonna do? Why would you want to fight for this government?
Guys, welcome back to the podcast. Today my guest has a lot of experience in the Army Reserve. So I'm speaking with Major Ash Bardwaj, who is not just a major in the Army Reserves, but a keynote speaker, an author, and travel expert. So it's going to be super interesting to understand how he basically navigates two career paths. So if you are there considering the Army Reserve in the Army Reserve and thinking how do I navigate a career, this is going to be super relevant for you. As well as anyone else that's going regulars and you just want to understand a little bit more about what the reserves do and some of the challenges, then this is going to be super specific to that as well. Ash, thanks so much for coming in and giving up your time. I really appreciate it. How are you doing? Yeah, very good. Thanks, Anne. Lovely to be here. Thank you for having me. No, no, no worries. Do you just want to add on a little bit to that intro, a bit about who you are, what you do?
SPEAKER_00So, as you mentioned, I do journalism and really it's been focused on travel. That's what I started off doing. So, travel journalism usually is going places and writing about it to inspire and inform people about what's new, what's out there, maybe help them travel a bit differently. I then wrote a book about that called Why We Travel, which puts all the ideas together. But I do defence journalism as well. And actually, so my experience in the Army Reserve has helped me better understand that space. And the goal there is really to translate it for the general public so they can understand what's going on. I did an academic background in strategic communications, which is all about how do you change beliefs and behaviours through stories. And then in the Army Reserve, I originally started as a trooper in the honourable artillery company. I then commissioned, went, well, went to Sandhurst, commissioned, and then joined the Rifles, Seven Rifles, Seventh Battalion, the Rifles. And since then I have done external postings in the joint environment, information activities and operations, and army media communications, which is media operations. So that's kind of been what my career has been like in the army and also outside of it.
Yeah, okay. So a lot to get into.
SPEAKER_02And we'll we always start at the start, but I just want to go on the the book a minute because I sort of listened back on on Spotify uh after recommendations, which is good stuff. But actually, what I've noticed is that it's not just travel advice. This is it's way deeper than that. Like why we travel when I initially heard the title, I thought it's going to be travel advice, places to go and whatnot, but it's way deeper and it's all about your own experience getting into travel, but but not even just because like there's there's things and nice beaches, it's it's way more than that. How did you come up with the idea to put it together?
SPEAKER_00There's lots of travel books out there that are first-person narratives that is somebody going somewhere and telling the story of what they experience, or there's travel advice books, how to travel better. And what I realized as a travel journalist, my mates had always asked me where should I go on holiday? And I might say go hiking up Machu Picchu, or that's a fairly common one, but I might say go to Ukraine and visit Western Ukraine. Probably not a great holiday destination at the moment, but it's a great country to visit. And what I realize is different motivations matter at different times for different people, and therefore the things you should be doing on holiday are downstream of that. Whereas we tend to think of it the other way. What country do I want to go to? What things do I want to do rather than self-reflecting? And so the way I wrote it was thinking about how my experiences had changed over life and the different ways that I travelled, and the military was a way that I had travelled, serving abroad, and then that inspired this six-month journey I did from the top of Norway to Russian occupied Crimea in 2018 to get an understanding of the propaganda and cultural activities Russia was doing to try and undermine unity in the countries along its border, countries it used to occupy. Uh, of course, Ukraine being the one that we know of best, but there's stuff going on everywhere else. And so it was about the things that I went through along the way, how I changed as a person, and how stories have really big impact on who you are, as do your experiences.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and I think that was the thing that that came through in the book was actually your military experiences. Like it's a huge theme throughout your life, which I didn't realise actually, and and it resonated so much with me because it's what I go off about all the time online now, is my military experience, and definitely that option to travel a lot with the military, even though it's a different kind of form, but actually such a rewarding experience because you go and see new cultures and whatnot. Um, some of the highlights for me is going to places which I had never intended to go, and you leave going, oh my god, that was actually like not just for the work we were doing, but a really refreshing experience
culturally.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, the three really stand out for me in at the intersection of travel and the military. One was going to Myanmar, Burma, and finding out what the Chindits, which was basically one of the first special operations forces, I guess you could call them, did in northern Burma to slow down the Japanese advance onto British India. And they basically parachuted or flew in behind enemy lines and just disrupted the Japanese logistics route. That was an amazing opportunity to go to Myanmar. I'm a challenging place to go to now because of conflict that's going on there. But that was a unique experience. Going to Kenya on light infantry training, which I'm sure you've you've done, and doing a night patrol and then realizing we're in the middle of a herd of elephants or day patrol and looking out and seeing zebras and giraffe, and with this astounding landscape all around you. And also going to Estonia, which was the place that really changed my travel experience and what I ended up doing for a career for the next few years, eventually led to me doing a master's because I was so fascinated by that legacy of Russian occupation and their real sense in Estonia of threat from Russia. So there's this interesting mix of culture, military, defence, security, all these kinds of questions. And then seeing how that plays out. And the army's given me some amazing opportunities like that that have changed not just the course of my military life and given me amazing experiences, but change what I've then done outside of my definitely.
SPEAKER_02Kenya's the classic, isn't it? That's uh that was my first trip to Africa. I'd just become a platoon commander, just finished Brecon and sort of platoon commander's battle course. And I took my platoon out there, and we were doing a force protection task. So we didn't get to go through a scary storm as it was then, that that sort of famous exercise. Can't remember what it's called now. Um, but we did the force protection thing, and we got to go to Archer's post quite a lot and set up ranges and whatnot, which is so hot, right? Is it really intense heat? But I remember driving up there to go and set up this range, and we we drove past some of the wildlife, and I was like, oh, there's there's no protection here, like we're just in it. Yeah, and then the second thing was like you saw like genuine mass eye tribe warriors, and I was like, oh wow, they've got the spear and everything. And then the second thing, they're like, take out an iPhone and record you, and it's like, what is going on? This is crazy. But um, yeah, really cool experience where yeah, you're you're immersed in it whether you like it or not. And actually, yeah, I I thought it was fascinating.
SPEAKER_00It's a very unique form of travel. So the the way I ended up thinking about it was I I identify 12 different reasons why you leave home to go and do stuff, not just leaving home when you grow up, but leaving home to go travelling. Uh, and service is one of them because you want to go and do something good for somebody other than you, and ultimately, it's not the reason everyone serves all the time in the military, but that idea of having a high purpose is quite powerful, and it's you know one of the main reasons I continue working with the army reserve.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, I think the opportunities are great, which I'm sure we'll get into.
But let's start with how did the army come about? Why did service come about, and what was your route into the army?
SPEAKER_00So there were it happened twice, once didn't happen, one did. And I was at uni, I wasn't I've never really been a particularly decisive person or been very sure about what I wanted. I mean, I started off doing a degree in chemistry and molecular physics and then changed to philosophy. It's quite a difference. And then in my I think it was towards the end of my second year, as people were starting to apply for graduate training programs, lots of my peers knew exactly what they wanted to do. I went to the university job centre and found one of those things where you you know you type in what's your favourite colour, how do you like your steak cooked, you know, all these things, psycho, I don't know, psychometric test type thing. Uh, and it spat out three options for my feature librarian, niche, prison warden, uh, and army officer brackets training, sponsored by the home office. This program was. I wonder the two of those seem relatively similar. I wonder where the librarian creeps in. Yeah, I mean I like reading maybe. Um and of those three, the one that I was like, oh, that sounds quite interesting is army officer training. I didn't really know what that meant at the time. I I think what it meant was educational training service, ETS, um, being a teacher within the army. Uh but then I went and spoke to the I don't know if they even have these people anymore, but it was the army representative at the university who's a lieutenant colonel. I think he might have been somewhere in the light division, which now is the rifles. So RG, Royal, Gloucester Berkshire and Wiltshire, Devon Endorsets, the Light Infantry and Royal Green Jackets, as it was then. And uh, you know, it's like, oh you know, you play rugger, you're chap, yeah. I think you should join the infantry. Like he was in the infantry, obvious selection. And so I sort of started the process. I lived with a couple of guys who were going to the army. So, how old were you at this point, do you reckon? 21. 2021. I lived with a couple of guys who were joining the army, but they'd been to like Pangbourne or Wellington military schools. I'd gone to state school. I did know a lot of kids in my school who did go and join the army as soldiers, and a lot of them who were the sons of soldiers. Because I grew up in Windsor, and back then you had uh the guards and the light cavalry, not the light cavalry, the household cavalry, were based there. So a lot of the people who lived there permanently were NCO's kids and non-commissioned officers' kids. And so I sort of had a familiarity with the army, and I knew people who'd done it, and then these guys that I lived with were going in as officers. Went and did what was then called the regular commission board, really enjoyed it, went to go and view a couple of different units, uh, the Royal Artillery. I think I did I go and view the Royal Tank Regiment and also Third 2 LI, 2nd Battalion of Light Infantry, as it was then, back up in Edinburgh, which then became 3rd Battalion, the Rifles, and they were going to sponsor me through Sandhurst because you needed a sponsorship back then in 2005. Um, I'd had a like a back issue from playing prop in rugby, so that delayed my entry process. And I wanted to go to Australia and New Zealand to play rugby in New Zealand and be a cowboy in Australia, those are two things I wanted to do. Uh fell off a horse and damaged my hand horse riding, so I just just played rugby, which was far safer, and um became a ski instructor. And so by the time all of that medical stuff had come through, I actually moved back to Europe and I was working as a ski instructor in Switzerland and starting to do my training in journalism. And I thought going off to Sandhurst and going to join the army at that point, I was just I wasn't quite committed enough, was probably wasn't mature enough, and I was just enjoying what I was doing and pursuing that career in journalism at that point. So that was the first thing, and so I just kind of let that expire. Then a mate of mine who had been in the regular army uh left the regular army and I was doing some travel stuff with him, a guy called Levison Wood. He did a film called Walking the Nile, and he told me about the media operations group, which is a part of the army that effectively does content creation that is then given to broadcasters for you see a lot of the footage that you see from Afghanistan was filmed by army camera men and women led by an army officer doing all the in the production industry is called production on the ground.
SPEAKER_02Oh, really? Yeah, I didn't know that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02That's fascinating.
SPEAKER_00Um obviously you had TV crews like the BBC and Sky there as well. Yeah, but a lot of the footage came back was actually filmed by um army, some RF as well. Um so I was like, well, that sounds like an interesting thing that I could be doing. And I realised I could do it as a reserve route, so I could still continue with my journalism in the in my day job. So um that was what inspired me to go ahead and do it. I joined the Honourable Artillery Company. And the reason why I went in as a trooper first is I wanted to check that I could tolerate the commitment and tolerate the external discipline uh before I made the full commitment of going to Sandhurst and then getting the job as an officer. And so I had to turn up every Tuesday evening and every other weekend, and every time I hated it because I hated it when I was arriving because it was a summer and it was in Old Street, which is a very lively part of London, certainly was in 2013, and I'd see all these people having fun drinking beer in the sunshine, and I was just gonna go and dig a hole for a weekend. Uh, and then every Sunday I had the greatest sense of satisfaction that I had. It was awesome as we slowly bonded as a group, still mates with some of those guys now who've come to my wedding, I've been to their weddings, and it was a really rewarding experience just to get better at something, whether that was ironing my shirt or running or tabbing with some people that I developed alongside, and through that I kind of developed the sense of commitment. I then wanted to go in as an officer to go and do this media operations job. Um, the honourable artillery company you have to go through like an internal selection process first. So I just went and did direct entry. Hopefully that doesn't upset anyone in the honourable artillery company. I think it annoyed a few of them at the time, and then I joined, went through Sandhurst, had to redo a AOS B as it was then, the Army Officer Selection Board did that, went to Sandhurst, did the eight-week course, and then I I was still figuring out what unit I wanted to join in the run-up, and then af afterwards, and it came down to either a ground based air defence unit with the Royal Artillery or the Rifles. And I ended up joining the rifles, partly because all the way back in 2005 it was it was the antecedent unit. Um but also if I was going to go and do media operation stuff anywhere, I thought the root capability and skill that would be most useful would be infanteering because it's the basic it's the basics of being in the army and understanding artillery or engineering or logistics probably wouldn't enable me to do stuff better when I was out filming. So I joined the uh the rifles and then went on to Brecon.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, amazing. Which I you referenced in the book as well, which we'll come on to. But something that you mentioned there is like you know, going to Old Street, uh, which I know well because I used to work just behind there, and uh yeah, it's pretty lively most evenings, um, especially for sort of midweek. And there's that which you say in the book about type one and type two fun, and I imagine that's a perfect example. You've got everyone exhibiting great type one fun, and then you're sort of dreading going there, spending a weekend, but actually, or or an evening, and actually by the end of it, you've go, okay, you look back, and it's more of a proud achievement rather than the type one fun, which I would say is maybe more transactional at the at that point than transformational. I think it's probably a a way to sum it up. So that was your way into um so AOS B past, no issues there. Any sort of key insights from from taking you back going through that
process?
SPEAKER_00There's this phrase that you hear people talk about a lot when they've left the military, when they're speaking to others about how they can apply some of those concepts to civilian life. That's controlling the controllables. There's a few things I could do. I could get fit enough so that the fitness wouldn't be an issue. I could do my maths well enough so that I could do the speed time distance thing. I was fairly used to standing up and talking in front of people. I'd worked as a school teacher and I was doing journalism, so that bit I was I I felt comfortable with. What I really lacked was military knowledge. I, as w although I knew some kids at school whose dads and mums had been in the military and who were joining themselves, I my grandfather had been in the RAF in World War II, but I was not from a military family at all. And I just didn't really know anyone who's in the army until later when I was then going in as a reservist, and I had a few mates who I'd been at university with who'd served a career in the regular army. So then I could ask them things and gain some insights. But I know I don't think that's what they're selecting for at AOSB. You need to have some basics, but they're selecting your potential, and so it's knowing what I could do, maths uh running, and then the rest of it just making sure that I felt confident enough, if I didn't know anything, to be able to say, I'm sorry I don't know the answer to that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and well, it's quite interesting. Back in the day, AOSB used to put out, and I know definitely when I was going through of that you can, you know, do your maths, get fit. Other than that, don't prepare, just come and give it a go. Which in hindsight is very bad advice. Um, and actually now they don't give that advice, there's preparation you can do. Now, you don't always have to work with people for sure, but there's a lot of free stuff you can do, you know, in terms of uh gapping that uh or bridging that gap of military knowledge. Fantastic website called the British Army website where where you can go and research it. There's the old Santhurst documentary to find out what's coming up. There's all the our war documentaries, which is basically what recruited me back in the day, seeing all of that stuff. And okay, you know, I can't say that I watched a BBC 3 Our War documentary and suddenly thought I know how to do platoon attacks, but it did suddenly show you what the commanders were thinking about at section level, at platoon level, at company level, which I found gripping. And obviously, when you watch that and you go, Oh, I want to be a part of it, I think the infantry is right for me. Like it's it's really sort of getting my blood going.
SPEAKER_00And actually, you reminded me then I kind of forgotten there's a whole load of stuff that I did do in the run up to doing the regular commission board, which later became the uh army officer selection board. You know, I read loads of books. I read Dusty Warriors, which was uh P the PWRR uh book, which was about Iraq. And yeah, I I exactly there's lots of great films, there's lots of good books. Obviously, there's now podcasts and stuff as well that didn't exist back then. YouTube is much more prominent. And yeah, so there's definitely a sense it's easier to get a sense of what the military is, yeah.
SPEAKER_02I think. And I and I think just on your just to finish that sort of point there, is preparing for AOS B isn't just preparing for those AOSB assessments. It's actually what they want is do you know what you're gonna do at Sandhurst? Do you know what your young officer career looks like? Yeah, because I think some of the risk, and you I've spoken with sort of people that have done SAS selection and been successful and then went back to DS on it. And some of the risk is that you get people that would just want to do the training bit. And it's like, well, no, no, no, once you pass this bit, you're in. So what's what's after? What do you know about it and why do you want to join? Is it just because you want to do special forces selection, is it just because you want to go to Sandhur? But actually, we're not we're not recruiting you just for that, we're recruiting you to go and then do the job.
SPEAKER_00So I think you've hit on something really important, which is you know, once you get into the army and you start to do all the um learning how to do staff work, estimates and orders, and those sorts of things. There's this point about the commander's intent, which really is the the why, the purpose behind you doing anything. Weirdly, this is one of the things that I write about in the book, which is understanding why you're doing anything and your your root purpose. And you know, when I look back on why I joined in the first place, there are a couple of different bits of purpose for me in there. There's the higher purpose of doing something more than just being quite selfish. And you know, when I went into going into uh the reserve when I was 29, 28, 29 when I eventually did that, you know, I was living a life where it was fairly week to week and definitely type one fun and just doing quite self-centered things. I liked the idea that I missed from other parts of my career before then, of having a team to work with, having a team that I could look after, who I could develop, and who I could enable, which is definitely really the role of an officer. Um, but I also like the idea of selfless commitment, doing doing something where you are giving up some of your freedoms for doing something that has a higher purpose as well, giving myself constraints and commitment and accepting those constraints on what you can do has helped me in every other part of my life. Like the fitness, the self-discipline, the external discipline, which becomes self-discipline, and giving up going out on Thursday, Friday, Saturday nights, which is what life was like when I was living in East London. Sounds great fun. I mean, it was great fun. But I do, I do, you know, I was it was I had I had a very fun time at that. And I you know, there's lots of fun that still continues. It's not like all of the fun ends when you join the army with the army reserve. But I do remember like my housemates, I would they'd been out raving all weekend and I'd come home on a on a Sunday and they'd still be doing the things that would continue their fun, right? And they hadn't slept all weekend, and I had uh gone and you know, obviously not particularly challenging. I'd walked up a hill and come back down again and dug a hole. This was you know basic, basic infantry training. But I was like, oh, I feel like I've done more with my weekend than I could have done.
SPEAKER_02It's the equivalent of like going for a run club and seeing people still like leaving, leaving, leaving the things and being like, God, how good am I? You know, I didn't go out last night, these people are gonna have a sht Saturday. I've just smashed a 5k. Like it, but I I totally get it. And just to just to rewind slightly, because I think purpose is a really big one. I spend a lot of my time speaking with people that want to join. I have a really sort of I was chatting with an MP yesterday um about military recruitment, and uh one of the things we spoke about was national resilience.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Um and this will make sense in a moment, I'll sort of come back around. But uh he asked me and I said, Do you know what? I'm probably not a good person to ask because the people that I basically in terms of do people want to serve? And I was like, Because the people that I speak with all want to serve in some capacity. They're all you know putting applications in, they're trying to develop themselves as best as they can. That's why they reach out to me and all that type of stuff. And obviously, the content we put out gravitates towards those that want to join. So I don't think I'm great at speaking about it. But for those that do want to join, I do know what resonates. And it's that sense of purpose. And one of that thing is um that I see in comments on social media sometimes is why would you want to fight for this government? You know, UK's gone to shit or whatever. And just on that point, I'm like, I don't know a single person that joined because they like that government. I think we all like the idea of government and like that's worth fighting for, but I'm not fighting for the Labour Party or the Conservative. But like that's not why you join and do it. And I think it's just something I don't really talk about much, but actually it kind of loops back into that purpose of, you know, you're not, yes, you're serving the government, but you're not necessarily that's not your motivating factor to join.
SPEAKER_00Well, one of the things that I've I found really beneficial as a travel journalist is I've visited lots of places that don't have a lot of the freedoms and privileges that we have here. And I do think that's worth worth defending. And one of the things about travelling to Estonia with the Army Reserve to place like Finland, to place like Norway, is uh and to Ukraine, which I visited in 2018. You know, they really have a sense of what they could lose and therefore why it's important to defend it, because they've they have lost it in the past. Yeah, and that's it's funny because that I feel that actually that was I wanted something beyond myself, but I feel that sense of what I was just talking about about you know service to the nation kind of came later. Yeah, me too. And it was initially the good thing about the reserve is you could you you only have to start off by doing a Tuesday night and every other weekend or every fourth weekend, right? So you're not committing entirely all in one go. And I've I remember thinking, I don't know if I could bother to go through this Tuesday night, I'll just quit, I'll go raving or whatever instead. Can have those freedoms back. But each time I became more committed, and I think I developed that self-discipline and that commitment through each of those experiences as I went through them.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and I think I think service you learn, and they're really good at teaching it. You know, um I'm from Plymouth, which is you know, obviously a very raw marine territory and sort of navy, but uh, there's the 2-9 commando, which is the Royal Artillery Commando unit. So um basically it's a big military town, and uh I had a grandfather that served and stuff, so we would always on Remembrance Day, you know, Remembrance Sunday, go up and see the parade and whatnot. But it wasn't until that first one when I was at Sandhurst where it really hit me of what it's all about, and not that you have to be in the army to understand what remembrance is, but it just had a profound effect on me. I remember our colour sergeant literally saying, or actually it wasn't our one, but one of the company ones, just going, Um, right, we'll do remembrance, and then I'm off, you know, don't contaminator because I'm off to a specific thing where I'm gonna go respect my friends. And I was just like, wow, it just hit me like a ton of bricks to be like, oh, this is so real for some people, so so close. Um, and I think that was one of the bits where you like you learn that sense of service, and it's not through just that, through you know, your own deployments and experiences, but yeah, definitely it's I've never really thought about it like that, but it's it's something you learn, and maybe that sense of service isn't what everyone joins for, but after a while you start to understand what that means, and it's it's the missed funerals, the missed weddings, and you start to really add up and go, Oh yeah, I haven't been to war per se, but I've given up a lot.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and I think it's important to remember because well, I one of the things I you know I joined in 2013 and then went through Sanders in 2014. So the large part of uh what Herrox had finished by then, and I wasn't in a position to go on Toral or any of those things by the time I finished Brecon, and there's plenty of people in the regular arm to do that instead. So I've never served on operations, I have done exercises that are a subset of an operation. So OpkeBrit is the British deployment to Estonia, our exercise was out there, but I think it's important to remember that even if you're not serving in operations, you're still serving and you're still doing something good. And you know, defence journalism is part of what I do now, and deterrence is vital, yeah, deterring Russia from doing more to NATO. And the simple fact that the army exists and there are trained men and women in the army, and that the army deploys to Estonia, that is having an effect because the best military or the best uh defence you can have is one that you don't end up having to use because you've deterred the adversary to such an extent that they don't fight. So even if you don't go on operations or fight in a war, you're still doing good service for your nation. And I think I think it also took me a while to overcome that sense of you know when you go through sound hits or breck and you speak to people who have lost friends and people who have fought in those sorts of operations. There's a little part of you that goes, Oh, you know, I'd like to do something like that. Everyone I know who's done that, one of the things they say to me is always be careful what you wish for. And I I think it took me a while to overcome that imposter syndrome to be like, actually, I'm I'm still doing something useful, even though I'm not serving full time and I'm not serving on operations. Yeah, totally.
SPEAKER_02I I think um it was actually after I left that I became more comfortable with it. And in to be honest, not until quite recently. Um, Johnny Mercer came on the on the podcast um last year. Yeah, really, really good bloke. He travelled up from Cornwall, which I thought was a testament to the type of character he is, um, and like asked for nothing in return, like just a really, really good guy. Um, not that people ask for stuff in return, but it's a trip, it's my my point. Um came up, we had a really good conversation. Uh he said beforehand, he was like, nothing's off limits, ask him anything you want. And I thought, fair play. Um, and we we had a really good conversation, and he halfway through the podcast, and I kept it in because I was like, that's not getting edited out, that's really important. He sort of gripped me up because I said something about optoril uh not being like an op Heric. And for those that don't know what that is, they're both operations in Afghanistan, they're just very different types of operations. Herik is the the classic, we are war fighting, essentially, if if you want to use that phrase, and Torrel, which I was on, uh, is the word for the operation, but that's very much like a protection type thing. So I was there escorting uh diplomats and high-ranking generals around a zone in in Kabul. Uh we weren't actively fighting. We would if we were no had to, but we weren't looking for it. We were just protecting. Whereas the Herrick days, that was we're planning attacks and all that good stuff to defeat the Taliban. So that's the difference. And I sort of I said, you know, it's not Herak or anything like that. And he gripped me up. He basically was like, in a very polite way, he was like, Yeah, let me just touch on that. Like, don't ever sort of put yourself down and don't think that because your tour wasn't as hard as this one or whatever, you're still giving up six months of your life. You're still willing, you can't choose the tours that you go on because it's all time bound. And like you just get sent when you get sent. And if you get sent to Northern Ireland when it's all kicking off, to Herrick when it's all kicking off, to rap whatever, that's just what it is. And if it's not kicking off, it's not, but you're still giving up that time. And I think it's something I've become a lot more relaxed with um as I've as I've sort of progressed in life to still look back and go, actually, yeah, there's loads of stresses that come with being deployed. And okay, you know, we sort of got mortared in whatever, not directly, but anyway. Um, my point being there's still a load of stresses and there is still a risk to life, and you've still got to manage that risk, especially as a commander. And I think there's there's so many stuff that at the time I felt like I couldn't dwell on that experience because the people I would speak about it with had all done the the hard bits, yeah. But actually, the irony is they all get it because they've done both, and they're like, This is still stressful. So, yeah, it's just a it's a it's an interesting way to sort of reframe your brain, and that's my advice to anyone going through is like don't ever belittle what you've done. I'm also very conscious of not bigging it up, which is why I always make sure it's uh it's not a war fighting tour, it's a different tour. But that's not an embarrassed thing, that's just to put the context in the person's brain that I wasn't out there, you know, running around in in ditches and trying to kill people. It was it was very different to that. Um awesome.
Well, look, I I wanted to sort of bounce around with some of these questions here, but um, I know a lot of people that are joining the reserves would like to know more about how it all works, and I think it's particularly challenging for people in the reserves because I think you've got to work hard to navigate a career. I don't think it's as easy as if you're in the regulars, where it's just kind of you do this job for two years, you then do that one, then you might promote. So I guess my question to you Ash is how does it work?
SPEAKER_00I can only really give you my experience and the insights that I've gone through that. So I went to Sandhurst, where you get trained to be a commander initially of a triple platoon. I then went to Brecon, which is the infantry battle school, where I learned how to be a commander of an infantry platoon. I the way that was done then is I spent two weeks on the regular platoon commander's battle course, which was great because I've got to spend two weeks amongst the people who had done it a full sound test and who were doing this full time, which is both chastening but also heartening. It's chasing largely because they were so competent at the basics because they'd practised them all so much, uh, and were fit much much fitter than I was, uh, particularly combat fitness, which is slightly different to other things. Um, but also just realising oh, I'm I'm not that far behind on everything as I thought I would be, having done a fifth of the training time. And that's kind of just the pipeline that you go through, and then you go into regimental duty where you end up commanding a platoon for the first time. And that early bit, I guess it's fairly like the regular army. You just kind of have a job that you have to do for a couple of years, and then you do your next promotional course, which for an officer is junior officer's tactical awareness course, as it was then, and then you usually get another job within your unit. But the way army reserve units are are structured is rather than having a battalion all in one place, a battalion will often have different company locations because its roots are in the territorial army, which is very much regionalized and localized. So I joined F Company 7 Rifles, which was based in Davies Street near Bond Street, and our soldiers, our riflemen, um, would come from all over London. Some came from Kent, some came from Hertfordshire, but they all came to this one location to train, and we would train every Tuesday evening, and then every fourth weekend we would go away to put that into practice in the field. And I had a platoon sergeant, the the platoon sergeant I had most of the time was a guy called Mark Polden, he was an ex-regular and was now uh uh was now in the reserve, and so I could get a lot of the sort of ground truth about how the platoon felt from him. That was really useful. And most of my job was just enabling the corporals to do their training. That was really all you have to do on the Tuesday night. Every now and again it was something that I would deliver. I'd take part in all the training as well. I thought that was quite a useful thing for me to upskill all my basic infantry skills and also do like the G1 management and that sort of thing. So personnel management.
SPEAKER_02Well, that's what I was gonna ask because um that's the bit that takes up so much of your time, right? So I'm guessing your job's quite unique. I'm guessing it's still similar to what you're doing now in terms of you've got your own thing. Yeah. Um, so it's it's probably not the classic, like you're commuting to the office every day. You you you you know, you're here there and everywhere doing different bits. But are you getting calls outside of that Tuesday evening thing to be like, you know, either from the chain of command or from your your soldiers, to be like this has happened and you've got to solve it. How much? I I guess my question is how much outside of that? How much goes into it, really?
SPEAKER_00Probably half a day to a day a week. So quite a lot. Yeah, you're you're doing it interstitially, like small bits of time here and there. And every now and again I'd have to spend a few hours doing something. I used to, because I worked effectively on my own schedule, I would often just get in early on the Tuesday and just do it as much as I could then. Exercise planning, putting people forward for courses, writing up reports, those sorts of things. I would just try and do that on the Tuesday, and I'd get in early and do it. I had a very good company commander as well who really helped me understand what I needed to do, really got me into the mindset of finding solutions, and if I needed a sense check, I would go to him for the sense check of the solutions rather than just going, here's a problem.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00You know, just developing a bit more of that attitude.
Of course, one of the things that's very different about the army reserve is you can't really use coercion or discipline because people are choosing to turn up, um, they're usually very motivated as a product of that. People are uh doing it because they want to have a change from their normal life. So for some of them, the 60 quid or whatever you get as a private or rifleman for a for a day service, for me, when I first joined, it was a substantial part of my income that allowed me to pay my rent. So that was part of the reason I joined. It was a top-up for the rest of my income. Um but also they're motivated to be there. Whereas, you know, correct me if I'm wrong, I think in the regular army, you often have a lot of soldiers who just sort of are are less motivated, and you kind of have to use coercion or discipline to get them to do things. Whereas you can't do that in the reserve. If you discipline someone, if you ag guy someone and they just don't turn up next week, what are you gonna do? Yeah. So you have to become quite good at making sure that their time is well used. Um, for the for the men and women that are coming in, you have to make sure that you're using their time well, that they're gaining something from it, and they feel valued. Those are really the things that matter. So you can't really mess people around. I think that's quite a useful thing. And also because you have less time, I think you become quite efficient at using that time.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, definitely. I I I completely hear you. I think it's one of the things where if I'm talking to people that are looking at joining, it's like, why do you want to join? It's like, I want to be surrounded by motivated people. It's like you're not always going to be surrounded by motivated people. So how are you going to motivate them? Or or you know, words to that effect. And I think it's it's the bit where it's eye-opening, especially when you go through, you know, as as my journey, 44 weeks at Sandhurst, four months at on the platoon commander's battle course, and then you're pretty motivated by the end of that because you're like, okay, cool. I've been working with motivated people, I've had motivated instructors, and now I'm really keen to put what I've learned into practice. Then you turn up to battalion. And for the most part, look, I loved my platoon. I took over Templatoon C Company, and um, I had a great time with them, and there were some exceptional people in there for sure. But there was also the ones that weren't motivated, didn't want to be there. And it's really tough to deal with, especially when you're new, because you're like, hold on, I've been surrounded by high calibre people, especially the instructors you've had at that point. Yeah. And it's like, well, what's going on here? No one's briefed me to deal with people that don't want to turn up or don't want to put the fizz in. Like, these are all the things that I joined for. Why are people not the same? So then you have to go through this thing of yes, there's the the discipline process, but I wouldn't say it's particularly effective and motivating. And that's where you learn that leadership side of getting it wrong most of the time, but thinking, how on earth are we going to pull this guy out that's been a private soldier for eight years and actually get him on a promotional course because he doesn't care? How am I going to get him to care? And that is that is tough. Um, which you know was successful sometimes and not in others. So I I totally hear you on that. And I think, yeah, it's it's the same, right? You you can't force people to be there. So how are you gonna get them to turn up? And once they're there, how are you gonna make it worth their while? I think is a really interesting challenge, and probably something that I imagine continues throughout your entire reservist experience.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and uh I mean it once when you end up at different places, you know, I've I've ended up doing external posting. So after after Rifle Platoon, I then became the platoon commander of the mortar platoon. Oh, cool. But the challenge was that F Company um got moved to a different regiment. So F Company Seven Rifles, the location was closing down, so that became F Company Um what is now London Guards. Oh, okay. But my platoon, the mortar platoon, moved to G Company Seven Rifles, which is over in West Ham. But our location was my land. Right. For people that don't know London, that just sounds like gibberish. But basically, you're moving quite a large way, and obviously the transport links are very different.
SPEAKER_02Very close to where I live, actually.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's so you kind of know what the transport's like over there, and then the rest of the company moved to Hammersmith. And I was the platoon commander of Mortar Platoon. Hammersmith had probably been a bit more convenient for me, but I realised that my responsibility was to make sure that that the soldiers in that platoon didn't lose enthusiasm because you're moving to a different company which has a different subculture. Obviously, the other company has a very different subculture, they're moving to the London Guards, but they kept their rifles cap badges initially. And I just had to make sure that you know part of your part of your job as a as a platoon commander is you must have heard this phrase phrase before, being a s umbrella, stopping everything, and making sure that they were given the resources and opportunities that they needed to integrate gradually into G Company and feel that they had a sense of purpose and motivation and take on this, you know, mortaring. I we transitioned from a Rafael Patoon into a mortar platoon. So it was a new skill. Make everyone feel enthusiastic about that. One of the odd things is I never had the opportunity to do the mortar platoon commanders course, and I didn't have during that period of time enough reserve service days, which is the amount of days that you can do each year, which is capped, yeah, unless you're doing a specific operation to do the mortar course. But that that's kind of quite a useful thing to think about in leadership, which is you don't need to be a specialist in everything. I just needed to make sure that they had the training, space, and time to get good at what they needed to do, and I was looking after making sure they were getting on courses, making sure the training was set up, making sure the exercises were set up and those sorts of things. Interesting.
SPEAKER_02I've I've I've noting down things as you as you speak, and I think that umbrella, uh, if no one's heard of it, is basically as as sort of a leader, you're trying to not let your frustrations from above come down to your soldiers or whoever's in your team. Yeah. And I think the best way to do it is, and I experienced this when I when I left the military as well, is I had a boss that was quite stressy and it I worked in sales, which is a pretty stressful role anyway. Um, and I I remember actually saying to it at one point, and I sort of had to navigate this weird thing where I left the military, I had all these skills, but I didn't quite know how to put them into practice in my job yet because I went into tech and I didn't know anything about tech. So for the best part of six months, I not that I felt like a spare part, but I was like, I feel like I'm doing an entry-level role. I know I'm not entry-level, but I just can't figure out how it all comes across. The irony being it's that understand phase, understand what you're in, and then actually you can leverage everything else to more effect. But I remember sort of uh being on the call with my boss at one point and being like, I just need to stop you there. Like with all the teams on it, and I just sort of pointed out we've got our own stresses, like you've got your own stresses, we don't need yours on top of ours, and that's where I described the sh umbrella. And I was like, I was always taught to basically like try and put on a brave front to the soldiers, not because we're trying to keep them from the truth or whatever, that's not what it's about, it's because they've got their own stresses, and I don't want my stress to impact that job. That's my job, they've got that to sort themselves, and I think that was quite interesting for me.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and your job as a leader, we'll come into the work I've done at the Central Army Leadership, which is a product of my reserve stuff. But you know, your job as a leader is you're there to help the team succeed. And uh, there's Adair's three balls, which is a leader's job is to develop an individual's build build a team and achieve the task. So being the umbrella and stopping your stresses going to them is your it's serving leadership as well. You're in your your job really is to just give them everything they need to get things done. Obviously, you have to put constraints in and push them in the right direction from time to time to achieve the task. Um, but really your job is to enable them. And if you're if you're passing down, you're making life harder for them, you're putting mud in the gears. Yeah, definitely.
SPEAKER_02And going back to um the the the reserves there and sort of um I've put here just because I think there's a this obviously I've put here the classic person that's in the reserves. No, I know there's all sorts of people, but from your experience, what would you say the reserves is mostly useful in the terms of the why people are joining it? What what do people do it for as an individual within the career? Yeah, so I I guess I'm coming at this because I I speak with a lot of people that um are looking to commission as an officer in the long term, yeah, but in the short term, and I guess kind of similar to your experience, to go, well, let me try this out and I'll I'll join as a soldier and I'll get a feel for it. Now they might just love that route and it works for them. But I think sometimes there's a misconception that it's one or the other, and it doesn't always have to be a reserve. You can absolutely use the reserves to then become regular later, uh, or just make sure that it fits your life, or for whatever reason.
SPEAKER_00And I think maybe the classic person is a bit disingenuous, but I mean, I think one of the things that fortunately you know legislation and policy is doing is making it easier to move between the regular and the reserve more frequently. Not that you want to be doing it every year, but I think it's easier now to do reserve to transition into the regular or to go from regular and transition to the reserve. I mean, one of the things you can do as a reservist is you can do uh full-time reserve service, FTRS, which is where there's a job for you that you can do full-time for six to twelve months. That's much more common once you if you're an officer, once you get to a staff officer job, so uh SO2 posts as they're known, staff officer two, which is a major's role, or SO3, staff officer three, a captain's role, where there's support needed in headquarters or things like that. Though they need someone to help just do the day-to-day planning, the processing, the operations work up at the permanent joint headquarters, for example. I know some people who are reservists who work their full time and they get a full time pay. And then there are others who just love going away every fourth weekend, doing an exercise, and then going away for two weeks and maybe doing some A T as well. That can just be a really enjoyable thing. And then if there's the need for them to go full time, you could be mobilised. I think there's been very few false mobilizations in the recent past. If it gets to the point where being where we're all being mobilised to fight Russia, I think either way you're in trouble. Either way you're having a difficult time. So you know you're probably going to get mobilised at some point if you're not in the reserve if we're fighting Russia. So there's options that you can do in that. The other thing is kind of the route that I've ended up taking is you remember I said that the thing that made me turn back to looking at the army when I spent my time as a journalist and filmmaker was doing that for the army. In the end, I didn't do that particular route initially, but my civilian skills have become used by the army. So you can end up doing your specialist skill that you have as a civilian within the military in some pretty interesting stuff.
For me, the first time that really happened was during COVID. So OP Rescript was the defence's name for the operation to deliver services to the nation when the COVID pandemic happened. And the first thing was mobile testing units. Remember, this is when soldiers are out swabbing people. And the reserve were used for this because you had a trained body of men and women who were able to deliver this, uh who were trained and then were able to deliver this. And obviously the media were very interested and the public were very interested. So they needed a what's called a unit comms officer, which is basically the media manager for a unit. Couple of roles training people in media training so they knew what to do if a journalist appeared. But the other thing was to train the whole battalion on what to do if a journalist turned up, how to respond in a way where you're not going to cause upsets, but knowing what the correct pathway was to get them to me largely or or the officer commanding, the major in charge of that particular unit. The other weird thing that was occurring then, of course, was there was a lot of this was really the beginning of disinformation on a large public scale. And you had those people that were calling themselves citizen journalists that would turn up on a video with a phone and you know, this is the start of the military takeover of the crew. So how how do you respond to that? And just making sure that the soldiers knew the actions on for those sorts of things, and then also liaising with the press, local press, or the directorate of defence communications, the MOD's press office, if you like. Um, and because I understood what journalists were doing and I was able to see the opportunities and not just the threats that people are unfamiliar with the media might consider, and the other thing was effectively doing content creation, so making some films about what we were doing and putting it out there through the directorate of defence communications so that there was good comms about what we were doing. So people who were like, Why are why all these soldiers on my streets all of a sudden they could find out and have that video there?
SPEAKER_02Interesting. So uh would would you say that's one of the few maybe not the future, because I know you're working with the Cal as well, but where you've leveraged all the skills from your civilian work into that? Because I'm guessing as a platoon commander, there's transferable skills, but it's not your your skill set to go and go, okay, this is the infantry. So, how how has that come to fruition in your career? Obviously, rescripts are a good example.
SPEAKER_00I think it's part of it is knowing your strengths and weaknesses, right? So I was by the time I finished Brecken, I was 31. Uh, I was 30. So I wasn't like a super fit ex-rugby captain, 25-year-old mega infantry platoon commander, charging at everything. But I was much better at because I've been a school teacher, empathy, and understanding that was my skill set there. So that's the day-to-day use utility of it. Then how does the army use it? Well, it's all it's just making sure people are aware of what my skill sets are so that they might be able to use them. I think the army reserve in its ideal form is is is wanted by the you know the people in charge of it and understanding where the skills lie within it of the people within it, um, is leveraging that more frequently so that they can have access to things otherwise wouldn't. I mean, there are army reserve units out there which are full of PhDs in AI, for example. And the army doesn't have the money access or routes or pathways to be able to access that externally, but they can leverage that internally. So knowing what's there, I mean, this is all very much you know what's happening with digital transformation, so on. This isn't stuff I know about, but that's an example of where there's skill sets within the army that the army could use. Um, of course, then it's making sure you're balancing what the person who's within the army reserve wants to do. You know, for me, I loved looking after a platoon. I really enjoyed that ability of helping the men and women in my platoon develop and reach their full potential, not just achieve the task, but you know, coaching them through the stuff that would help them get through the section commanders battle course, for example. And do I want to be doing journalism within the army? Is that what I want to be doing all the time? I mean, I I really enjoyed it on stuff I have done, but I also really, really love running around in a field and crawling about in the mud with cam cream on my face. So I think it's making sure that if you are the person going through this, it's being clear about what you want. Yeah. Offering things to the army reserve when you think you can really help, and if you're helping the nation, that's a great thing to be doing. And also being like, I just really want to crawl around in cam cream.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. Well, it's I really resonate with that because when I started doing uh some YouTube stuff when I was in um the infantry training center, I was a platoon commander. So I absolutely loved the role and I was passionate about getting some really good comp good, subjective, but some content together to sort of showcase what we were doing. And the aim was to let other people prepare, they could see what we were up to, none of it's secret, and they could prepare better for what was to come. So it was like an informing, uh all-informed type thing. Then when I went back to my unit, part of my role became the media officer. And I was like, no, no, no, I've not joined the army to do that. I don't mind doing my own stuff, but then all of a sudden, and obviously then it's a lot more policy-based. Uh, and you're not in control of that. So I found going from my own stuff where I'm largely in control, well, totally in control of what I want to put out within reason when I was in the army, uh, to then suddenly going in and briefing people because it's not my channel, it's not what, it's not my content, it's the battalion's content or whatever. And I just remember, you know, you look on paper and it's a perfect fit. Oh, we've got a guy, and that's the hardest thing about media officers, is most people don't want to do it. They have no interest in it. And it was like, oh, there's this guy that doesn't mind putting himself online, he can do it. But actually, no one had sat me down and asked me if that was something that I really cared about doing, and it was probably something I learned to be like, no, no, this is I enjoy doing it because it's freedom and I can express myself in my own way. I don't enjoy this because there's zero freedom.
SPEAKER_00The army will always find a way to make something fun and enjoyable.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, if you think of uh GPMG ranges, you know, machine gun ranges, how is that not a great day? Well, it's because you know, the safety, the stress, it's like that should be the best day of the year. Um, I just wanted to touch on Ash how you've managed to navigate your your career.
So obviously you're a major, yeah, so you've gone through a promotional board, you've obviously gone through the other promotions as well. But how how does that happen in the reserves? And do you have to tick off certain jobs to be able to do it? And you know, do you have to give up more time? Yeah, how does that work from your side?
SPEAKER_00Um, so you have to do each job well enough to be able to have earned a promotion. And I think there's probably two career pathways, really. You know, the uh my first few bosses had had done almost a classic reserve version of the regular career. Uh, most of them had done Herrics as well, actually, by um, you know, my company commanders and others had had done those sort of operations by the time I came in to my job as a uh rifle platoon commander. And so they'd done regimental duty, you know, platoon commander, maybe specialist weapons platoon, company second in command. They might have done the intelligence officer job, they might have then gone away to do a staff job, which exists for reserves as well. So a staff job is where you go outside of your battalion, go and work in a headquarters or a brigade headquarters, or the maybe even the Ministry of Defence to do a captain's job usually as an officer, and the return backs unit to do a company command job. So that you know they're sort of almost like company men, you know, that they kind of follow that path. I think for some people that's amazing, that's what they really want to do with their job, and that is very much about looking after the platoon, looking after your the people in your unit. I've enjoyed applying my civilian work to the military, uh uh because obviously you always think you can do it better than the people that are doing it already. And you know, certainly, you know, for for professional storytelling, which is what journalism is, the army in places are very good storytellers. But if you're able to help improve it, you can see better outcomes. And I think that's a nice thing to be able to do for the army and for defense if I can, if I can help in places, that's a great thing to do. Um, so I've really enjoyed that. But I probably will return back to doing some form of regimental duty before too long. I did the junior officers' tactical awareness course that allowed me to promote to captain. I then did the joint information operators course to be able to do the kind of things that I uh was doing and then doing the unit comms officer course, DCC, I can't remember what it's called, defence communications course, then do the unit comms officer's job. Um, and then content creation for army, media, and comms, which is attached to army headquarters. So, you know, this is several levels beyond when I was just in a company. But the next job I'd really like to do is return to having some element of command. I I might like to go and work at an officer training corps, I'd probably have a company command job now that I'm a major, and then maybe go back to doing um, you know, a company in the reserve rather than an officer training corps. And I, you know, that's great because you know, the the the greatest thing I found in doing my job as an army reserve officer was the development of the soldiers under my command.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think for for everyone, that's the that's the horrible part about um finishing platoon command. Yeah it's probably your best experience that's behind you. Now, you know, for those that get to major in lead companies and actually, you know, I had Paul Nansen on here, who obviously was the commandant at Sandhurst and whatever, and he's done it all, he's seen it all, you know, it's great. I asked him, and maybe it's not in the podcast, maybe it was over a coffee, uh, what his favourite role was, and it was unequivocal company command. Yeah, and I think a lot of company commanders think that because now they've got the experience to pick it up. Platoon commander, you're very much learning the ropes. However, it's such direct leadership, and it's your first taste of it that it is probably one of the best jobs you'll do. And I think people end up really wanting that command. And it's not just because you're sort of, you know, uh you love the responsibility so much that it's just that it's more about developing people, having those close relationships, and I think it's that direct leadership rather than the strategic piece, I guess, is what we're talking about.
SPEAKER_00Well, I'm sure you found this when you when you left the army. When you go into a civilian job and you, you know, people know you've been in the army, they'll say something like, Military leadership won't work here because you can't tell people what to do. I'm like, you can't tell people what to do in the army, really, either. Yes, you can you can fall back on command and um rank to force people to do something, but if you want people to do something well, that's not going to work. And I think that's uh you're taught and you learn that at Sandhurst, but then you experience it doing a first platoon command job, which is you know, the men and women under your command aren't going to do something because you've told them to. It's can you bring them along with you? And that's that's leadership. That's the difference between command and leadership, really. Definitely, yeah.
SPEAKER_02The most outspoken people in the world, and this is ironic coming from a person that comes off online all the time, but they're soldiers, right? They will tell you in no hesitation when it's wrong, what they think of it. Yeah, um, they're professionals, so as long as it's lawful, they'll do it. But actually, it's that key difference. And I I never really bought into this thing of like, you're not here to be the soldiers' friends. Granted, that's absolutely true, but I think some people misinterpret the premise of that, and it's it's basically saying, like, uh, you can just order them to do what you want. It's like, well, you probably could, however, you won't get the best result. The best result will be because they do it because they really think you're a good person and you genuinely care about them.
SPEAKER_00Oh, and we'll probably come on to the human advantage in a moment, which is the Central Army Leadership work. But I remember a guy called Charlie Lee, who came on it, he was uh he was teaching at Sandhist at the time, and he's he said the mistake that he made about that being friends with the soldiers was that he had favourites, and there were some that he were more he wanted to be liked. He didn't just want to be friends with him, he wanted to be liked, and then when he became a multiplatoon commander, he was much better at applying reward and discipline fairly and following policy more clearly, and he said he got a much better response from his platoon because they knew where he stood. Now he didn't have to be unlikable, but his goal wasn't to be liked, his goal was for the platoon to succeed, yeah. And I think if you reframe the way I found that that was a really good way to think about um the work that I did at that early stage, and everyone wants to be on a winning team, no one wants to be on the losing team.
SPEAKER_02So once you have a bit of evidence that that you know, people buying into the plan, trying really hard, working hard and getting the results, the morale picks up, and not that the morale is necessarily low to start with, but you know, everything's sort of moving in the right direction, people then get a bit of a taste for it, and they're like, we're one of the best platoons here in
in whatever. Let's come on to the the Centre for Army Leadership work because it's super interesting, right? So for those that don't know, maybe if it's best coming from you, what it's all about.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, not to promote a rival podcast on yours, Dan, but this one of the examples of where somebody else saw my civilian skill set and how it could be used to do something useful in the army, was a guy called then Major David Love, now a lieutenant colonel, who was at the Centre for Army Leadership, and he was overseeing this project to turn army leadership doctrine, which is fairly new, only came out in 2015, which is sort of the philosophy of this is how we lead in the army, drawn on 350 years of experience of the whole army, not just Dave Love, he's not that old. Um, but then turning it into the science. What does that look like? What are the things you need to be doing to do good leadership? But then it's a case of well, how do we make this applied? The engineering, how do we make it happen? And my job was to interview 40 experienced junior leaders, well, 40 experienced leaders about their time in junior leadership. So these were mostly people who were colour or staff sergeants, company sergeant majors, regimental sergeant majors, and um late entry officers, that's people who've gone through the soldier pipeline and then commissioned afterwards, or majors, lieutenant colonels, and colonels talking about their time, usually at section two company level command, either as the officer or as a non-commissioned officer in that role. And Dave wanted someone who uh could do interviews, could produce, could construct it into a story, could understand what the direction was, but understood the military as well, which is how do you how do you speak to soldiers, how do you elicit stories from soldiers who, despite being very good at gobbing off in the mess, don't talk about that stuff publicly or on the record usually. Um and nearly all have a form of imposter syndrome, weirdly. Uh that point you were talking about before on operations and so on. And needed someone to translate that to make it into a tool that people could listen to and uh then become better at leadership themselves. So the podcast is a series of interviews with experienced leaders about their leadership experiences, the good and the bad, and what they learned from it, how they changed, how they reflect on it in the past. And it was an extraordinary privilege to interview everyone from you know former special special forces operators through to the senior soldier of the entire British Army, the Army Sergeant Major, to people who were sort of just getting their teeth stuck into mid-level command and being able to ask them questions about what they what they wish they knew when they were starting out. Yeah. And it was uh it was a great thing to have the chance to do.
SPEAKER_02I've um I've been super surprised since starting this podcast and doing some work with CalMyself and stuff is how much I've learned through those conversations and also it forces you to reflect. Yeah. You know, I'm quite fortunate with what I do now in terms of we the courses that we run, we we literally bake in reflection periods and stuff. But I think it's something I really missed when I was a young platoon commander. We're very good at doing after action reviews on exercise or operations and whatnot. But what we don't do is, you know, bi-weekly or monthly uh sort of catch-ups with your section commanders where it's just tell me the leadership problems you face, let's let's talk about it, let's discuss it. It's always we're planning for this, I need you to do this, rather than that reflection period. And I think if I was to do it again, and I've said this before, I would absolutely, where possible, have like a monthly catch-up with my my command team, no matter if I was a company commander or a platoon commander or whatnot, and just get them in and basically be like, we'll go for a brew out of the office, and we'll just talk about some of the challenges because it is not normal, some of these challenges that we're faced with. And it could be anything from deploying an exercise, someone's nervous, mental health crisis, and someone, you know, um sort of alarming the fact that they're they're not in a good place and they might take their own life, huge things, it could be family troubles outside, whatever. None of us are uh professionals at that, yet that's the task we're faced with. And I think one speaking to people about their own experiences is great, reflecting on your own is fantastic, and also sharing through vulnerability, and that's when I listened to loads of the human advantage ones and the normal centre for our militia ones where they have like uh the sort of big south gates on it and stuff. And you hear these people just sharing where they fed up, basically, and it's insightful because you're like, oh yeah, the world isn't imploding just because Dan Russell got it wrong once. Yeah, like you live to fight another day.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so that that's yeah, that's self-reflection, and if you make a mistake, it can usually be okay. And um, particularly if you're doing it in the training environment. Yeah, I should mention, I'm not advocating loads of mistakes on arms. Um, yeah, and it it's I mean the the tool that the that the Centre for Army Leadership has developed is this thing called the leader competency framework, which breaks down leadership into three domains: 34 competencies and 266 subskills. Now that's useful as a as a way to reflect on your own leadership, but also as a sort of diagnostic and conversation to with your command team. So, what are you finding that you think you're getting wrong and right on this? And then you can say, okay, so my thoughts are this. When I went to do the Patoon Commander's battle course, I did a little bit of time as a Patoon Commander before I then went away to do the Patoon Commander's Battle course and then came back with that qualification. So sort of an unqualified Patoon Commander for a couple of weeks. And after every serial, you do three sustaining, three improves, which means you stand there and then the directing staff will say, What are three things that you would keep from that? And what are three things you would improve? And you would say, and then uh they would ask the rest of the platoon, your peers, the same about your performance, and then they would offer uh theirs to you, and it creates this level of trust and psychological safety and also separates the emotion of criticism from improvement and analysis of your performance. And I took that into my platoon, and after every serial, I would maybe not every serial, but as often as I could after every exercise, get my three corporals around and sometimes a platoon sergeant as well, or do it separately with a platoon sergeant usually, and do the same thing. And I think it just really that embedding in reflection is a really useful thing to do. And now that that leader competency framework exists, it's another tool for reflection.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and and creating the space. I think the army does it really well to and it's a process you get trained to give feedback and receive it. And I sort of always like and the first few times at Sandhurst where you do a peer review, it's all like, oh Dan, you're a really good bloke. Yeah, it's like, yeah, yeah, great, cheers, marker, and then all of a sudden you go into interest and it's like you're sh the the combat estimate or whatever it is, it suddenly becomes really sort of direct, and actually it's it creates that environment for it as well. And I think actually, if you outside of the military, sometimes you need to work to create that space, and actually that's what those reflection periods do, and to try and get a corporal, especially in the infantry, who's very, very strong-minded. Um, and look, when people are doing a job, they want to do it to the best of their ability, to then try and create a space for them to self-reflect and go, maybe this wasn't as good, or maybe I dropped the ball here, and it doesn't have to be a tactical action, it could be something in camp. That's actually a really good skill for your a leader to present that for failure to not be okay, but we have to accept failure in development. Yeah, so therefore, how do we put that into and I'll be honest, I don't think outside of um one particular platoon commander at Santos, I'm not slacking off any of my bosses, they were they were great, but I never felt empowered to fail. I never thought that if I failed it would be okay. It was always a pressure of no, no, no, this is go time, even in training. And I thought I just reflect and I was like, I think we could have done that better. Maybe I could have done it better. Not necessarily then, but that was my reflection.
SPEAKER_00The the that thing about like, yes, definitely creating more. There's this thing where we the army often talks about creating the space to be safe to fail. Um I'm not sure how well it does do that. And part of that's a constraint on training time, you know. Uh, you want you want to build confidence, you want to make you want to make people feel confident and enjoy their job. So sometimes maybe that's not done well enough. On the self reflection piece, a couple of the ones that really stand out to me a guy doing a summons of exercise in a new form of war fighting when they were developing the Ranger Battalions, Ranger Regiment. Um, he stood up in front of his subordinates, his peers, and And his bosses, and the first thing he said was, Here are the three things I did that failed you. This is why I mess up on the leader, I take responsibility. And that just allowed everyone else to immediately share their mistakes, and it just really improved the speed at which I developed this new method of operating. Another one was Colonel Hanna Stoy talking about um really getting to know people and seeing beyond the uniform and making space for that as a s commanding officer of uh a unit and having to literally go and sit on benches or in corridors where she knew her subordinates spent time, the ones that didn't come into her office, just so they'd walk past and say, What are you doing here, Mar? And then she'd go, Oh, I'm just seeing what's going on, just getting a bit of seeing what's up with you, and then getting to know people through that and getting some ground truth coming up that way. And then two command sergeant majors just reflecting on their times as section commanders, and one of them talk reflecting on his time as a staff sergeant, and how they the first one who's from the infantry talks about developing a sense of peer improvement, figuring out the strengths and weaknesses of his fellow corporals so that they would just have that honesty with each other and then they would support each other in in strengthening their weaknesses. And the other one who reflected on how he'd behaved when he was from a very 1990s army of very transactional discipline all the time into developing a more transformant transformational way of leadership and just reflecting on how they change over that time. That's an extremely humbling thing to hear from these extremely experienced people talking about the mistakes that he'd made that then makes it easier for you to then acknowledge the mistakes you made. One of the things I noticed on that podcast was that the more experienced people were much better at reflecting on their mistakes when they were younger. I haven't reflected on many of my mistakes yet. Sorry, Dan, because I'm a mere major.
SPEAKER_02But I guess I guess that comes with they're they're comfortable in their own strengths and weaknesses. They're also comfortable that they're actually competent at the job. Therefore, they're happy to share their first. I get it, you know, second Lieutenant Russell definitely wasn't too comfortable going, Oh, I think I've messed up here, blah, blah, blah. Because you you're still questioning your level of competence overall. But actually, as you get better, that's why I can share it now because I'm quite happy with what I did. But yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and I mean I I remember having finished uh Passing Commander's battle course, going back into um my my company and getting ready to lead the guys out on an exercise. We were doing fighting woods and forests, fear after which I'd just done on Brecken. I was like, I don't have to do this. Go up there, like walking up there, like doing the break into the forest, and the company 2RC taps me on the shoulder and goes, You've got the wrong wood block.
SPEAKER_01It's over there.
SPEAKER_00You know, here's my wardets from the great siege thing in the village. If you think anyone's nervous, just put the enemy in there.
SPEAKER_02Someone can just move them over for me, Mike. Yeah, we we we've all done so I remember setting up a gun line. Um, and uh it was really classic Brecken. The the Klag, the fog was in, couldn't see anything. Uh, and I basically took the took a back bearing really, and it was set it up, and all of a sudden the the we're like, Oh, we're meant to be doing like support in the brain, but we can't fucking see anything. I can't get comms with the the leader, the lead attack. And I was like, maybe we'll just try and have to observe from here and see what we can do because we've got no comms at the moment, and all of a sudden, there it goes behind us. And I was like, Oh sh lads, turn around 100 metres that way. Yeah, it wasn't a fun moment.
Um, actually, we're we're we're coming towards the end, and uh it's been really interesting, but I'd like to sort of hear your take on the advantages and sometimes disadvantages of being a reservist.
SPEAKER_00I think that joining the British Army Reserve was the best choice I made in my adult life. Um and it gave me so much, it gave me a sense of identity, it helped me div consolidate my values and my standards and my commitment and my self-discipline. Uh that was then a commitment that made it uh made it easy for me to make the uh then then the best choice of my life, which is to say yes to my wife when she asked me if I'd marry her. Uh but also the skills of looking after people that is a skill to develop, and the skill of leadership really is the same thing, you know, developing a team, emotional intelligence, empathy, problem solving. I mean, I'm I'm still a bit flappy, but developing a bit of unflappability and managing stress. I think all of those things have made me much better at every part of my life from having been in the Iron Reserve. So there are so many advantages, and just just feeling a part of something bigger and more valuable than simply earning money. Um family's the other thing, of course, it does that, you know. But now I've got two kids, that's all that's certainly something that uh gives me a high sense of higher purpose. Um disadvantages, I mean, I had to stop raving so frequently when I was when I joined. I don't see a huge number of disadvantages of joining the Army Reserve. The uh challenges are that you don't have as much time to develop your skills and competencies as your regular counterparts. But when I used to see our riflemen go and spend two weeks on exercise on Ascari Storm, I come by the time they came back, their skills were pretty good. And certainly the ones that had spent six weeks out and done the full time with the regulars on Ascari Storm, you couldn't differentiate them from a regular from their competencies, certainly at the rifleman level. I think you know you're your your differences start to become more challenging once you get further along. So as a as a major now, when I look at my regular peer majors, they just have such an understanding because they've done it every day for so long. And it's the simple understanding that comes to sort of the bureaucracy in admin of how to navigate the system, how to communicate in a way that's easily understandable by the by the rest of the regular army. Again, if I spent six months in a regular unit, I'd probably polish all that up. But you're not supposed to be the finish article when you're reservist, you get a much lot much less time, you're not fully deployable immediately. You you would have pre-deployment training, you would have time in a regular unit to uh upskill, hopefully, if it were needed. And so I think that's a disadvantage is that you're just kind of not, you're not the finish art, you're not quite polished. I find I have found that when I would step into doing things, I'd just be like, oh, that was a bit slack. And I think the skill fade comes in.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, definitely. I mean, look, I had skill fade between finishing Breconny and going on my first tactical exercise, and I'd been in the regulars for that six months, I just hadn't deployed, and I remember getting the the sort of tam out, which is your Bible if you're a commander, um, and basically being like, God, I feel like I've forgotten a load of this and just having to get your head back in it. So I can imagine that when you're took out of that environment for a period of time and you're not doing any army stuff and then thrown back in late, I can imagine that skill fame. I think I did a video not too long ago um and put it on sort of a short film thing. And I think people misinterpreted it because I got a lot of backlash with some some reservists, but I basically talked about the fact that uh from what I had seen from working reservists, so I was obviously on a regular uh platoon commanders battle course, so we had reservists join us, uh, this and the skills are all varying. Whereas for everyone else that's a regular at that time, some people might have done the reserves before, but we're all a similar standard. You get the good ones and you get the ones that maybe are a bit off the mark, but everyone's similar. Whereas the reservists, they've all got different experience up to that. Up you could have been in the army for years, they could have just joined. It's it's all varying. And what I saw was that some of the newer ones didn't quite read the room and the fact that we'd already done half of this course. Fatigue was fully setting in, uh, but we were also well drilled at that point, so it was quite a calm environment. The DS were shouty, but but not like as you would maybe imagine if you weren't in it. It was all quite calm. We knew what we knew what we were doing for for the most part. Obviously, still a lot to learn. But then all of a sudden, sort of the command appointment went down to this to the reserve, and this guy was in the fusiliers. And he just came, it was a really nice lad, but he completely changed and started trying to shout at us all. And I think one of the guys did actually put into one sign and be like, it's not gonna work. You're in command for 24 hours here, just chill out, like this is not gonna work. He didn't take it on board, and it actually ended up in us kind of like resenting him for that 24-hour period. His attack went to shit because I don't think anyone really tried. And it was a it was a thing for me, that wasn't like my first look into it. And then in this video, I kind of referenced the fact that uh the thing you have to be alert to is not that we're super soldiers and you or anything like that, but that there's just a skill gap to acknowledge, and it you can plug it. So the next time I I was exposed to reserves was actually on Optoral, uh, and we had two reservists attached to us, one's now a regular officer, the other one transferred to regulars after that tour as a soldier. Um, and look, by a few weeks in, and they hadn't done, I had they done our pre-tour stuff, I can't quite remember um pre-tour training, but they by by like a few weeks into that tour, they were pretty much a similar standard, right? It wasn't a huge gap. And I think that's my point is that humility to go, and this is for anyone, humility to go, I'm not well trained as as the as the rest here, but also to acknowledge you guys aren't super soldiers, like the gap isn't that hard to close. Yeah, and it and I think that was what I tried to get across in this video, and I don't think it landed. I think people were very pissed off, thought that I was sort of undermining reserve service, and that isn't the case, it was just like what I've seen works and doesn't from a regular standpoint. Um, I don't know if that's anything we want to jump on.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, you know, when I went to Sandhurst, the Sandhurst course that I did was eight weeks long. Now, I happened to have done my phase one and phase two as an army reserve trooper when I joined the Honourable Artillery Company. So phase one is basic soldiering, phase two was radios. So I kind of knew how to do those bits. Um, but eight weeks at Sandhurst, when you I hadn't I didn't hadn't really done a section attack apart from when I'd gone to Purbright to do the final part of my trooper training. So you've got eight weeks at Sandhurst, right? And you'll you're learning how to polish your boots properly, iron, clean your rifle, look after yourself, admin yourself in the field, learn how to be part of a section attack, learn how to command a section attack, learn how to do the estimate, learn how to do the orders process, some war studies lessons, and then some command appointments. I mean, by week six, you're still trying to figure out how to pack your burgen, you know, properly. Um, so you've just got a lot to try and do. So you're not going to be at the same standard as someone who's come out after 44 weeks, where you know, at the end of term one, you're you're pre-squared away in your basic admin and you know leading a section attack, and then you're getting better at the estimate and learning how to do company work uh as you get onto your your final term. But accepting that, and then when going when I went to Brecon, it was encountering all those other officers who'd done 44 weeks and as you say, done six weeks, and just having the humility when I arrived and sort of met them all, be like, look, guys, this is where I'm at. I could I could really do with a few pointers here and there. Yeah. Um, do you want to ask you some questions every now and again? Um unfortunately, you know, turned up on the defence phase and I was like, oh, don't worry, I'll just keep digging. Yeah. So just you know, leaning in, doing the stuff that I knew how to do well. I was like, oh, I'll tell you what, I'll do the next 10 minutes of digging if you can help me out with this, or can you show me how you do that? And that was that's created a really good sense of willing. And you know, by that point, they'd they'd effectively done nothing but the army for what a year a year and a half by that point. So they quite enjoyed listening to my stories about travel journalism and those things that I'd done. So I was able to offer them something and they were able to offer something back. And I actually got on really well with that group of guys in my section in Wider Platoon, and I learnt a lot because I knew that I wasn't at that standard, but it was an opportunity for me to learn from them as well as from the instructors.
SPEAKER_02And and I think that's the leadership skill that uh or the leadership challenge that every new officer faces is you've got to learn from those that you actually lead sometimes, and it's knowing a bit of give and take, and uh yeah, you might know doctrine a bit better, but then when your platoon sergeant grabs you to one side and goes, This is actually how we do it, it's like, well, you've got to listen to that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and and I mean, I would you know, say to my section commanders, look, I think this is a direction that this is the direction I want you to go in. These are the things I've noticed that might be of use to you, but you know, you're the one that's done the section commanders battle course. You tell me what you need for me to help facilitate that for you. And they were like, Oh, cheers. It it was quite I I could tell that at times that had been unusual for them.
SPEAKER_02And I I think that was my big difference from going to Templatoon Commander, first job, second lieutenant, lieutenant, to then going and being at the infantry training center was the reason I had a better time, and probably my screws had a better time, is because I was able to realize where they added so much more value than me. And I think I really started to get that. Uh, whereas at battalion, I I think I was still very much trying to learn it, and that sort of hit me to be like, okay, yeah, no wonder I'm really enjoying this job a lot more. It's probably because I'm better at it and I'm I'm knowing my own strengths and weaknesses and knowing where the screws have, and you know, for context, three out of the four section commanders that I had at Catarick had all done platoon sergeant's battle course. So, like, you know, they know the doctrine, they've all been on tour, they it's great and they love training people. So you just give them the free reign, and at times you have to pull them back because they're they're you know they're NCOs and they're just you know hardcore. And it's like you pull them back a little bit and you control it, but the training, the tactical side, you guys know what you're doing. You know, I can add a little bit of input, but you also know how it feeds into the platoon context. So I don't I don't really need to be watching this or or gripping you on this, you all know.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and letting section commanders do section commander business, but then saying, What can I do to support you on this?
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And you know, that's the thing, the reserve. You've only got a bit of time every now and again, every Tuesday, like, okay, this is your time to do what you want. What do you need for me to enable it? And that just creates such a sense of goodwill, I found.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and I think that's to to finish. When I go back to Sandhurst and I I speak to the intermediate term um about sort of my journey and and things I've learned. And um, one of the things there is about delegation. And at the start of the course that that I run, we ask people about their delegation, and most people mark it, you know, pretty high. And actually, as the course goes on, they start to mark themselves lower. And at the start, I thought, oh no, they're they're getting worse. And actually, it's no, they're realizing they're not good at it. And we I talk about effective delegation, I use this example when I was at ITC Cataric, it was before laptops had been rolled out across the army. So if you had a personal one, great, but there was one computer. So when I said, okay, all reports need to be in by the end of this week, uh, that's the task. I've delegated the task and they've got to go and do it. But it's not effective delegation because two of them didn't have laptops. So I'm not supporting them in a way. So when am I going to free up time on my, as in the platoon office computer, for them to jump up? Now, this is a really minor way of looking at it, but that is essentially it. Effective delegation is right, I've cleared your afternoon, I've cleared my afternoon, here's the computer, your task reports. That's way more effective than go and find a means to do with this. I'm not going to support you in any way, just here's the task and get it done. And if not, then you'll be punished. It's like not very effective. Um, Ash, I always like to finish with just any sort of tips or advice to the next generation in anything that comes to your
head there.
SPEAKER_00I've loved being in the Army Reserve. It's given me so much that I've been able to use externally, as well as just being an extremely rewarding thing to do anyway. And I think if there's someone out there who is thinking about joining either the reserve or the regular army, but they're not yet sure, the Army Reserve is a really good way to get started. I have found that every day that I've done with the Army Reserve has increased my sense of commitment and how much I've enjoyed it. And I know plenty of people who've gone from the Army Reserve to joining the regular army, either as a soldier or as an officer. And I just think that it's a great way to get started if you're not sure.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I think it's a perfect way to finish it. And I think something I've I've learnt more from meeting more people in the reserves, and I've done it more since I've been out of the army because of podcasts and meeting new people, etc., is there are far more similarities than there are differences in terms of the challenges that young leaders face. They're pretty much identical, to be honest with you. You've got to learn from those that you lead. You'll be put into new positions which you don't fully understand, and you've got to be humble enough to say that you don't understand, ask for help or whatever. You've got to deal with the admin stuff in your own time, never mind, just on the clock. And I think it's it's what you said about development of people. That's why people love the platoon command role or any command role, is because you get that really direct leadership with people and you can see it. It's so visceral. It's like, okay, yeah, I've really improved this person or not, and you learn from it. But I think that's something I've definitely learned. So um, mate, thanks so much for your time. I really appreciate you coming in. Uh, where can people find you, by the way, online?
SPEAKER_00Um, so I I do have Instagram at AshBaldwodge. I've currently deleted it from my phone because I was spending too much time on it. Um, that's probably the best place. LinkedIn. Uh, and of course, my book, Why We Travel. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, which is definitely worth a read. For anyone that's interested in military service, by the way, not just in terms of travel, I think that's something I sort of took away from it as a key theme that runs through it. But um, guys, that's it for for this episode. I hope you've enjoyed it. I hope you found it insightful. I definitely have. And if this sort of content is useful for you and provides value, I'd really appreciate it if you just give this a like because it really, really does help me out and it lets us know that we're producing content that you guys enjoy. If you've got questions, put them in the comments. And as always, if you can click subscribe, that would be great. That's it for this week, and I will see you next week with a brand new video in a bit.