Air University Review, March-April 1982

A Response

What is a leader’s job anyway? To answer this crucial question, one must distinguish between the concept of leadership as an organizational function and leadership as a personal quality. The first concept is concerned with decision-making powers in an organization and the second with personal characteristics. This discussion focuses on both dimensions and provides a framework for examining the qualities, abilities, and situations that enhance the performance of leaders.

As suggested by Major Benton, management and leadership are often considered the same activities, but the two concepts differ in the sense that leaders focus on people and managers deal with things. Field Marshal Sir William Slim, a soldiers’ general who commanded British forces in one of the epic campaigns of World War II, recognized this distinction when he stated that "managers are necessary; leaders are essential." In the judgment of this writer, managers are concerned primarily with affairs, but men and women are led, not managed. Viewed in this context, management and leadership embody entirely different traits, and both are essential to the Air Force mission.

Managers relate to people in the sense of controlling acquisition and use of human skills and associated experiences, and they develop and refine skills and experience through education, training, and job application. But they do not manage motivation, productivity, and personal aspirations, and they do not manage human values. Development and support of these qualities are clearly leadership responsibilities.

As a result of austere defense budgets and apparent public indifference in recent years toward the international threat, it seemed almost natural in some quarters to emphasize management rather than leadership. Proliferation of management techniques in the business world and increasing demands for management expertise in the military profession led some Air Force members to view management as the sole function of Air Force leaders. This article recognizes the need for skilled managers in the military and suggests that the Air Force currently recognizes the need to focus more sharply on the qualities of effective leadership.

A familiar sign of the times is the outcry for compelling, creative military and civilian leadership. Most Air Force people understand the management concept, but some people experience problems in studying leadership because, conceptually, it is more difficult to develop and apply in everyday job relationships. In both a practical and theoretical sense, leadership is one of the most discussed and least understood subjects in the modern technological environment. Both military members and civilians tend to view leadership in much the same perspective as their health: they understand it best when they do not have it and feel a need for it.

General Lew Allen, Jr., Chief of Staff, has stated repeatedly that the most persistent concerns of Air Force leaders in the 1980s will be the recruitment, training, and retention of talented people needed to fulfill the Air Force mission. In other words, positive leadership is necessary for the Air Force to acquire and retain the kind of people needed in a modern fighting force. Thus, Major Benton quite appropriately states that leadership is vital for achieving the Air Force mission and that a cohesive, disciplined, and purposeful Air Force is impossible without effective leadership.

Benton suggests that most people have observed successful and unsuccessful leaders in action. But the critical elements that distinguish successful and unsuccessful leaders are matters of major importance to anyone who manages, develops, or conducts programs in leadership education. The professional military education (PME) curriculum pursued at Air University generally recognizes leadership as the art of influencing and directing people in a manner that wins their obedience, confidence, respect, and enthusiastic cooperation in achieving a common objective. Thus, a leader is a person who applies principles and techniques that ensure motivation, discipline, productivity, esprit, and effectiveness.

Considered in the broadest context, people exercise leadership any time they attempt to change or modify the behavior of an individual or a group of individuals. In effect, leaders exercise interpersonal influence through their persuasive power and acceptance by followers in given situations. Thus, leaders must first understand the nature of power, for leadership is a special form of power exercised in relationships with people. To enhance these relationships, they must fuse organizational and personal needs in a way that permits people and organizations to reach peaks of mutual achievement and satisfaction. James MacGregor Burns states that "leadership is nothing if not linked to a collective purpose."

Although effective leaders are goal-oriented, they must have the necessary communication skills to express and interpret the mission clearly so that their followers can easily understand and accept it. The leader’s primary task is to focus the attention of people on logical sequences of actions required to perform their jobs effectively and efficiently.

Some people believe that leadership can be taught, but others contend that an individual can be taught only about leadership. If one perceives education as a change in behavior through experience and effective leadership as a special kind of behavior applicable in given situations, then leadership can indeed be taught. Despite the complexity of the leadership role, people can develop and learn leadership skills just as lawyers, writers, test pilots, or engineers learn their skills, but leading and learning to lead require not only intensive study and application but superior inner strength, character, and personal commitment as well.

The all-volunteer force underscores the need for leadership skills that ensure creativity, efficiency, productivity, and vitality in a military environment constantly faced with the challenge of doing more with less. To meet this challenge, effective Air Force leaders must know their people, their problems, interests, and needs. And today’s leader must understand that young recruits are better educated, more sophisticated, more politically aware, and more conscious of the limits of military discipline than their predecessors. As a rule, these young men and women are not motivated by intimidation; they must be led rather than driven. The obvious responsibility of the leader is to instill in these people a sense of purpose, duty, loyalty, and emotional linkage to the Air Force as an honored profession. General David C. Jones, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, describes the responsibility in these words: "Lay the rules out clearly, insist on compliance, lead by example, and manage (lead) your people with dignity, respect, fairness and individual consideration you yourself would want to be shown."

Good leaders demand much of themselves and their subordinates. Their style is a careful blend of caring, dignity, discipline, and self-confidence rooted in unshakable dedication to their people, their organization, and the Air Force mission. The word caring has special meaning for effective leaders, for, with caring, they must comprehend and negotiate a special mixture of frustration and difficulty. All too often, people in leadership positions concern themselves with the quantity of work performed by subordinates rather than the quality of their products. True leaders recognize no substitutes for hard, productive work, intense concentration, and willingness to assume total responsibility, but they also recognize that they cannot achieve their goals alone. They must develop and recognize their subordinates if they expect to excel over an extended period, and they must require their people to make their own decisions.

Education in military leadership should reflect a historical perspective in the sense that it relates the lives and accomplishments of successful military leaders in the past—Washington, Lee, Eisenhower, Patton, Nimitz, and Bradley. Present and future leaders can link theory with practice by reflecting on the lives and accomplishments of these and other leaders, such as Carl Spaatz, Hoyt Vandenberg, Thomas Power, and Curtis LeMay. They were outstanding Air Force leaders whose contributions should be continuing sources of study.

Winston Churchill, Britain’s World War II prime minister and one of the great leaders of all time, employed principles of strong and decisive leadership in guiding his people through the dark days of World War II. Although he was an able manager, his greatness stemmed from his ability to motivate and inspire people in a common cause. He had more to offer than mere planning, programming, and managing by objectives; he offered blood, toil, sweat, and tears and gave freely of himself in mobilizing his countrymen for war.

A key element of leadership is the decision-making process, and military educators can always improve their methods of analysis and decision-making. In this connection, educators should strive to improve techniques for interpreting and presenting information so that student officers can determine more readily what information is available to them and what they can do with it. This does not suggest that officers should be taught how to think; they should already possess that skill. But they need to improve their skills in making analytical assessments of huge amounts of information from numerous and varied sources.

Leadership classes and laboratories should also address the proven qualities of successful leaders: sense of responsibility, technical and professional competence, emotional stability, enthusiasm, listening, self-image, integrity, recognition, flexibility, sense of humor, risk-taking, communicative skills, vision, courage, energy, perseverance, and dedication. The message is clear. Leaders are not given esteem with their rank or assignments; they earn it by studying and exercising the qualities of leadership. Admittedly, the development of quality leadership is not an easy task, but the sense of personal satisfaction and achievement gained from efficient mission performance is ample reward.

Of all the qualities that characterize effective military leaders, the most important is moral and ethical leadership. General of the Army Omar Bradley expressed the idea in these terms:

We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount. The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.

If General Bradley’s life and experiences are valid sources of guidance, leadership curricula should address, in no uncertain terms, the moral, uplifting, and transcending aspects of leadership. The objective should be a leadership of purpose, broad direction, and strong commitment aimed at better appreciation and understanding of enduring Air Force values. Students, faculties, and staffs should search together for answers to such questions as these: Who are the leaders? Who are the followers? What are the leaders’ purposes? And what do they achieve?

Leadership is obviously a dynamic concern in today’s military community. What, then, is the problem? Major Benton asserts that, basically, the problem is not the quality of leadership but the environment in which it must be practiced. He argues, with some merit, that emphasis on managerialism and strict compliance with rules that limit the exercise of personal judgment can retard the development of effective leaders. In his view, the system is the problem rather than the solution. Young officers need to serve in an environment that recognizes human fallibility. They cannot develop innovative skills unless their seniors are willing to accept mistakes and show how to avoid them.

Stability of assignments is closely linked to the problem of leadership development. One can assume from Benton’s article that longer tours of duty would help officers grow in their assigned responsibilities, learn from their mistakes, and use experiences gained to improve themselves. In short tours, every mistake is critical in a system that forces officers to function as atomic-powered supermen (on paper at least) if they expect to compete for their next promotion. The greater the stability of officers in assigned positions, the greater the likelihood they will develop a better understanding of their people, their jobs, and their organizations.

Major Benton’s observation that a more positive environment will enhance leadership suggests modification of certain current practices. Cosmetic qualities, such as attractiveness, toughness, and decisiveness, are important, but leaders and managers should focus more on ability to perform and the capacity to share successes in getting things done. Thus, Benton’s assessment implies an environment that emphasizes people and their importance.

Since human beings run Air Force organizations, leaders should become more skilled in motivating members of the team to reach back into their physical and mental resources and walk the extra mile. They need to function more as teachers in relating to their subordinates, but they often appear as taskmasters rather than mentors to junior officers. Military and civilian leaders alike go to great lengths to conceal their weaknesses and portray a know-it-all image, in part, perhaps, because they feel threatened by their juniors. A common complaint among junior officers is that senior officers refuse to listen to them.

Major Benton suggests that the Air Force should do a better job in emphasizing leadership, but how can it promote leadership in an environment that places a premium on management skills? A simple illustration can signal the possibilities. It can demand more skills in planning and conducting meetings, especially in developing skills of listening and combining different points of view into acceptable conclusions and generalizations. When one considers that most officers and equivalent civilians spend approximately one-third to one-half of their duty time in meetings that tend to be less than productive, PME programs and other educational activities should provide more opportunities for developing skills in this area.

Most Air Force leaders have been successful in particular disciplines or functional elements, and they have been promoted to senior leadership positions on the basis of this success. However, once they gain these positions, they often fail to recognize that they no longer function in narrow areas of specialization. Their challenge is to build effective organizations that can continue to function without them. As leaders, they must play hard ball and insist on disciplined organizations, but they must also excel in satisfying human needs. Senior officers can invest more energy in relating to younger officers, training them carefully, and encouraging their commitment to the higher aims, purposes, and goals of the Air Force. This commitment should be undergirded by an ardent sense that the Air Force is a special place to work and that Air Force personnel serve America in a very special way.

To enlarge on Major Benton’s fundamental premise, the writer suggests that leadership stems from the opportunity, ability, and willingness to exercise judgment. It is a person’s image, but it also involves a discipline that can be and must be taught. As mentioned earlier, Air University plays a key role in this area of instruction. But it can extend its effort to encourage members of the profession to believe that service in the Air Force is not just another job and that officership is a repository of special trust and responsibility. Research and instruction should emphasize that Air Force service is categorically different from civilian occupations.

The significance of Major Benton’s article lies in its timing and content. The writer agrees with the premise that the Air Force should conduct significant new research into the need for more leadership in the current management enviromment. Major Benton’s study provides a stimulus for new thought in clarifying perceptions of leadership versus managerialism. People who teach and practice leadership are often ill- equipped in the sense that they lack sufficient theory and supporting empirical evidence to broaden their perceptions of leadership. Benton raises more questions than he answers, but he certainly encourages further research, instruction, and dialogue on the subject.

Dr. Richard I. Lester is Director, Educational Plans/Programs and Educational Advisor, Leadership and Management Development Center, Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama.

The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.

Air & Space Power Home Page | Feedback? Email the Editor