In Search of a Twenty-First-Century Air-Leadership Model: Fodder for Your Professional Reading - United States Air Force

Aerospace Power Journal, Summer, 2001 by Dr. David R. Mets

DR. DAVID R. METS [*]

Editorial Abstract: Where can future aerospace leaders find guidance and inspiration? One route is to reap the benefit of past experience through a vigorous professional reading program. In the latest installment of his popular "fodder" series of articles, Dr. Mets provides the air warrior- scholar with a sampler of important books on aerospace leadership.

Read and reread the campaigns of Alexander Hannibal, Caesar, Gustavus, Turenne, Eugene, and Frederick. Make them your models. This is the only way to become a great general and to master the art of war. With your own genius enlightened by this study, you will reject all maxims opposed to these great commanders.

Napoleon Bonaparte

THE QUEST FOR a key to successful air leadership is as old as airpower itself. An Air Force Academy was first proposed in Congress in 1919, and by 1931 Randolph Air Force Base (AFB) was known as "The West Point of the Air." Yet, until fairly recently, professional air warriors have had slim pickings when they looked for case studies in airpower leadership. For a long time, we have had many biographies of soldiers and seamen, but common percep-tions hold that airmen are not a contemplative lot and have little inclination toward literary efforts. Few of them have set pen to paper to tell either their own life stories or those of other flyers. [1] Still fewer scholars and foundations have felt sufficiently competent to undertake such studies. But in the past two decades, that void has begun to be filled.

This article first explores the nature of models. What are they? What are they good for? What are they not good for? It then turns to sources of biographical material on airmen and the nature of biography as a vehicle for exploring the subject of air leadership. It further examines the advantages of the biographical approach and its shortcomings. The article illustrates these matters with reviews of two forthcoming books about air leadership--one on Maj Gen Mason M. Patrick and the other on Adm Joseph M. Reeves. It then suggests some possible benefits as well as the limitations of biographies and, in keeping with my "fodder" series of articles, closes with a "10-Book Sampler for Professional Reading."

I am not sure to what degree either Napoleon or his marshals followed his advice. Certainly, his interpreter Carl von Clausewitz held that it takes more than maxims and that genius--intuitive judgment--is the crucial element. [2]

What Is a Model?

A model is an artificial construct; it is not real. It is a simplification of reality. At the very best, it is an approximation of reality. It has no more authority than the credibility of its originator. Its utility is that it yields a conceptual framework and perhaps a commonly understood vocabulary that enables us to analyze and discuss a problem. It is an academic device to facilitate explanation and learning. But it cannot be used as a definitive guide to action. It can help in thinking about leadership, but it will certainly not make anyone a good leader. Consequently, all the abstract literature on leadership and all the air-leader biographies can do nothing more than suggest. Thus, one should certainly consider Napoleon's maxims but should do so in the light of his or her own genius--that is, professional judgment.

We have about as many leadership models as leaders. When I attended Squadron Officer School (SOS) in 1959, the institution's model was Body, Mind, Soul. Yet, we received instruction from a parade of dignitaries from the flights over Schweinfurt, Germany, and other unpleasant places who gave us their own prescriptions for successful leadership. They were all different, but as I saw it, they merely described their own leadership styles. Some left out the need for professional knowledge, and some even omitted courage--perhaps taking it for granted. West Point's motto for the last century has been Duty, Honor, Country, and a recent version of the Air Force's core values calls for "integrity, service before self, and excellence in all that we do." Still another maxim depicted by Prof. Dennis Drew suggests, "Know yourself, know your job, set the example, accept responsibility, foster teamwork, and care for people." The point is that no universal model for leadership exists. Drew suggests that leadership is highly situational, with the exception that one cannot compromise the constants of integrity, service before self, and the continual search for excellence. [3] I suppose that is largely the old SOS model of Body, Mind, Soul--just in other words.

We encounter so many models of a positive kind that they become a bit bewildering. Either they are so complex that no one can begin to use them in all their dimensions in a crisis, or they are so simplified that they become useless platitudes in the real world. Perhaps a leadership model cast in a negative way would prove more useful--specifying a set of things to avoid rather than identifying desirable practices. One should avoid being unlucky, unhealthy, short, ugly, hesitant, cowardly, reckless, lazy, careless, dishonest, tactless, reticent, and pushy, just as one should not become a workaholic, martinet, dummy, or an intellectual "geek." Readers will quickly perceive that many of those attributes, like luck, are not within the leader's control. They will also see that only a very fine line separates some of them. Officers never want to say a dishonest word. Neither do they want to appear tactless when the general's wife asks what they think of her new hat.