Level Up Leadership

Tom Frearson
5 minutes ago
5 min read

Why the best leaders train beyond their own role — and why everyone in the team is responsible for the bigger picture.

The Principle

In most organisations, people are trained to do their job. Their role. Their responsibilities.

And that's where it stops.

But in the Royal Marines, we were trained differently. We were always trained to the rank above — in navigation, communications, weapons, tactics, planning. Everything.

The obvious reason is straightforward: if the person above you is killed or injured, you step straight into their role without hesitation. There's no handover. No briefing. No time.

But the real value of training above your rank goes much deeper than contingency planning.

Understanding What's Around You

When you understand the role above you — and alongside you, and below you — something shifts.

You stop seeing your job in isolation.

You start understanding the pressures, responsibilities, and decisions that the people around you are dealing with. Not theoretically. Practically.

That changes how you communicate. It changes how you support. It changes how you challenge. And it changes how you follow.

When you genuinely understand what someone's role demands, you can empathise with the weight of their decisions. You can anticipate what they need before they ask. You can offer support that's actually useful rather than well-meaning but misplaced.

And critically, you can hold them accountable — not from ignorance, but from understanding. You know what the standard looks like because you've been trained in it. You know what right looks like because you've practised it yourself.

That's not undermining leadership. That's strengthening it.

Leader-Leader, Not Leader-Follower

This connects directly to the leader-leader philosophy — the idea that high-performing teams don't operate with one person thinking and everyone else following.

Everyone thinks. Everyone is responsible. Everyone understands the mission well enough to act with initiative rather than waiting for instruction.

David Marquet explores this brilliantly in Turn the Ship Around, which I've reviewed previously. He transformed a struggling US Navy submarine by replacing the leader-follower model with a leader-leader approach — requiring his crew to say "I intend to" rather than waiting to be told what to do.

The Royal Marines operate on the same principle, though the language is different.

You don't just know your job. You know the job above you, beside you, and below you. And you're expected to contribute to the bigger picture, not just execute your own piece.

Check Nav

One of the clearest examples of this in action came during my Mountain Leader assessment.

The assessment runs over three days and two nights. Usually, four candidates with one assessor. Day and night, you navigate across mountainous terrain — scrambling, ridge work, wild camps, camp craft — while being continuously assessed.

At any point, the assessor will turn to one person and say: "Take me here." They'll point to a location on the map. You've got a couple of minutes to work out the distance, the time, and the route. Then you lead.

When you arrive, you say: "We're here."

Not "I think we're here." Not "I'm pretty sure." You commit.

The assessor gives nothing away. No nod. No correction. No emotional response. Just: "Thank you."

Then they turn to everyone else in the group — the ones who were following — and ask each of them: "Tell me where we are."

Every single person is expected to know.

Then the assessor picks someone else to lead the next leg. And the cycle continues — bouncing between candidates, day and night, for three days straight.

The point isn't just to test the navigator.

It's to test everyone.

Because in a real situation, you don't switch off just because someone else is leading. You check nav. You maintain awareness. You know where you are, where you've been, and where you're going — regardless of whether you're the one at the front.

If the navigator makes a mistake, you catch it. If they go down, you take over. If they're right, you confirm it. Either way, you're always engaged.

That's leader-leader in its purest form. Nobody is a passenger.

How I Apply This Today

This principle didn't stay in the military for me. It's how I run every team and every event at Be Fearsome.

For our big events, everyone on the team has access to the full event plan. Not just their section. The full plan. I want every person to understand what's happening across the whole operation — not just the bit they're responsible for.

My operations manager in particular always knows what I'm doing, what the plan is, and what my role is within it. That way, if he needed to, he could step straight in. And because he understands what I'm doing, he's constantly pre-empting my next move — anticipating what's needed before I ask for it.

That doesn't happen by accident. It happens because he has visibility of the bigger picture and the initiative to act on it.

When you find people like that — people who get it, who think beyond their own role, who check nav without being asked — you hold on to them.

You surround yourself with them. You make sure they feel valued. You make sure they know how important they are to the operation.

Because people like that are rare. And they're invaluable.

The worst thing a leader can do is take those people for granted. The best thing a leader can do is recognise what they bring, invest in them, and make sure they stay.

Why This Matters Beyond the Military

Most teams in business don't operate this way.

People stay in their lane. They know their role but have limited understanding of what sits above, below, or alongside them. They defer upward by default. They wait for direction rather than contributing to the bigger picture.

And when things go wrong — when a leader is absent, overwhelmed, or making a poor decision — nobody steps in. Not because they don't care, but because they've never been trained or expected to understand the wider context.

That creates fragile teams. Teams that function well when conditions are stable and fall apart when they're not.

The alternative is to build teams where:

Everyone understands the mission clearly enough to act with initiative.

People are trained and encouraged to understand roles beyond their own.

Challenging upward is expected, not punished — because people have the knowledge to do it constructively.

Following is active, not passive — you're always checking nav, always engaged, always contributing.

Leadership doesn't sit with one person. It's distributed across the team.

The Takeaway

Training to the rank above isn't just a military concept. It's a leadership development principle that applies to every organisation.

When people understand what's happening around them — not just within their own role — teams become more resilient, more adaptable, and more effective under pressure.

And the question worth asking is simple:

Does your team only know how to do their own job? Or do they understand enough about the bigger picture to step up, support, challenge, and lead — whenever it's needed?

Because the teams that perform best under pressure aren't the ones with the strongest individual leader.

They're the ones where everyone is trained to lead.