Man I'm glad I've just bought a wide screen laptop, gives me a better perspective on some of the massive egos being stroked on this thread. I guess some people go through life loudly DEMANDING their respect by virtue of their position, most others just quietly and humbly go about EARNING that respect every day.
To me it seems that being a captain brings out the best and the worst in people, the best in about 98% of people and the worst in the rest. Before all you old timers start burning out the batteries in your pacemakers, I don't think anyone here seriously is questioning the fact that a captain who is
(1) highly experienced, WHO IS ALSO
(2) properly socially adjusted
(3) conscientious with SOPs and
(4) approachable with all crew members
that kind of captain is indeed at the top of the aviation tree, and yes Rainboe you are completely right in your assertion that FO's will do well to role model on that kind of individual and learn from them.
I've just recently stepped from a spell of several years in the LHS with a regional and I'm now RHS on a medium jet. Woop de doo. Am I somehow less of a pilot than I was before? I have absolutely no qualms in admitting, looking back on my time with my previous company, that the standard of piloting in many many cases was higher from the guy in the RHS. Partly caused by the fact that so many of the good young pilots left and went to bigger things before they got command, but the main problem was several highly experienced long term captains who can be politely described as 'accidents waiting to happen'. Total non-adherence to SOPS, minima busting, lack of situational awareness, non briefing of approaches whatsoever even with inexperienced FO's, utter utter laziness with regard to basic aviation discipline such as tuning and identing navaids etc, the list goes on and on. Basically people who think the rules no longer apply to them because they've been flying the same old simple old aircraft on the same old route for 30 years. Admittedly they tend to be found more amongst the smaller and turboprop operators but they're out there, make no mistake.
I do wonder 411A, with regard to your cooler-than-thou assertion that the one guy who complained about you got demoted and spent 5 more years in the RHS - you do appear to be under the impression that that incident somehow proves something about the infallibility of your own judgment or captains in general, perhaps you'd care to elaborate? I can certainly relate a story from when I was an FO, there was a recently hired DE captain who'd scared the living bejeezus out of several of us in the short time he'd been there, a quiet unofficial word was had with another skipper whom the lads trusted and respected, and he took the matter higher - the 'turkey' was flown with unannounced by a standards captain who was so horrified by what he saw that he went to management and threatened to resign on the spot if that same 'turkey' of a captain was ever allowed to set foot in a company aircraft again either in the left or right seat. The guy was in fact sacked the next day and he's still barred from the premises as far I know.
Now Rainboe I'm all in favour of "adapting to different techniques" but ultimately I'd rather that we all had the same techniques, and that I learn my techniques from a TRAINING captain who has formally demonstrated their skill in passing on knowledge in a company approved manner, (and tends to be a lot more humble about how they teach it)! Most line captains make lousy trainers. There's a very fine line we have to walk sometimes with 'adapting to different techniques' of our fellow pilots, I'm sure you don't mean to say that FOs should have to sit there and tacitly endorse the behaviour patterns of someone who's rude, lazy or who likes to creatively interpret the SOPs.
If there's one thing I have learned in my time about how to deal with prickly characters and prima donna captains, it's to stay on the edge of my seat because invariably if the flight is going to turn to rats it's when someone with a big "I'm the Captain" ego trip is on board.