What My Battalion Taught Me About the Boardroom

I had the privilege of commanding an Air Defence Regiment for two years. Before that, I had spent nearly two decades in the Corps of Army Air Defence, learning to make decisions within the narrow, unforgiving window between a threat appearing on the radar and its becoming real.

Command teaches you a great deal about weapons, drills and operational readiness. But its deepest lessons are about people, about fear and courage, mistakes and forgiveness, grief and resilience.

Looking back, much of what I carried with me after leaving uniform had little to do with missiles. It had everything to do with meetings, difficult conversations and the responsibility of leading people through uncertain moments.

Two incidents from those years have stayed with me. I often return to them when I think about leadership in the corporate world.

The Watch

I was once speaking firmly to a Junior Commissioned Officer who had made a mistake. It was not a crushing error, but it was serious enough to require correction. As his Commanding Officer, it was my responsibility to address it clearly and directly.

Halfway through the admonition, I noticed that he kept glancing at his watch.

It annoyed me.

It was a formal ritual, and he appeared to be checking the time. Unable to hold myself, I stopped and asked him rather sharply why he kept looking at his watch.

He met my eyes. He was neither defiant nor embarrassed. He simply said:

His answer caught me completely off guard.

Over the years, I have returned to that sentence more times than I can count. He was not being insolent or dismissing the seriousness of his mistake. He was reminding both of us that this difficult moment was only one moment in a much longer relationship and career.

He would listen to the correction, learn from it and move forward. And so would I.

In boardrooms, we often treat a missed quarter, a failed initiative or a difficult performance conversation as though it permanently defines a person or a team. Leaders who lose perspective can end up at one of two extremes: they become so reluctant to hurt people that they avoid honest conversations, or so severe in their criticism that people become afraid to bring them bad news.

That JCO taught me that accountability and empathy are not opposites.

You can take a mistake seriously without making the person feel that they have become the mistake. You can hold someone to a high standard while also reminding them that they are capable of learning, recovering and doing better.

After that day, every meaningful correction I gave carried an unspoken second sentence:

The Raising Day

The second lesson came through a much more painful experience.

One of our jawans lost his five-year-old son. The child had been unwell for a long time and died on the battalion premises, surrounded by a community that had watched the family live with his illness for months.

Four days later, we were due to celebrate the battalion’s Raising Day, the most important event on our annual calendar.

Months of preparation had gone into it. Money had been spent, support had been sought from other units, and families had made plans to attend. Everything was ready.

And yet, celebrating felt deeply wrong.

A father from our own regiment had just lost his child. His family was living through a grief that most of us could scarcely imagine. How could music, ceremony and celebration continue as though nothing had happened?

We seriously considered cancelling the event altogether. But cancellation also carried a cost, not merely financial, but emotional and organisational. A military unit draws strength from shared traditions and from the belief that, even in difficult times, it continues to move forward together.

Neither option felt entirely right.

Eventually, we chose a middle path. The Raising Day went ahead, but in a quieter and more subdued form. There was no loud music and no triumphant tone. A memorial service for the little boy became part of the gathering rather than something conducted separately and out of sight.

Everyone attended.

The jawan stood before his regimental family, not forgotten at the edge of its celebration as his son was remembered.

I cannot claim that we found the perfect answer. Perhaps there was no perfect answer available. Leadership sometimes demands that we make a decision when every option carries pain. But we refused to accept a false choice between caring for the individual and preserving the institution.

Boardrooms face versions of this choice more often than we acknowledge: the launch deadline and the employee facing a personal crisis; the celebration of business results and the muted pain of colleagues who have been laid off; the shareholder announcement and the human consequences hidden behind its carefully chosen language.

Grief does not clear its calendar to accommodate an organisation’s plans. Nor can an organisation always bring everything to a halt when life becomes difficult.

The challenge for a leader is to create space for both realities.

That experience taught me that the answer is not always to celebrate as planned or cancel everything. Sometimes the more humane choice is to reshape the occasion so that it can hold both achievement and sorrow, two sides of the same coin.

What Stayed With Me

I did not leave the Army with leadership frameworks. I left with stories, memories, and incidents that still guide me.

In difficult moments, I often tell myself: This too shall pass! And then I ask, Will this still matter a year from now? Then, what would it take to protect everyone’s dignity while making this decision?

A battalion and a business may appear to have little in common. One prepares for a war it hopes never to fight; the other competes in markets it hopes to win.

But beneath the uniforms, designations and organisational charts, both are communities of people. Those people need to trust that the person leading them will speak honestly, hold them to a meaningful standard, and not abandon either them or the mission when circumstances become difficult.

A JCO glancing at his watch taught me the importance of perspective.

A grieving father standing before his regiment taught me that institutions do not become weaker when they make space for human pain. They become more worthy of the loyalty they ask from their people.

But the essential understanding remains the same:

Every moment, every incident, is a part of a much larger canvas. Give it too much importance, and you lose the larger picture.

Empathy is neither black nor white. Deadlines and personal crises often go hand in hand. We have to make space for both. The show has to go on.