Our latest Culture Series event explored what resilience really means for leaders, with candid, practical insights from former specialist military unit commander Ash Alexander-Cooper OBE.
Leaders in the legal sector are facing pressure from every angle. Technology is moving faster than most firms can adapt, workloads are relentless, and the people they lead expect more from them than ever. In that environment, resilience is starting to look more like a strategic necessity than a corporate buzzword.
That was the backdrop to our recent in-conversation evening with Ash Alexander-Cooper OBE – former specialist military unit commander, world championship athlete, international musician and author of the newly published The Mindful Soldier – which we co-hosted with RPC before a packed room of managing partners and senior leaders.
Below are five key insights from the conversation.
1. Think of resilience as a bank account
We all have a resilience bank account, but nobody tells us the balance. Ash compared it to real-life finance: some people are fortunate enough to start life with a healthy amount in reserve, others have to build it up over time as they face the challenges life throws at them.
The difficulty? Your ‘resilience balance’ gets depleted over time and nobody tells you how much you have in reserve. That’s why people who have been through genuinely difficult times can be broken by even the smallest of challenges that follow.
The upside, however, is that resilience can be learned, collected, and consciously topped up. Sleep, community, kindness and humour all add to the balance. As does stopping to fully appreciate the difficulties you have overcome instead of rushing straight on to the next challenge.
Learning your limits, investing in the habits that top you up, and taking stock of what you’ve already come through will all help to keep the balance healthy for whatever adversity is yet to come.
2. Life is complex, not complicated
Lawyers love structure: precedent, careful preparation, and predictability. But life doesn’t follow the rules, can’t be predicted, and no amount of preparation guarantees the outcome.
Yet Ash offered a simple, alternative way to look at this unpredictability: don’t treat the unwritten future as something to fear – see it merely as a blank page. If the path isn’t yet set, you have the freedom to shape it.
3. Vulnerability is a leadership strength
The best leaders aren’t the ones who pretend to know everything. They’re the ones comfortable saying “I don’t know”, who surround themselves with people who do, and who are open enough about their own struggles to give everyone else permission to talk about theirs.
Effective leaders also model the behaviour they want to see, such as taking leave properly, protecting sleep and recovery, and staying visible and connected to the people doing the work, rather than leading from behind a closed door.
4. High-performing teams rest on four foundations
Drawing on his experience leading elite teams, Ash set out four foundations for any team aspiring to high-performance: trust, common purpose, ‘shared consciousness’ (making sure everyone has the context), and empowered execution – pushing decisions down to the lowest appropriate level.
He also offered a simple exercise for any leader: write down every decision you made this week, then ask honestly which of them could have been delegated.
5. Keep the human in the loop
When asked about his view on AI’s role in leadership, Ash described its real value as cutting through the noise: it can highlight what matters, track your commitments, and help you prioritise. The former soldier and current Head of International Public Sector at OpenAI was clear, however, on his red line for using the technology – the decisions, and the judgement behind them, must always stay human.
A final thought
Ash closed with the message that ran through the whole evening: Everyone is carrying something, and so is everyone they work with. Or as he put it: “Life is messy, and we’re all on our own journey. Be someone that people feel they can come to.”
Our thanks to Ash for his openness and generosity, to Antony Sassi and the RPC team for co-hosting the event, and to our wonderful audience.
You can purchase a copy of “The Mindful Soldier”, Ash’s new book on resilience, online. All author royalties go to veterans’ charities.
