On July 1, 2010, the Swedish Armed Forces made the biggest organizational change in over 100 years when the mandatory military service (conscription) was deactivated and replaced with an all-volunteer force. With this, a whole new profession was introduced in Sweden, the employed soldier. It has now been a decade since the soldiers and their squad leaders were introduced as a professional category and since 2016 the group leader is also officially a part of the Armed Forces leadership hierarchy together with the officers. The purpose of the study has been to study how the squad leaders, in terms of their new professional role, view leadership and how they experience the leadership of their closest officers and how it affects their leadership and job satisfaction.

The study was conducted with an interview method with six squad leaders that work in the same military unit in the Armed Forces. Their experiences and views on leadership have been compared with the leadership model of Gerry Larsson (2006) (which is the same as the officers are educated in) and the theory of destructive leadership by Maria Fors-Brandebo, Sofia Nilsson and Gerry Larsson (2018).

The results of this study show that the squad leader, for the most part, have the same view of leadership and desire the same qualities and competencies as in Larsson's leadership model but with the exception that they rated the trait humbleness highly in good leadership. Humbleness is a new trait not found in any of the theories. The study also shows that the squad leaders have to adapt their own leadership both consciously and unconsciously to their officer’s leadership in order to keep the job satisfaction and motivation high for their soldiers. The study also shows that squad leader’s trust in the officer and their work motivation is highly influenced by the officer’s leadership.