CMCE - BAM Joint Event: Voices on Leadership: Leaders and Effective Teams

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In the latest event in the Voices on Leadership series hosted by the Centre for Management Consulting Excellence (CMCE) in collaboration with the British Academy of Management (BAM) we are delighted to welcome Dr Anthony Bird to share his insights into the role of leaders in building effective teams.

Anthony Bird is a highly experienced British Royal Marine Commando with 21 years of service, which has seen him deploy extensively across the globe. Through the military, Ant has completed an MBA, and a PhD at the University of Glasgow, where he is now an Honorary Research Fellow. His doctoral research focused on emotional intelligence and emotional regulation strategies in high-performing teams.  Ant’s current role is as the Senior Researcher at the Leadership Institute Royal Navy (LIRN) based at the Navy Command Headquarters in Portsmouth. Ant is instrumental in facilitating high-impact research by bringing academics into the Naval service. Beyond this, he promotes emotional intelligence within the UK armed forces, and his expertise has seen him brief the head of the Royal Navy, the Minister of the Armed Forces, and members of both the Houses of Parliament and the House of Lords. Outside of the military, Ant’s company, Sigma Bird, provides consultancy to organisations seeking to implement emotional intelligence and emotional regulation as part of talent identification, recruitment, retention and self-care. 

This talk will examine the concrete actions leaders take in building team capacity, from attending to cognitive ability, emotional intelligence, and personality in team construction, to actively decentralising decision-making, authority, and risk-holding. Central to this is the leader's oscillation between management and leadership, knowing when to provide structure and when to enable emergence, when to hold accountability and when to distribute it. These leadership actions manifest differently across sectors and roles, yet all require taking responsibility for creating conditions in which individuals evolve, and teams strengthen.