Changing the culture: Royal Navy vulnerable to promoting toxic leaders, says First Sea Lord

The Royal Navy, like all military organisations, assesses the skills of its people and promotes them accordingly.

Or that's what should happen.

At the First Sea Lord's conference in Portsmouth Guildhall, General Sir Gwyn Jenkins cast doubt on how the Royal Navy promotes its leaders.

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 "I have a real issue with the way that we assess our needs at the moment," he told the audience. 

"I think we are very subjective in our leadership assessment tools. It's very top down. How your superior feels about the way you present yourself largely dictates how you get reported upon."

Gen Sir Gwyn believes this can lead to the wrong people being promoted.

"[This] makes us very vulnerable to promoting toxic leaders, if we're not careful, who, by their nature, are very persuasive up even while they're damaging below."

The First Sea Lord announced that several trials have been running with the goal of identifying different ways to assess leadership, as well as collecting data to prove these individuals are top-notch leaders.

The result of these trials will be published around April 2026, but the conclusions have, so far, been encouraging.

"We've already got a couple of really powerful vignettes on the negative side, where we've identified leaders who are, again, getting really good reports, [but] appear to be having quite corrosive effect on their people.

"That's a really interesting insight. And on the flip side, [there are] people who aren't getting the outstanding reports but appear to be creating exceptional team environments."

The audience at the talk was made up of senior non-commissioned officers, Royal Navy captains and Royal Marine colonels.

The First Sea Lord believes these are the people who deliver rather than those who organise.

The need for the Royal Navy to prepare for warfighting was also discussed, with Gen Sir Gwyn bluntly stating:

"I genuinely believe war is a possibility. I really hope it doesn't come. It would be horrendous for all of us for a bunch of reasons, but our professional job is to be ready."