CHAPTER 1

100 YEARS YOUNG: THE RAF PAST AND PRESENT

What do you think leadership is about?

What things do you think are the most important about leadership?

What are the skills, knowledge and behaviours that leaders need?

INTRODUCTION

Everyone has their own definition of what they mean by leadership. I will not try to define the term here, but any organisation can learn about leadership by observing what a highly successful institution has been doing for 100 years. The RAF was born in the midst of a desperately fought, blood-soaked war that shocked the world: a major crisis. That war saw startling changes in technology, thinking and ways of fighting, part of which was the use of aircraft in war. The RAF was ultimately successful in meeting those challenges because everyone in the organisation was clear about what had to be achieved: leaders at all levels were allowed to get on and lead; people had the determination to do what was asked of them; they had the technical competence and mental agility to exploit it; and largely embraced the many changes that had to occur. In war, leaders have to develop a strong moral compass, and leaders in the RAF were no different. That moral compass is now articulated in the acronym RISE,1 which forms the title of this text. The code is given to every member of the RAF when they join the organisation and stands for:

1. ■(Mutual and self) Respect – the respect for others that flows from the duty to put others first, without prejudice or discrimination.
2. ■Integrity – moral courage, honesty, responsibility, justice – the courage to do what is right in all circumstances, which is the basis for trust between people.
3. ■Service – physical courage, loyalty, commitment, teamwork – professional duties taking precedence over personal interest; service before self.
4. ■Excellence – personal excellence, discipline, pride – a desire for continuous improvement and innovation, not just in skills but in the way we tackle tasks and take responsibility.

It is no accident that respect comes first. The debate within the RAF on ethics continues in all the through-life education of its people, on fighting wars, the use of types of military equipment and weapons and so on. Every member of the RAF has to develop their own strong moral compass consonant with the basic code, because militaries of democratic countries that don’t prosecute their affairs ethically will eventually fail. Whatever it is your organisation does, it must be done ethically. This goes beyond legal rectitude. Organisations that don’t act ethically may win in the short term but usually lose in the long term. Corporate (like military) history is littered with both organisations and individuals who have fallen to unethical behaviour, from a holiday company’s treatment of those who die in foreign hotels, to manufacturers who exploit cheap labour, to charities who abuse those for whom they are supposed to care.

THE RAF LEADERSHIP MODEL

What makes the RAF leadership model distinctive are the following ten behaviours, knowledge and skills, which it believes leaders need in order to be successful. I have already introduced the ‘strong moral compass’ as the first of these ten:

1. ■Developing a strong moral compass
2. ■Determination to achieve the mission
3. ■Followership
4. ■Allowing everyone to lead
5. ■Understanding yourself and your people
6. ■Becoming technologically competent
7. ■Being flexible and responsive
8. ■Leading change
9. ■Handling ambiguity
10. ■Being politically astute.

In the years since its formation, the RAF has tackled many conflicts, full-blown wars and the demands to help in all sorts of crises. It has faced amazing advances in technology, from the flimsy and slow aircraft of the First World War with their simple weapons, through the advent of the jet engine, to the supersonic, sophisticated, networked aircraft of today. The advent of helicopters, jump jets, drones, satellite systems for surveillance and positioning and other space applications, and the whole world of cyber space, has all occurred within the last 100 years. The pace of change in events, technology, demographics and behaviour has been, and continues to be, incredibly fast. Through it all, the RAF has remained successful, and this is the story of the leadership that has enabled that success and what everyone, in all walks of life, can learn from it. Through my work in all sectors of the economy – the private, public and third sectors – I have come to understand that there are many things in leadership that transcend where you work and what you do. If you work in an organisation of any size, these things apply to you. There are three fundamental things that all leaders must understand:

1. ■the whole context within which they work;
2. ■a deep knowledge of how their organisation gets things done;
3. ■a real understanding of the people with whom they work – peers, superiors and subordinates (all organisations have some sort of hierarchy whether it is explicit or not).

Determination to achieve the mission

Within the RAF, this is called being a warfighter because the RAF has to be prepared to fight wars and face the toughest of circumstances. In essence, it means that everyone in the RAF must be prepared for this – must be resilient enough, both mentally and physically, to be able to get the job done and have the will to do it. There are plenty of organisations that face equally tough circumstances, putting lives on the line for others; the emergency services would be a great example here. They are not alone, however, as charities looking after those with challenging mental illnesses or commercial companies that work in difficult and dangerous parts of the world (politically or physically) also need considerable mental and physical resilience in their people. Those who have occasionally to work very long hours also need the resilience to do so and the determination to get the job done.

Followership

To be a leader you must have followers. For some, the word ‘follower’ is too supine to be of use, but this is not what it implies in the RAF. Good followership enhances leadership. It is an active, not a passive, stance. Good followership is not just blind obedience, nor is it being able to say after an event that goes wrong, ‘I could have told you so’. It is engaging in planning, pointing out flaws, suggesting alternatives, improvements and efficiencies and preventing unintended, and undesirable, outcomes. It encompasses the concepts of constructive dissent and constructive consent.2 Leaders need to be open to such challenges and create the time and space for them to occur. Followers must have the emotional intelligence to understand when and where it is appropriate to challenge their leaders. They must also know when it is no longer appropriate to challenge, and to move to necessary action to get the job done.

Allowing everyone to lead

The RAF is what could be called a leader-full organisation. It is deliberately thus, as no one knows when they may be called upon to lead and in what circumstances. Leadership is not confined to one type of person, such as the pilots or aircrew, nor to rank. It is not the preserve of the commissioned officers nor the non-commissioned officers. Those with the necessary skills and understanding in the moment lead. That way, things can be done so much more quickly than waiting for a senior leader to come along and tell everyone what needs to be done and how to do it before disappearing again to the next crisis. It also means people don’t switch off and do silly things; they are continually thinking about what they are doing and why they are doing it. It doesn’t prevent accidents, but it helps. To make this work within a large organisation, you need a philosophy of leadership to promote it. For the RAF this is Mission Command.

Understanding yourself and your people

This is a repetition of one of the three fundamentals of leadership mentioned previously, but there is no apology for this. Leadership is about people, so those who aspire to lead have to understand them. It was Sun Tzu who said that not knowing people would condemn you to defeat. It starts with knowing yourself: where you are good and where you are not; how you come across to other people. With these fundamentals you can then move on to knowing others. Knowing what motivates them allows you to help them understand what needs to be done and why. What they are good at allows you to use their skills, knowledge and behaviours to best effect, especially to compensate for those areas you are not good at. Perhaps most importantly, knowing your people (and they knowing you know them) is the biggest factor in generating trust between you. Without trust, Mission Command will not work.

Being technologically competent

The RAF has always exploited technology to achieve success on operations. As such, it is obvious that it needs people who understand technology and its latest developments, people who are experts in their field. But the idea of a leader being technologically competent is not about that. There is no chance today, if there ever was, of a leader being an expert in all the technologies that emerge that may give their organisation an edge in one field or another. Today, for example, there are nearly 70 speciality fields that make up the workforce of the RAF. A technologically competent leader is one who embraces new technology, is able to see the opportunities that it represents, but is also able to stop those projects that are not fulfilling their promise. They are not necessarily expert in that field.

Being flexible and responsive

This is a changing world, as much in military affairs as in any other sphere. In order to survive in it, organisations must respond to those changes in a timely and sensible fashion. If the organisation has to respond, then so must the people within it. To respond in sensible ways, people also need to be flexible: flexible with the outcomes they are trying to achieve; flexible with the way they work; flexible with the skills they should learn; and, perhaps even harder for some, flexible with un-learning skills and practices that are no longer useful. Everybody has a part to play in leading others through these changes.

Leading change

For a very long time, business schools have talked about change management and people have concentrated on setting up processes and procedures to facilitate change, or to change the way people work. More important is leading people through change so that they understand why they have to change and come to want to do it. This can be one of the most difficult and frustrating parts of any leader’s job.

Handling ambiguity

Our constantly changing world throws up all sorts of challenges. Social, political and technological change means the future can be unpredictable and can move in unexpected directions at an exponential pace. An organisation’s affairs, none more so than the military, are complicated with many competing demands that often conflict. This moves ‘complicated’ into something more often now named ‘complex’, as it frequently defies being unravelled. Decisions, particularly (but not exclusively) those made at the top of an organisation, are not about what is right or wrong, good or bad, but at best least-worst – sometimes between two probable outcomes neither of which is good. This is the sort of ambiguity facing leaders. Everyone in the organisation needs to see this ambiguity to be able to understand why certain decisions are made and to learn to handle it when their turn comes to make such decisions.

Being politically astute

The RAF has to advise politicians of its capabilities, and of what it is not capable of. It has to carry out the operations demanded of it by the British Government and understand the political consequences that all military operations have. In this, it is not alone: all organisations face the consequences of national and local political decisions and must take account of them. However, this attribute of leaders is less about such consequences and more about the political astuteness leaders will need within any organisation of reasonable size. To get anything done in an organisation there are always key people whom you will need to influence to get on your side, and they are not just the ‘bosses’. Influencing people is the definition of politics. Furthermore, to move up within an organisation, if that is your wish, you will need to promote yourself with key people and demonstrate your abilities. Being politically astute is about doing these things ethically.

THE RAF LEADERSHIP PHILOSOPHY – MISSION COMMAND

Any organisation that wants to nurture a degree of intelligent cooperation throughout its people such that everybody is allowed to lead, needs to have a philosophy of leadership that enables it. In the RAF, this is Mission Command – the principle behind the fourth of the ten behaviours, knowledge and skills that make leaders successful. Leaders cannot just tell everyone in their organisation to lead without guidance and boundaries, as the result would be chaos and internal conflict. Leaders need to know the direction in which to lead and to be able to do what they want in their area while synchronising with those around them – guidance and boundaries. This is what the doctrine of Mission Command gives. The modern version was developed from the nineteenth-century Prussian army concept of Auftragstaktik, which could be translated as ‘mission command’. The Prussians, after their defeat by Napoleon at the twin battles of Jena and Auerstadt in 1806, looked at why things went wrong. They found they needed a way to ensure that a general could know in detail exactly what was going on at all places on a battlefield, could understand the chaos from all the messages coming back to him, devise a new plan to overcome setbacks in the original one and communicate that new plan to his junior commanders at the front in anything like the time necessary to make a difference. This was not possible and the Auftragstaktik was invented. So powerful was Auftragstaktik, that when the French Army lost to the Prussians at the first Battle of Sedan in 1870, losing 107,000 men either killed, captured or wounded, the French thought the Prussians had some sort of secret weapon. Yet it was just leadership.

The modern British military doctrine of Mission Command has seven things that leaders and subordinate leaders need to get right:

1. 1.Timely decision making
2. 2.Subordinate leaders are told what they must achieve and why
3. 3.Subordinate leaders are allocated sufficient resources (which includes time) to carry out their missions
4. 4.The leader’s determination to take the plan through to a successful conclusion, with the clear responsibility of subordinate leaders to fulfil that intent
5. 5.A leader ensures that their subordinates thoroughly understand the leader’s intent, their own contribution and the context within which they are to act
6. 6.A leader exercises the minimum of control over their subordinate leaders, consistent with their experience and ability, while retaining responsibility for their actions
7. 7.Subordinate leaders decide for themselves how best to achieve their leader’s intent.3

The fundamental guiding principle is the absolute responsibility to act, or decide not to act, within the framework of the leader’s intent. This approach requires a style of leadership that promotes decentralised leadership, freedom and speed of action and initiative, but which is responsive to superior direction.

This is a bare description of the bones of Mission Command, and it is important for every leader contemplating its use (as every leader should), to spend some time reflecting on what it means and the practicalities of using it. The very purpose of the philosophy is to promote the freedom of action of junior leaders to enable them to get the job done. It is immensely important that they understand the purpose of their actions – why they are doing something. A purpose that people believe in is the single most important driver of human activity. That purpose had better be ethical. At the same time, it requires enormous trust for junior leaders to take independent actions. How are the people to whom they report going to react if they make a genuine mistake? Will they get bawled out? Will they be scapegoated for what happens? Will they be humiliated in front of their peers? What will happen to their career? The bare description above says that commanders retain responsibility for the actions of their subordinates, but will they honour this? Unless great trust has been built up between the leader and their subordinates, the subordinates will always refer all actions to their leader before they do anything so they cannot be blamed. Hardly the freedom of action that is supposed to be promoted, and it will certainly slow things down. Leaders also need great trust in their subordinates, as they have responsibility for all their actions. But what if a subordinate does something stupid? What will happen to the leader’s career? Will they have to pick up the cost (literally or figuratively)? The temptation is to over-manage the subordinates and to demand at least constant briefing on what is happening and why, if not a veto on all actions before anything is done. Again, hardly the freedom and speed of action that is ideally being sought.

Helmut von Moltke the Elder, Chief of the Prussian General Staff at the first Battle of Sedan, is known to have said that it was better for a junior officer to make a mistake while taking action in pursuit of the commander’s intent than not to do anything at all. When you think about that, it is quite an extraordinary statement from the head of what is always thought of as a rigidly disciplined nineteenth-century army. The job of the more senior leader was, and still is, to make the space and freedom available so that their subordinates can take advantage of the fleeting opportunities that present themselves.

The same was true of the RAF in the Second World War. In the Battle of Britain in 1940, where the RAF had set up the world’s first networked air defence system, principally using radar and telephones, the freedom of decision making was clearly set out for each level of the system. Thus, Fighter Command had the overall responsibility and saw the whole picture. The four group commands each dealt with their areas – broadly, the North of England to Shetlands for 13 Group, the Midlands and Wales for 12 Group, the South East for 11 Group and the South West for 10 Group. Each group area was subdivided into sectors with their own responsibilities. Though the people at the time would not have understood the term ‘Mission Command’, the principles were the same: each had their mission with clearly set limits to their decision making and, in the language of the time, ‘every man was expected to use their own good judgement’.

It is little known that at the height of the Battle of Britain, when it must have seemed that there was every possibility of the RAF being overwhelmed by the Luftwaffe and therefore England being overrun by the Germans, Churchill asked Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding to take personal command of the battle. Dowding was the Commander-in-Chief of Fighter Command with the overall responsibility. He told Churchill that the best man for that job was Air Vice Marshal Keith Park, the Air Officer commanding 11 Group, which was taking the brunt of the German attacks. Dowding saw his job as ensuring that Park continued to get the supplies of aircraft and pilots he needed to do his job through the training system and aircraft manufacture and repair facilities – the sufficient resources necessary for Park to do his job successfully. Dowding also worked continually to find a reasonable solution to the increasing night attacks, which threatened to take more and more of the Spitfires and Hurricanes away from the desperate day fighting to try to stem the night attacks – a task they were really unsuited for. All of which gave Park the freedom of action he needed.

I have often been asked, but what if people are stupid or negligent? If they are likely to be stupid, the leader should know. Any leader must, as a first priority, know their people and their capabilities well. Missions must only be given to those who are capable of delivering them. The likelihood of someone doing something stupid must be known and guarded against accordingly. Negligence is another matter. Negligence must be dealt with openly and properly. People who are negligent must be shown why they have been so. Their colleagues also need to know this, or else they are likely to feel that ordinary, genuine mistakes will not be treated well and all trust between leaders and followers will evaporate instantly. People learn from mistakes – their own as well as those of others – and come back from them stronger, wiser and more capable. As one boss said to me once: ‘Why would I want to sack someone who has just had some very expensive training?’

HOW VISCOUNT TRENCHARD FORMED THE RAF

The case for forming an independent air service was agreed by the Government in 1917 and it was formed on the 1st April 1918. During that period, the outcome of the First World War was far from certain, with the German Spring Offensive in 1918 nearly breaking the Allied defence. Hugh Trenchard, who was to be the first head of the RAF, was then in charge of the Army Air Corps. He was opposed to the formation of an RAF, as he believed that setting up a new service would be a distraction at a time when everyone should be straining every sinew to defeat the Germans. Yet he was flexible and responsive enough to take on the task at a most challenging time, when the maximum effort was required from everyone.

Trenchard understood the importance of organisational identity: new uniforms were produced for the new air service. However, he also understood individual’s feelings and loyalties, as not everyone was required to wear them; early photographs show a mixture of Royal Navy, Army and the new RAF uniforms. He also understood the necessity of leaders setting an example and being seen by their people. As the Commander of the Independent Force, he was out and about among his squadrons around eastern France so much that the springs on his Rolls Royce staff car were broken on the rough roads. He knew his people. He led his people through the changes. Yet he did not shirk from all the paperwork and meetings necessary to set up and run a new organisation. He assiduously maintained his relationship with Field Marshal Haig, the head of the British Army in France, and Marshal Foch, the head of the French Army and overall Allied Commander, as he understood the political necessity of doing so.

After the end of the First World War, Trenchard continued to show his ‘political’ acumen, through both the national politics and organisational politics in those financially straitened and turbulent times. Politicians wanted much smaller and less expensive military services; the Royal Navy and the Army wanted to break up the new RAF and subsume its parts back into their own services, so money was not diverted away from them. Trenchard had the vision to see that times had changed and that an independent air force was necessary to cover those aspects of war that air forces covered but that were not considered by armies and navies. Though the headline costs of aircraft and the equipment needed to operate them seemed then, as now, expensive, the overall costs of deploying them was then, as now, so much less than deploying armies. Trenchard saw and proved this with his air policing operations in the Middle East in the 1920s.

Trenchard also understood the importance of education and training in an organisation, and the vital part that senior leaders play in bringing on new leadership talent throughout the organisation. He started an apprentice school for training all the highly skilled engineers that the new RAF would need. This was an innovative move at the time as he gave paid training and skills to people who would have left school at 14 with little prospects. The top apprentices each year from this apprentice school at RAF Halton were offered commissions and places at officer training at RAF Cranwell, and the RAF continues today to commission many of its people this way. In the 1920s this was socially very innovative, both in the paid education for those who would otherwise not get it and in the commissioning from the lower ranks. By doing so, Trenchard was laying the foundations for a flexible workforce who were kept up to date with the latest technology.

He furthered this effort by creating an officer training establishment at RAF Cranwell for the new commissioned officers. He went on to start a staff college to continue the education of more senior officers, and leadership figured largely. Those at the RAF Staff College wrote about leadership in essays that have been preserved for the education of all to this day. For example, Squadron Leader Charles Portal wrote an essay on morale while at Staff College in 1922. He later became Marshal of the Royal Air Force and Chief of the Air Staff for most of the Second World War. However, leadership was not to be confined to the top of the organisation. By 1948, thoughts on leadership could be found expressed in a booklet for the consumption of the whole organisation. That publication talked a lot about ‘duty’ – a term we would not use today. We might now think of it as the expectation that we have for leaders and the ethical code we expect them to abide by. Then it was the ethical code of an expressly Christian society. The foundations to create every person’s strong moral compass have always been there, as well as the effort to understand and encourage people. The tenets of leadership explicitly laid down today have been part of the RAF way of doing things from the beginning.

THE RAF HAS ALWAYS ALLOWED EVERYONE TO LEAD

From the first, the RAF has nurtured leadership among all its people, as the distinguished historian Sir Michael Howard noted:4

Stories often show better how theory and practice come together. Leadership comes in many guises and from all sorts of people involved in an organisation’s efforts. It is not just the top person or the senior management or leaders who provide leadership, as the following stories show. These examples also demonstrate that it has always been thus in the RAF, as they span the entire history of the organisation.

But it is not just aircrew or commissioned officers who lead, as the following story from the Second World War illustrates.

Aircraftswoman Williams was a driver by trade, not a fireman, and in an age where leadership was thought of as a male trait, she stood up when needed and led by what she did and said. It is not who you are or your background, colour, race or gender that counts when leadership is required. It is being able to see how the task can be done, the knowledge and skill to do it and the confidence to stand up and be counted. Another such story from the modern era continues this theme.

Returning to aircrew for a moment, things have got vastly more complicated and immensely faster and involve so much that was unimaginable in the First World War. Communications from the cockpit of even single-seat fighters now involve two or three radios all tuned to different networks, datalink and voiceover datalink. (In Mick Mannock’s time, it was a hand waving from one cockpit to another or waggling the wings of the aircraft.) Complex weapons systems have to be manipulated, choice of weapons made depending on the target type and its circumstances, rules of engagement considered and the avoidance of non-combatants and civilians. And all of this done at considerable speed in compressed timescales while flying and navigating the aircraft and considering the tactical situation over 40,000 to 60,000 square miles. At times, huge combined air operations are mounted involving upwards of 60 aircraft of all types covering huge areas. The overall leader is usually a fighter pilot. The choreographing of all this requires careful planning on the ground prior to the first aircraft getting airborne: for example, who refuels in the air and when, so that each sub-formation has the right amount of fuel to get to the right place at the right time. Sequences are carefully planned to ensure that complimentary capabilities are available for greatest effect in attack or defence. Each formation has its own leader who will deal with contingencies for their own formation, though the overall leader will still have to monitor the whole effort to take account of emerging events and actions to ensure that the purpose of the effort is achieved while still completing his or her own individual task. This requires enormous concentration from the leader with a great deal of fast decision making, as well as considerable trust across all those in the air.

Leadership of another sort can also be called for from fighter pilots, best illustrated by the story of a Harrier pilot from the twenty-first century.

All these stories show that leadership can come from everyone – it is not confined to senior people. Leadership transcends organisational structure and boundaries as well as rank. Indeed, were it so that only the top people could give leadership, decisions would be far too slow to affect situations in a positive manner. Aircraftswoman Williams’s bomb dump would have blown up with huge loss of life and loss of vital war material before any senior leader could have realised what was going on, let alone made a decision about it. Marie White’s local civilian drivers would have panicked, ran and been killed or wounded (along with the loss of important supplies) before the intervention of a senior leader. Despite the best efforts of the senior leaders of the Royal Flying Corps, and later the RAF, in the First World War things would have been very different without the likes of Mick Mannock. The convoluted communications necessary to get senior RAF and US Ranger commanders to agree a Harrier pilot’s plan are risible against the time necessary for action. Yet without his leadership, many moral issues may have arisen.

The RAF has always had a much looser rank structure socially than its sister services. The technical expertise of its people is recognised as more important than rank. The captain of an aircraft in the RAF is always the pilot, though others in the crew may outrank her or him, be it in a two-seat fighter or in a large aircraft with a crew of 17 or more. During the Second World War there were many sergeant pilots and, as with any other pilot, the ultimate responsibility rested with them. What mattered was whether their people trusted them, their professionalism and their success, which were derived from their understanding of their context, their knowledge of how to get things done in the organisation and their understanding of the people with whom they worked.

Leadership within a large aircraft, or a formation of single-seat ones, is carefully and quickly passed to whoever has the information and expertise that can give the best leadership in the moment. It may be the most junior pilot in a formation, who has the best situation and target awareness on their weapon system, who takes the lead for a bit. Or the navigator in a two-seat aircraft formation, who first spots incoming enemy aircraft or missiles, who manoeuvres the formation to counter the threat. Decisions have to be taken quickly, as you may imagine when you are travelling at over eight miles a minute and missiles considerably faster! Trust, professionalism and a reputation for success are the key. The same is true within a large multi-crew aircraft, such as the airborne early warning and control aircraft with its crew of 17. Whoever within the aircraft has the situation awareness and best information for the circumstances will lead, both within the aircraft and in giving leadership to those to whom the aircraft is providing a service.

The same is true on the ground: while aircrew, particularly fast-jet aircrew, can be twitchy and tetchy when they return from a sortie with the adrenaline still pumping, they would not dream of not trusting the ground engineers to diagnose the faults in the aircraft and its systems that they experienced in the air. If the engineers say it’s fixed, I have never known any aircrew who have refused to take an aircraft flying. All fast-jet aircrew are trained to be able to ‘turn-round’ their aircraft should they land away at a base without their ground crew. They cannot fix faults, but they can refuel it, check all the different oils and hydraulic fluid levels and so forth, so that it is safe to fly again. I remember taking a senior non-commissioned engineer as a passenger in the back seat of a two-seat fighter to a continental European air force base from which our squadron was to operate for an exercise later that year. We had been sent to reconnoitre the base to ensure that the squadron could operate safely for the entire period of the exercise. We had to check that there was going to be sufficient working and living accommodation, the right fuels, oils and other fluids, enough good and compatible communications equipment and so on – a long list of things to look at and check for both aircrew and engineers. When we landed, I offered to do the turn-round to save my passenger time and effort as he had more work to do than I. He refused. I don’t to this day know whether he mistrusted my engineering expertise (though I suspect I know the answer!), but he trusted my flying expertise and professionalism and I his engineering. We remain friends to this day. The leadership he provided to me, and me to him, during that reconnaissance was born of mutual trust and respect.

The same is true of all the many specialisations that make up the RAF. The intelligence officers are respected for their expertise, as the communications and software people are for theirs. When their expertise and professionalism is the one needed, they lead. The chefs are more than respected for producing great meals, sometimes in the most difficult of circumstances and at all hours of the day or night, and they provide leadership of their own kind when necessary. And so it goes through all the multitude of specialisations that are necessary to make up the RAF.

PURPOSE – THE DRIVING FORCE

It is the job of senior leaders, and then all leaders throughout the chain from top to bottom, to explain the purpose for which everyone is doing things, and to make that purpose something everyone believes in. In a battle for national survival, such as the Battle of Britain, purpose is not difficult to get everyone to believe in. Elsewhere, however, this is not always the case, which is why a commander must explain his or her intent, the contribution (or mission) they want from each of their people, teams or groups, and the context in which this all sits. The Reverend (Wing Commander) Jonathan Chaffey, later Chaplain-in-Chief (Air Vice Marshal Chaffey), called this ‘vision’:5

It all sounds very simple: know the detail, know what you want achieved and create your intent and vision to cover that, then explain it all to your people. Yet the world and the things that large organisations try to do are rarely so simple. Things are not usually so black and white – ambiguity abounds around what we do and why. Everyone knows that politics can become a very murky game and decision making within it is not straight forward. Military action is simply an extension of politics, just as diplomacy is. While at the lower levels of an organisation things can seem simple, they are often based on decisions that have had to be made in very ambiguous circumstances. That ambiguity can burst through at inconvenient moments. So, while it may seem easy to say ‘create your intent and communicate it to your people’, that intent has to be simple and succinct enough to be readily understood, yet must cover complex and confusing circumstances. It must cut through ambiguity yet allow for it. It must not be so detailed that it gives those doing the tasks no room to make their own decisions. It must inspire not enervate people. It must continue to build the trust so necessary for Mission Command to work. A story often puts things in context and makes sense of theory.

The example that leaders set by their own behaviour is also crucial, as this story shows. Example speaks so much louder than the words that leaders speak or write. Communication is difficult. How do you know that those to whom you have been explaining the context, purpose and mission have understood what you have said? Usually, the more people that you are speaking to the higher the number of different interpretations there are. Leaders must check that their people have understood what it is all about and know what they are to do. They must understand where the boundaries lie and who needs to know when they are about to be breached. Equally, good followership means that subordinates must strive to find out context, and ensure they have understood the intent of their leaders (although the ultimate responsibility remains with the leader).

SUMMARY

Leadership is much in demand in our modern society, in business, in government, in the charities and in the military. The RAF has, for the British military, a short history of just 100 years, during which time it has faced huge challenges: wars for survival, complicated wars on foreign soil, complex peacekeeping missions, humanitarian efforts and the extraction of British citizens from the wars of others. It has dealt with enormous societal upheaval, technological change and organisational restructuring (both expanding and contracting). Through it all it has remained successful. That success is due in great part to its leadership. Some contend,6 and I agree, that while facing the most dangerous time stemming the German forces that had swept all else before them in 1939–40, the RAF won the Battle of Britain because of its leadership. That leadership continues to this day.

Leadership comes from everyone in the organisation, new or old, junior or senior, no matter what their specialisation. Some may attract many, even public, plaudits for their efforts; countless others do what is necessary in the circumstances before them. The most junior need to step up, as Senior Aircraftswoman Marie White did recently, and the most senior need to grasp the nettle, as Air Chief Marshal Lord Dowding did for the Battle of Britain. The RAF has always had a deep respect for the knowledge and skills of all its people, regardless of their rank, and expects them to lead when necessary.

To enable all people to lead when it is necessary for them to do so, the RAF has a philosophy of leadership that gives subordinates the freedom to act to achieve success. This is Mission Command – a philosophy that empowers subordinates while guiding them. It allows them the maximum freedom of decision to choose the way to achieve the outcomes desired, but with clear boundaries. It is vital for all to understand the circumstances in which the leader is working, the intent of the leader and the reason for the desired outcomes.

When people have the freedom to act as they want to in order to achieve their given outcomes, it is vital that they have a strong set of values – a good moral compass with which to guide their actions for the benefit of all.

THE TAKEAWAYS

1. ■Leaders of all organisations need:
   1. ■To understand the whole context within which they work.
   2. ■A deep knowledge of how their organisation gets things done.
   3. ■A real understanding of the people with whom they work: peers, superiors and subordinates, customers, stakeholders and competitors.
2. ■The RAF leadership model provides detail of the behaviours, knowledge and skills that leaders need to be successful:
   1. ■Developing a strong moral compass.
   2. ■Determination to achieve the mission.
   3. ■Followership.
   4. ■Allowing everyone to lead.
   5. ■Understanding yourself and your people.
   6. ■Becoming technologically competent.
   7. ■Being flexible and responsive.
   8. ■Leading change.
   9. ■Handling ambiguity.
   10. ■Being politically astute.