Leading in civilian organisations after the armed forces

I spent the better part of three decades in the Armed Forces, starting as a weapons engineer, before moving into the international defence industry. I was not short of leadership experience when I made that move. And yet the first stretch outside was harder than I expected.

Not because the work was harder. Because the unwritten rules had changed, and nobody told me which ones.

If you are leaving the forces for a leadership role — or you have already made the move and something is not landing the way it used to — this is the guide I would have wanted.

What transfers, and what doesn’t

Start with the good news, because there is a lot of it. Most of what the forces taught you is exactly what civilian organisations say they want:

• Planning under uncertainty. Making a sound decision on incomplete information, then adjusting.
• Composure. Staying useful when things go wrong, rather than becoming part of the problem.
• Clear briefing. Saying what needs to happen, by when, and why.
• Ownership. Treating an outcome as yours rather than waiting to be told.
• Looking after your people. Knowing that a team that is cared for performs.

What does not transfer cleanly is the context those skills sat in. In uniform, a great deal was settled for you before you opened your mouth: who decides, how to address whom, what a given instruction means. Outside, much of that is unspoken, and it varies from one organisation to the next.

The skills are portable. The operating environment is not.

Five shifts that catch service leavers out

1. From authority to influence

Rank settled the question of who makes the call. In most civilian organisations, authority is shared, implied or quietly contested. Your job title gives you less than you think, and the people you most need to move often do not report to you. Leading here is mostly persuasion: building relationships before you need them, and bringing people with you rather than directing them.

2. From explicit to implicit structure

The organisation chart tells you who reports to whom. It rarely tells you how decisions are actually made. Often the real decision happens in a corridor conversation or an email thread before the meeting, and the meeting simply confirms it. If you arrive at the formal forum expecting to argue the case there, you may find it was settled last week.

3. From direct to calibrated communication

Brevity and directness are virtues in service. Outside, the same message can read as curt, or even hostile, to people who are used to more cushioning. The reverse catches people out too: “I’ll take that away” or “interesting idea” can mean no. You do not need to abandon directness — it is often refreshing — but you do need to notice how it is landing and adjust deliberately.

4. From a clear mission to competing priorities

In uniform, the mission usually set the priority. In a business, priorities pull against each other: customers, cost, shareholders, this quarter’s numbers, next year’s strategy. Very little is decided once. Expect to revisit trade-offs, and expect reasonable people to weigh them differently from you.

5. From the team you are given to the team you have to win

Your people can leave. They can also stay and give you the minimum. Much of what makes a civilian team perform is discretionary effort, and that is earned rather than ordered. The care you showed your people in service matters even more here — it is simply expressed through different channels.

What to keep doing

Some habits from service are rarer outside than they should be. Keep them, because they will set you apart:

• Debrief properly. Most organisations are poor at looking back honestly at what happened and why. A well-run review, without blame, is a genuine asset.
• Make it safe to raise problems. The best leaders I worked under were the ones who made it safe to say “I don’t think this is right.” That matters as much in an office as it does on a trial.
• Plan, then tell people the plan. Many civilian teams are starved of clear intent. Giving it is a kindness, not a habit to suppress.

Practical steps for your first 90 days

1. Map the real decision-makers. Not just who signs, but who needs to be consulted, who can quietly block, and who others listen to.
2. Ask before you fix. Things that look inefficient often exist for a reason. Learn the reason first; you will earn the right to change it.
3. Translate your experience. Drop the acronyms. Describe what you did in terms of outcomes your new colleagues recognise.
4. Find someone outside your line to sanity-check you. A peer, a mentor or a coach who will tell you honestly how you are coming across.
5. Decide what kind of leader you want to be here. Not a copy of the one you were in uniform, and not a watered-down version either. A deliberate choice.

When coaching helps

You do not need to be struggling to benefit from coaching. Most of the people I work with are doing fine on paper. They have simply noticed that something is costing them more effort than it should, and there is rarely anyone safe to say that to.

For service leavers, coaching is most useful in a first civilian leadership role: a confidential place to test how you are landing, work out the unwritten rules of a new organisation, and recalibrate your style on purpose rather than by trial and error.

I am an ILM Level 5 qualified coach and a member of the European Mentoring and Coaching Council. I still work in international defence alongside my coaching, so I know both worlds from the inside.

Common questions

Do military leadership skills transfer to civilian roles?

Most of them do. Planning under uncertainty, composure under pressure, clear briefing, ownership and looking after your people are all valued in civilian organisations. What changes is the context around them: authority is less explicit, decisions are made less visibly, and directness lands differently. The skills transfer; the rules for using them have to be relearned.

Why do some ex-military leaders struggle in civilian organisations?

Usually not because of capability. The friction tends to come from habits that worked in uniform and land badly outside it: expecting rank or job title to settle who decides, communicating with a brevity that reads as curt, or assuming the org chart shows how decisions are really made. These are learnable adjustments, not character flaws.

How long does it take to adjust to civilian leadership?

It varies with the role and the organisation. What shortens it is noticing early which habits are landing badly, and adjusting deliberately, rather than finding out at your first appraisal.

Is coaching useful for service leavers moving into leadership roles?

It can be, particularly in a first civilian leadership role. A coach gives you a confidential place to test how you are landing, work out the unwritten rules of a new organisation, and decide what kind of leader you want to be there, rather than carrying the old version over unchanged.

Steven PoculaExecutive and leadership coach · ILM Level 5 · EMCC member · Poole, Dorset