I’ve just spent three days in the Peak District assessing students from Fernwood School on their Duke of Edinburgh Silver qualifying expedition.

It was a great few days but not without its challenges.

The students had to contend with some pretty testing conditions, including a particularly wet second night camping near Edale. Not the easiest environment, especially when you’re carrying everything on your back and trying to stay organised, fed and motivated.

But what stood out, as it always does with DofE, was how they responded.

Developing the Individual: The Hardest and Most Important Part of Leadership

I could probably write endlessly about this topic.

Most of what I’ve learned about developing people has come through 36 years of leadership experience — and plenty of trial and error along the way.

For me, this is one of the most important parts of leadership. And probably one of the hardest.

Because people are complicated.

First and foremost — know your people

You need to understand the people you lead.

Not just what they do at work, but who they are.

What are their hopes, fears and aspirations?
What are their strengths?
Where do they need development?
What are they struggling with?

Strong teams don’t just appear.

They’re built over time, and with intent.

I think this is something many leaders underestimate. We often assume that if we get the right people in the room and give them a clear task, the rest will take care of itself.

Sometimes it does for a while but if you want a team that performs consistently, especially under pressure, you have to be more deliberate than that.

Sometimes we need to slow down and think before we jump into delivering a task. Spending some time thinking through things such as why we need to do things and to what standard can pay dividends later. Not to mention considering whether we have sufficient time, money and people. We need to consider what options we have to move forwards and how we measure progress. Finally, we need to take the team with us. If we focus overly on the task, we risk burning them out.

Balancing the needs of task, team and individual when leading. Why its so important to ‘know thyself’

Read about six leaders, who stepped away from the pressures of work and headed to the Welsh mountains to reflect upon how they lead others and manage themselves

I’ve learned as much about leadership from mountaineering as I ever did commanding people on operations in Afghanistan.