Military leadership is based on traditional leadership patterns and the unique nature of the military environment. Many qualities combine to make a military leader successful. Among the most important are professional knowledge, decision, courage, humanity, and equity. The main elements in military leadership being used by senior staff are consideration, delegation, loyalty, selflessness, and character. Most of the senior military leaders monitor the group’s progress against norms and objectives; get back to basics and keep the team on track.
The designated military leader accepts responsibility as a leader but does not dominate the staff. As the activity of the group is observed, it is clear that leadership shifts from time to time, depending on the circumstances. The issue is not who controls, but how to get the job done. In military leadership, this includes not only the development of effective self-management skills: transforming; integrating, and mobilizing. To provide a broader perspective to military leadership and the lead role, and to provide a link between the key leadership functions of transforming, integrating, and mobilizing and the nature of work itself, a hierarchy of activity.
Such organization development is also, in part, a consequence of an appropriately effective leadership style, whereby the leader will frequently be operating in the realms of high emotional intelligence and, in his or her interaction and communication with others. If a leader is less than competent and effective in any one of the core functions of transforming, integrating, and mobilizing – or is operating and communicating at inappropriate levels, then the results will be apparent in the development, or otherwise, of the organization, its culture and especially its day-to-day operational ‘climate’.
The main qualities and tools I would incorporate in my leadership style are self-confidence and personal image. Developing, sharing, and communicating visions – as aspirational pictures of an organization’s desired future shape – are seen as key functions of the leader’s role. Moreover, they are also presented in this chapter as significant aspects of the context in which coaching and development need to take place.
I would create a unique leadership style based upon personal authenticity, which emerges, once again, as a major determinant of both people’s fulfillment – and corporate success. Against this, an understanding of the differences between ‘work’ and ‘nonwork’ behavior and a developing ability to look for and recognize the latter, especially, help to give a military officer the necessary head start, in diagnosing issues for what they are, and helping people to work through them more effectively.
A key aspect of the military leader’s decision-making style, in bringing about productive synergy, is the ability to create opportunities for dialogue and shared reflection with others which lead to joint ownership of problems, solutions, and decisions. Imperatives which pressure leaders to make decisions, within the context of crucial tactical, as well as strategic, cannot be ignored (Taylor & Rosenbach 2000).
If I were E-9 (Sergeant Major) I would combine two styles authoritative and coaching leadership. The role of coach, more than ever, may be viewed as a crucial one in management and leadership. The need for common understanding shared expectations and coherent action becomes paramount.
The combination of increasing uncertainty and need for greater cross-functionalism and multi-disciplinary responses, which already characterize so much of military activity, require both: the role of the visionary and transformational leader involves identifying which combination of behaviors is likely to produce the most effective results within changing conditions of high uncertainty – but also, comparably high opportunity. Such a role, too, inevitably takes the leader into the role of coach to his or her people, in helping them to develop not only requisite competencies but also the versatility and acuity necessary to predict, ‘read’ and respond to the changing scenes and needs of the military environment.
Usually, 0-3 (Captain) is the formal leader of the team or group who tends to play the two ‘structural authority’ roles of an inward and outward leader. Normally at least two other members of the group will tend to play, naturally – according to temperament, predisposition, and competencies. However, situations tend to throw up the necessary form of leadership– and hence appropriate leader – so that the four leadership roles tend to be taken up by those best equipped and most suited to deal with them. Developing a critical mass of committed, supportive followers would seem to be a major task for team leaders to build up the requisite level of functional maturity within the team.
If I were 0-9 (Lieutenant General) I would adopt a more authoritative leadership style based on personal charisma and strict delegation of authority. Particularly within the empowerment – delegation nexus, initiating leader styles and reciprocal subordinate receiving styles may emerge as determinants of the successful leader’s contribution to such empowered decision making then becomes principally one of providing context, perspective, stimulus, and challenge, to enable willing synergy to function with maximum effect and hence produce maximum creative output, within a group. For this rank, effective leadership requires a comparable response of coordinated and mobilized collective effort, where there are multifarious talents, preparedness to take initiative, and personal accountability.
Bibliography
Taylor, R. L., Rosenbach, W. E. 2000, Military Leadership: In Pursuit of Excellence. Westview Press Inc.