Leadership qualities required from a current raf leader
RLE
"Managing" the procurement budget also requires leadership. You need to lead your staff in a manner where they accept that real, deliverable, capability is more important than turning your one-ups dashboard green; sadly, this career-limiting quality is lacking and management-bo**ox is used as the gap filler to excuse sometimes woeful "leadership". Unless and until the situation changes (don't hold your breath...) we will continue to manage our way into catastrophes. Management is a convenient shield for those incapable of displaying leadership to hide behind. The bottom line? Management is measurable (did he/she deliver to time/budget) whereas leadership is harder to define and assess - hence why we are replete with managers.....
We do need management to run procurement-but we need leadership and moral courage to go with it....
"Managing" the procurement budget also requires leadership. You need to lead your staff in a manner where they accept that real, deliverable, capability is more important than turning your one-ups dashboard green; sadly, this career-limiting quality is lacking and management-bo**ox is used as the gap filler to excuse sometimes woeful "leadership". Unless and until the situation changes (don't hold your breath...) we will continue to manage our way into catastrophes. Management is a convenient shield for those incapable of displaying leadership to hide behind. The bottom line? Management is measurable (did he/she deliver to time/budget) whereas leadership is harder to define and assess - hence why we are replete with managers.....
We do need management to run procurement-but we need leadership and moral courage to go with it....
One of the reasons nobody makes a decision these days is because the PC crowd have decided leadership is a pejorative term. Part of the problem is the feminisation of many professions (stay with me, this is not misogynist, quite the opposite).
Girls like to reach decisions by consensus, and for historical reasons they rarely receive any proper leadership training. Thus, through no fault of their own, they find it difficult to judge the point where trying for a consensus is not the best leadership option. Most women I know prefer a male boss. When questioned in depth, it normally boils down to their experience of men having a better idea of when to end discussion and make a decision - and not make that decision or reaction to it a condition of continued friendship.
When I started work in a mostly female environment, I asked how many men were on the staff. Two women immediately said "just enough to stop the place getting too bitchy."
Now (hope you're still listening in an unbiased frame of mind), when you provide girls with proper leadership training, including giving them exercises where they are forced to take decisions without consensus, they prove in the long run to be just as good as boys at being leaders. And they are still better than boys at getting consensus where this is possible.
So why the problem? Well, in professions where decisions don't routinely have clear daily evidence of performance (e.g. almost the whole of local Government, which as you've probably noticed is HQ PC Crowd) the mostly untrained women rail against any signs of 'Leadership' - it's a dirty word. They don't have to face the consequences of lack of leadership, but they do have to face the consequences of upsetting people by making decisions the majority don't like. Management is acceptable because it purports to be just the application of 'policy', which is the new word for holy. The worst crime you can commit these days is to ask "why?" about policy.
In summary, if we want more women making decisions (and we should), we need to train them properly. It does work, but it is nowhere near common enough. We should also fix the massive problem where so many managers have targets that don't match the effects of their decisions, but that's a massive can of worms.
Girls like to reach decisions by consensus, and for historical reasons they rarely receive any proper leadership training. Thus, through no fault of their own, they find it difficult to judge the point where trying for a consensus is not the best leadership option. Most women I know prefer a male boss. When questioned in depth, it normally boils down to their experience of men having a better idea of when to end discussion and make a decision - and not make that decision or reaction to it a condition of continued friendship.
When I started work in a mostly female environment, I asked how many men were on the staff. Two women immediately said "just enough to stop the place getting too bitchy."
Now (hope you're still listening in an unbiased frame of mind), when you provide girls with proper leadership training, including giving them exercises where they are forced to take decisions without consensus, they prove in the long run to be just as good as boys at being leaders. And they are still better than boys at getting consensus where this is possible.
So why the problem? Well, in professions where decisions don't routinely have clear daily evidence of performance (e.g. almost the whole of local Government, which as you've probably noticed is HQ PC Crowd) the mostly untrained women rail against any signs of 'Leadership' - it's a dirty word. They don't have to face the consequences of lack of leadership, but they do have to face the consequences of upsetting people by making decisions the majority don't like. Management is acceptable because it purports to be just the application of 'policy', which is the new word for holy. The worst crime you can commit these days is to ask "why?" about policy.
In summary, if we want more women making decisions (and we should), we need to train them properly. It does work, but it is nowhere near common enough. We should also fix the massive problem where so many managers have targets that don't match the effects of their decisions, but that's a massive can of worms.
