Leadership Secrets of the Australian Army: Learn from the best and inspire your team for great results

by Noel Turnbull

The second quotation at the head of this chapter supports this empirically. It is from a Canadian study that investigated whether or not the traditional gender differences in leadership styles that had been observed in the private sector—with male managers generally more focused on tasks and females more focused on people—would be mirrored in the military. It found ‘surprisingly’ few discernible differences in gender-related leadership styles within the sample, not because women were leading in more masculine ways but rather the opposite: that is, male officers were leading in ‘more feminine’ (i.e., people-oriented) ways than their civilian counterparts. Those who were interviewed, regardless of gender, agreed that, without ‘knowing your troops’, a leader would be ‘in serious trouble’ in the extreme circumstances characteristic of military activities. Nontheless, all officers were prepared to be highly directive when necessary, with many seeing the emphasis on an inclusive style as an investment in building trust they could draw upon in those rare but critical extreme situations. Good people management doesn’t happen overnight, and it is not achieved with generous benefits, big speeches or splashy occasions, but by consistent attention to many comparatively small things that all add up to something big. Some of the main ways in which military leaders do this are shown in Table 7.1.