Leadership Lessons from Ukraine

Part two of my special examination of the key lessons about modern leadership from the war in Ukraine. In this final part, strategic and combat leadership are the focus.

Image: @DefenceU at Twitter / X

In the first part of this two-part series on leadership lessons from Ukraine, I examined the purpose of collection observations about leadership – at different levels – from the war in Ukraine. Further, I explored one of those levels, the political level. In this second part, I explore two other important forms of leadership on which the war in Ukraine has provided many observations. These are strategic leadership and combat leadership.

The British Army defines leadership as “a combination of character, knowledge and action that inspires others to succeed.” This is a variation on the other definitions of leadership that I provided in the first part of this series, but I quite like this British approach. It contains the fundamental elements of leadership, and it is applicable to the different levels at which leadership must be exercised.

This ability to scale for different parts of a hierarchy inside an institution is important for several reasons. Possessing a common leadership ethos at every level in an organization is a key element of achieving unity of purpose and building an effective strategic culture. It also allows different sub-elements within an institution, who may not have collaborated before, to quickly integrate, align and tackle a common problem or mission.

In this second part of examining the leadership lessons from the war in Ukraine, two important levels of command and leadership are explored. First, strategic leadership. And, finally, the crucial skill of combat leadership.

Strategic Leadership Lessons

A first order question is this: what is strategic leadership?

Strategic leadership at heart is the leadership that occurs at the highest level of an institution. This might be a military institution, with the strategic leaders being the Chief of a unified defence organisation or a military service chief. Alternatively, in government service, it might be the head of national intelligence, cyber, border security or civil defence agency. And, outside of the government, strategic leaders are the most senior officers in a corporation.

There are many civil and military publications that explore the responsibilities of strategic leaders. Military strategic leaders, according to one US Army War College publication, must possess conceptual competencies, including the thinking skills to understand a complex and ambiguous strategic environment. They must also have technical competencies, which includes the skilled application of specialised knowledge and institutional resources to achieve strategic goals, and appreciating the political, cultural and economic elements that influence military institutions.  Finally, they need interpersonal competencies to build effective teams, negotiate with other strategic stakeholders and build consensus within one’s own organization.

But non-military organizations also possess insights into the competencies of strategic leaders. One particular article from the Harvard Business Review contains a set of strategic leadership skills which are common to many other scholarly articles on this topic. The recommended skillset are as follows: alignment of goals and stakeholders; the ability to make decisions; the capacity to interpret conflicting and ambiguous information; to challenge current circumstances; to anticipate future challenges; and, to learn and adapt.

Of course, there is one key difference between strategic leadership in the military and that conducted in other entities. In the military, personnel are subject to an unlimited liability, which means they may be called upon to risk their lives, give their lives and to take the lives of others on behalf of their nation. No other organisation does this. As such, the imperative for identifying, developing and appointing the right people to strategic leadership positions in military organizations is clear.

While lessons in strategic leadership might have broader applications, for the purposes of this article, the strategic lessons that might be drawn about leadership from the war in Ukraine are those that concern strategic military and other national security leaders. This might include military commanders-in-chief, national intelligence chiefs and others such as national security advisors. All have leadership functions during peace and war.

The first lesson regards civil-military relations. In his book, Supreme Command, Eliot Cohen describes civil-military relations as an unequal dialog. In democracies, there may be a robust interchange of ideas between civilian and military leaders, but ultimately, the civilian political leadership always makes the final decision. While imperfect, this is a better system than the alternatives we might view in other historical eras or in authoritarian regimes. In Ukraine, we have seen civil-military relations play out during the war with the civilian president being the clear individual in charge. However, there have been tensions with the military at times, which came to a head with the civil-military crisis in November-December 2023 between Zelensky and General Zaluzhnyi. This was ultimately resolved with the removal of General Zaluzhnyi.

The key lessons from Ukraine on this subject include the need for democracies to have updated concepts for civil-military interaction for a quickly moving 21st century, and that politicians and military leaders must have clear, legislated functions in a democratic polity. The central functions of strategic military leaders in this civil-military environment, including winning resources from government, providing long-term vision for institutions and setting their culture, as well as communicating widely about the institution they lead, must be appreciated by political leaders.

Senior military leadership functions, and their interactions with political leaders, should not be solely based on conventions or individual preferences but should instead possess legal foundations as well. It is worth noting that developing and sustaining effective civil-military relations is one of the ‘interface issues’ that I referred to in the first article in this series. It is not only a responsibility of strategic military leaders but of political leaders as well.

A second lesson is that strategic leaders need to possess the intellectual capacity to lead the development of the military strategies that comprise a key element of any theory of victory in war. Ultimately the political leadership must build a whole of nation theory of victory for a conflict, but the military component will be a crucial aspect of it. Early in 2024, when President Zelensky appointed the new Ukrainian commander-in-chief, one of tasks given to Ukraine’s most senior military officer was to develop a new military strategy. While we are yet to see any public version of this new strategy, it is an example of the important role strategic military leaders play in formulating the core ideas for how nations might win modern wars.

A third lesson for strategic leaders is about alignment and integration. The strategic leaders in a military institution must align their operations with desired policy outcomes of the civilian government. In peacetime, this can be challenging. In wartime, it is very difficult, but essential. An example of this from Ukraine was the build up to, and conduct of, the 2023 counteroffensive. At a certain point, the conduct of a counteroffensive became a political inevitability, regardless of whether the military was fully prepared for it. The successful 2022 Ukrainian offensives in Kherson and Kharkiv had elevated the stature of the Ukrainian armed forces in western media and political circles, who then assumed a subsequent offensive would also be successful. The addition of a massive influx of western military aid including tanks and HIMARS in the second half of 2022 also placed pressure on the Ukrainian government to act, which then placed pressure on the Ukrainian military.

Political imperatives about the timing for the offensive, and the location, had to be somehow aligned with military realities by the Ukrainian high command. As the results show, this was an impossible task given also lack of time to train new brigades and the changes in Russian posture and tactics in 2023. In a similar fashion, Putin did not align military resources with his maximalist objectives for the 2022 large-scale invasion

Related to this need for strategic leaders to align policy and military strategy is the requirement for them to integrate the many elements of military operations. This deeper integration of military operations is one of the key trends in 21st century military affairs that I explored in War Transformed. Unlike the single or dual-domain counterinsurgency operations of the past two decades, Ukraine has demonstrated the need for military institutions to operate in all domains concurrently and more effectively integrate military affairs into broader national strategies. Ukraine has integrated several ground campaigns, a strategic strike campaign against Russia, a strategic influence campaign, a cyber-Defence campaign, its air and missile defensive campaign, the Black Sea maritime denial campaign and its civil defence operations throughout the war. While not likely to be replicated exactly in other theatres, it is representative of the kind of multi-domain integration challenges that will be faced by military strategic leaders elsewhere. And, it should go without saying that strategic leaders must communicate a vision or, purpose, for how and why this integration is required.

A fifth observation, which is related to the integration function, is about raising, sustaining and employing a military force in modern conditions. The Ukrainians undertook a massive expansion of their military in the first year of the war, almost quadrupling its size. All the functions related to this mobilization of the military, including recruiting, equipping, training, leading and prioritizing investment and force apportionment, offer potential lessons for the leadership of military institutions beyond Ukraine. While the raising, training and sustaining of a force is a normal peacetime function for military service chiefs, in wartime, the pace and scale of these wartime mobilization activities provides a challenge that is an order of magnitude beyond that faced in peacetime. The expansion of the Ukrainian armed forces overseen by their strategic leadership should offer useful insights for other western military strategic leaders should they also need to oversee a large-scale mobilization effort.

A sixth observation about strategic leaders in the Ukraine war has been the imperative to drive learning and adaptation. While hardly a new requirement for the most senior leaders of a military organization, the constantly evolving technologies, tactics and strategic imperatives in the Ukraine war have driven the need to learn and adapt quickly, and for lessons to be provided to industry, training and other institutional endeavors. While combat leaders must learn and adapt to survive the next day, this learning imperative for strategic leaders is somewhat different. Not getting the settings right for strategic learning and adaptation can have a significant impact on the outcome of a war. Ensuring that a military institution has a learning culture before conflict will make the learning and adaptation during war a less challenging undertaking. Strategic adaptation does not just happen, it must be led by the most senior leaders in a military institution.

Integrating new technologies of the right type and quantity, along with supporting operational concepts, is a key strategic leadership function. Image: @DefenceU at Twitter / X

Finally, strategic leaders need to make judgements about the balance of old and new technology in their organizations. Military organizations are traditionally conservative about new technologies, particularly if there are ‘tried and true’ technologies that are widely deployed and well understood. However, new and disruptive technologies can offer tactical and strategic advantages if introduced and absorbed properly into military organizations. Examples of this in the Ukraine war include drones (in the air, on land and at sea), new digitised command and control (C2) systems, as well as the application of AI in many intelligence and C2 functions. Much of the introduction of these new technologies has been driven from the bottom up in the Ukrainian military, often supported by crowd-funding initiatives.

This is not a bad thing. However, there is a need to balance this bottom-up innovation with top-down, strategic adaptation that takes battlefield lessons and rolls them out across an entire institution. To do this, there has to be a process of strategic prioritization – even in war there is still only so much money a military can be allocated by the state. Importantly, it is incumbent upon strategic leaders to ensure that new technologies have maximum impact by meshing them with new operational concepts and, if necessary, new kinds of organizations and units to employ them. This can only be led by those at the highest levels of a military institution because in addition to the functions described above, they must also communicate across the institution about the scope of changes being proposed and explain why they are required. This requires excellent communication skills from strategic leaders and their subordinates.

In concluding this section, there are many lessons on strategic leadership from the war in Ukraine. It behoves western military and national security institutions to study these lessons to constantly test their assumptions about what makes a good strategic leader and to improve their selection and development. It is, after all, a very challenging level of leadership, and success as a combat leader does not guarantee success in higher level leadership appointments. As the US Army War College Strategic Leadership Primer (4th edition) notes:  

Many leaders who are successful in early-mid career fail to make the second transition to the enterprise level effectively. Part of their struggle is typically tied to a lack of understanding of the strategic competitive environment where problems are far more complex and previous experiences, while important, are insufficient to solve multi-domain, joint warfighting level challenges. This environment often rewards clarity and punishes those who wait for certainty.

It is now time to turn to the final level of leadership to be examined in this article. It is a form of leadership that comprises the ‘entry point’ for most military leaders and for most, it is a crucible experience. It is also where bad leadership has the fastest feedback loop of all the levels examined in this study of leadership lessons from Ukraine. As such, it is time to explore the lessons of combat leadership from the war in Ukraine.

Combat leadership      

Just as strategic leadership was defined earlier in this article, so too must combat leadership be defined if we are to ensure the right lessons can be collected, assessed and absorbed by western military institutions. Combat leadership is that leadership that occurs in tactical units during wartime. These units might be the size of squad/section, they might be a company, ship or air force squadron or as large as an army or marine division or naval task force.

The common thread in combat leadership is that unlike the other two forms of leadership examined thus far, combat leaders and their subordinates are directly exposed to mortal danger. Therefore, as I alluded to above, it is the one form of leadership where there is a direct, rapid feedback loop on performance.

The complexities of military operations mean that military leadership must be taught, practiced and continually honed by institutions. Neglecting the development of military leaders has proven, throughout time, to have profoundly bad outcomes for military organisations, and sometimes, for their countries. Based on the overall lessons from the Ukraine war in the past 26 months, war’s enduring nature, and the ongoing changes in the character of war, I propose the following areas where Western military institutions can learn from Ukraine and develop the next generation of combat leaders.

Tactical Mastery.  A key element of any military leaders’ professional growth is building tactical acumen within their own service and specialisation. This might seem obvious, but the training programs of officer academies and training institutions often come under pressure to also include in their programs all kinds of superfluous training outcomes that have almost no relevance to the modern battlefield. As such, this emphasis on tactics, all arms integration at the lowest levels, giving succinct tactical orders and excellence in tactical operations is the first responsibility of every combat leader. It is an area that must be prioritized all other leadership concern in combat leaders. They must be effective combat leaders, who are able to achieve missions while also ensuring they do not place their personnel at unacceptable risk.

Tactics is cool, but many military institutions do not act like this. Senior service leaders must incentivise good tactical proficiency, for existing as well as new technologies and organisations. And it goes without saying that if you can’t win battles, you probably won’t win wars. Just ask the Russians.

Giving orders - a crucial combat leadership skill. Image: @3BrigaeeTSV at Twitter / X

Mission Command. Combat leaders need a good knowledge of tactics, and experience, to exercise mission command. Mission command, drawn from the German concept of auftragstaktik, is where subordinate leaders at various levels execute decentralised operations based on mission-type orders. This gives combat leaders flexibility in how they execute tactical operations, based on their superior knowledge of the local situation. It also ensures that military organizations can continue to fight with a common purpose when the enemy inevitably uses EW or some other method to break down the C2 systems of a formation in combat. The other integral element of true mission command, which is often overlooked, is that combat leaders must provide constant feedback up the chain of command to inform subsequent mission orders.

While not universal throughout the ground forces, there appears to be a greater degree of this approach in the Ukrainian military when compared to the Russian Army. The mission command approach to leadership will continue to be effective into the 21st century where distributed operations are likely to be the norm to preserve deployed combat power. It should be noted however that brand new combat leaders probably have less capacity for this style of command than more experienced combat leaders. It is one aspect of leadership where commanders have to make judgements about the capacity of individual leaders under their command and apply the right balance of mission command and directive control.

Human-machine integration. The war in Ukraine has seen an explosion in the use of robotic systems across the air, land and maritime domains. Indeed, there is a convergence in the application of robotic systems, big data, high-performance computing, and algorithms in the Ukrainian military which offers an array of lessons for different levels of leadership. Digitised command and control, with embedded AI, is an essential part of combat operations particularly in the planning and employment of drones as well as rapidly sharing data with fire units. Future leaders must be proficient in employing and integrating these systems not only in combat, but for logistics, reconnaissance, as well as disaster relief missions. Human-machine integration, while also a responsibility of military institutions, will remain a function of combat leaders as new technologies are rapidly inserted into combat units in the field. There may not always be time for higher level institutional integration activities so more junior leaders must be adept at human-machine integration.

Communication and Influence Skills. The ability to communicate is one of the most basic, yet crucial functions of leadership at every level. Combat leadership requires the ability to communicate with subordinates as well as superiors, and quickly convey tasks and intent.  The capacity to provide purpose, work with peers, generate influence and conduct information warfare, has always been important but has again been highlighted on the battlefield in the Ukraine War.

More broadly, Ukrainian combat leaders have developed a capacity for effective strategic communication through the use of social media. This has provided analysts and western publics with a more informed and gritty view of what is occurring in the war. While the Ukrainian approach to using social media appears to be more liberal than many other western military institutions, there is much that can be learned from allowing soldiers to communicate directly with their citizens about the conduct of modern war.

Creativity and Curiosity.  Ukrainian combat leaders have demonstrated creativity in many endeavours during this war, including the marriage of drones and artillery, new digital command and control systems and the conduct of influence activities. There has been an explosion of bottom-up innovation which has often been supported by crowd funding new technologies for units. Creativity is a foundation for new tactics and strategic approaches, and it should also influence combat leaders’ self-learning activities to build and sustain excellence in their profession. Combat leaders who demonstrate higher levels of curiosity are more likely to develop new tactics and organizational approaches when new problems or new technologies appear.

But this creativity must also be nurtured by senior leaders and institutional culture if it is to reach peak effectiveness. While this nurturing may not have always been the case in Ukraine, there is sufficient evidence from Ukraine and other conflicts that where senior leaders nurture creativity and invest in new innovations, those organizations are more likely to be successful in a rapidly evolving tactical and technological environment. Military institutions must have the right incentives to nurture curiosity in their leaders. This has not always been the case in many Western institutions. Despite the rapidly evolving capacity of computing power and artificial intelligence, creativity and ingenuity will be critical skills for future military leaders. 

Adaptive Combat Leaders. As has been seen throughout the 26 months since Russia’s large-scale invasion, the battlefield can change rapidly. The way the Ukrainians and Russians fought in the first weeks of the war is drastically different to how combat operations are conducted now. This is due to new technologies being introduced, the introduction of western weapons to the Ukrainian armed forces, and the changes in Russian tactics.  Tactical adaptation, the ability to learn and adapt to win battles, is a crucial skill for combat leaders. It must be practiced in peacetime in a training culture that uses failure as a mechanism for learning.

The development of combat leaders in the west, learning from the lessons of Ukraine, must also emphasise a working understanding of organisational theory, institutional cultures, and adaptation theory. They will require the cognitive capacity and mental agility to appreciate when the external environmental demands are changing, to know and understand the capacity for the military to adapt, and moreover, encapsulate the ability to lead that change at the decisive point. These are important battlefield, as well as senior leader, skills.

Strategic Foundations: Building Leaders for Modern Wars

While this examination of leadership in the Ukraine War has been divided into the political, strategic and combat function, there are some common requirements which provide the strategic basis for modern leaders involved in preparing for, and leading, their nations wars.

First, military institutions must build a professional foundation for all of their leaders. From initial training, future military leaders must establish a foundation for leadership in military institutions. This is a critical phase for inculcating the values, attitudes and behaviours demanded by military organisations. As observed in Ukraine, those institutions that pay attention to the basics of the profession – including ethical behaviour, military effectiveness and good leadership – are more likely to be successful on the battlefield and victorious in war.

Second, military institutions must improve at developing a broad technological literacy in all of its leaders. The Human-Robot-Algorithmic teaming examined above is a specific skill set within a broader need to maintain a knowledge existing, evolving and new technologies that are either used by the military or have an impact on the military. In Ukraine, soldiers and officers have applied their technological literacy to battlefield adaptation; this is essential at all levels of military endeavour. Military leaders must appreciate the challenges and opportunities of employing these technologies, and must pay constant attention to technological education, literacy and ethics. And political leaders must be well versed in relevant technologies when making policy decisions about either investing in the industries to develop them, or passing the legislation that regulates their employment.

Third, all leaders must provide purpose to those that they lead. Whether they are political leaders leading a nation at war or combat leaders on the front line, the provision of purpose is crucial. Purpose inspires citizens and soldiers and allows for the full expression innovation and different ideas in free societies. This purpose must also be communicated effectively, a skill not always in evidence in some contemporary leaders.

Finally, there is one particular lesson that is a common requirement for all leaders engaged in a war: they must know how to win. War is a competition, and we have again witnessed just how brutal this competitive environment is in Ukraine. As Clausewitz wrote “to overcome the enemy or disarm him – call it what you will – must always be the aim of warfare.” Military institutions must develop leaders who know how to win, but also how to do so within the values and ethical frameworks of their institution and the nation they serve. There are no silver medals in the military profession nor in war. You win, or you lose everything you hold dear. We should not shy away from using the term ‘win’ in modern discourse on competition and conflict or the strategic patience required to win wars. And nor should our political leaders.

Learning from Ukraine to Lead and Win

The most fundamental human skill in any institution is effective leadership. While important in civil and commercial entities, the value of good leadership in military affairs can literally be the difference between life and death. Those who are appointed to lead nations, military and national security institutions or directly command military personnel on operations must be able to lead and to influence. To be an effective leader, they must develop the skills and interpersonal approaches to convince others to do very difficult things in demanding and dangerous circumstances.

The aim of this article has been explore some of the lessons from Ukraine for the development of effective leaders in wartime. While this study was undertaken by viewing leadership through the lens of political, strategic and combat leaders, there are undoubtedly other frameworks which might be employed in studying leadership lessons from the war. And it goes without saying that every lesson identified in the two articles in this short series on leadership lessons from Ukraine could be the subject of entire books. They probably will be in due course.

The war in Ukraine has demonstrated, again, that good leadership matters. It has provided many lessons, although in almost every case, these are not new lessons. But whether it is has been the Ukrainian President or a squad leader in charge of combined arms assault, the skill of leaders has provided the essential foundation for success where it has occurred. And while some of the qualities of good leaders continue to evolve as they always have, the identification and nurturing of good leaders remains the core of effective modern institutions.