NUFC,
Sadly I think that you are right from our side of the fence, but from my experience on operations (which is where leader is really required, and not the civilian, LEAN style politcally correct 'management') it has been the Pongos that have really impressed me. Yes they do climb up themselves at times, and yes they can be incredibly arrogant, but Brig Butler (Commander 16 Air Assault Brigade) and Lt Col Tootal (Commanding Officer, 3 Para) were truly inspirational when the rounds started going down range in Afghanistan only 1 month after Swiss Des had said that not a shot would be fired (I can name them as they have already been named in official press releases etc).
Talk about honest, direct, no faff Joint Mission Briefings and also keeping a calm and cool head when the plan started to go wrong/need dynamic adaptation, then these 2 certainly rank up there in my books. On some of the missions we knew that there was a real chance that we could be shot down (opposed SH landings, get out of here, why train for that!), but there was not one doubt in the leadership and the decisions that the Pongos were briefing and all of us were inspired.