CHAPTER 4

THE RAF’S MODERN APPROACH TO LEADERSHIP: SPOTTING LEADERSHIP – WHO IS THE LEADER?

Who should lead in an organisation?

What enables there to be more than one leader?

Why is office politics so necessary but so loathed?

INTRODUCTION

Before the RAF took up the mantra of Mission Command as its philosophy of leadership, the idea behind what it did was ‘centralised command, decentralised control’. Aircraft are expensive, and there are never enough of them to go around all the places where they might be needed. Centralising command allowed senior commanders with the best overall view to apportion the available aircraft to where they would have the greatest effect, or were most needed. Decentralising control allowed local commanders to use the apportioned combat power in the most effective way. This was a lot like Mission Command, and in either case senior commanders were going to be giving a huge amount of their power and authority to their subordinates. They needed to know their capabilities and their morals. Ultimately, when the trust is high, power or positional authority matters little and the person best able to lead will do so.

A manager, or commander in RAF terminology, must get to know their people well, and do so quickly. It is vitally important to do so as the first step to generating the trust that is necessary for the decentralisation of control, the giving away of authority, allowing others the freedom to lead and do what they think is best for the situation, as they see it, to work. There must be great trust from managers in those they manage. There also has to be great trust by all people in those who manage them as without it, the risks of using any freedom they might be given are just too high.

When a leader gives away her or his authority, they do so on the understanding that things will get done. They want to know that the people to whom they give their power understand how to make things happen. They want their people to be politically astute. Some people will need to understand politics at the national or local level, as politics pervades all aspects of life to a greater or lesser extent. But this is not the sort of political astuteness that I am alluding to. Leaders need people who know how to get things done, whom to speak to and how to deal with the right people to smooth things through (without bribing them!).

POLITICAL ASTUTENESS

Being politically astute and having the ability to manipulate those around you – playing office politics – has very poor connotations. Many people automatically associate office politics with a Machiavellian outlook, where everything is considered fair in order to further one’s prospects. It is not, of course. Yet the Oxford English Dictionary defines politics as the ‘activities concerned with using power within an organisation or group’ (alongside its better-known definition to do with governing a state or the relations between states). The use of power within an organisation or group is very much what concerns leaders, what leadership is about. By very definition, then, to lead is to be political. To be astute is to be shrewd, to make good judgements. It is only when people are underhand and unethical that office politics becomes Machiavellian.

Managers need to spot those who can get things done, and do so in an ethical way. One such RAF leader was Arthur Tedder. In spring 1918, Tedder (then a young junior officer) was called for by a man who had previously noted his ability, Brigadier-General Philip Herbert. Herbert was then running training for the Royal Flying Corps in the Middle East. Tedder did not enjoy the work in the background – hankering, like so many others, to get back to the front line in France. However, he did have what it took to ‘get his [flying] schools functioning properly’.1 His management skills, his ability to keep his temper ‘no matter how petty the issue’, to see other people’s point of view and make sensible compromises saw his ‘schools’ become effective and efficient. His ability to deal with people was further demonstrated during his time in Cairo. By this time it was January 1919, the First World War was over and the RAF men at Heliopolis mutinied. The men had grievances about their hours of work and living conditions as there was no longer fighting going on. Effectively, they were on strike, but military personnel were not allowed to strike, nor are they allowed to do so now. Tedder visited them all, speaking to each man in turn, asking them if they were prepared to work and promising to arrest any who were not (it must be remembered that this was in the mores of 1919). None refused him.2 While other senior officers had regarded this situation as alarming, Tedder had completely defused it.

This ability remained with Tedder throughout his career. In the latter stages of the Second World War, he was chosen to be General Eisenhower’s deputy as the Deputy Supreme Allied Commander, much to the ire of Montgomery. He was chosen because he could, and did, deal with the huge competing egos of those who made up the senior commanders of the Allied Command. For example, Arthur ‘Bomber’ Harris, who commanded Bomber Command at this time, often clashed with those in the Air Ministry to whom he was responsible. But he said of Tedder that he was the easiest man to work with, despite Tedder making him use his forces to bomb transport links surrounding the Normandy landing sites in 1944 rather than his precious strategic bombing campaign in Germany, the ‘Third Front’, which he was determined to pursue with all his vigour. Tedder’s political astuteness continued to be recognised after the war as Tedder was appointed Chief of the Air Staff in January 1946, then Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee in June that year. This made him primus inter pares of the chiefs of the three services.

It is quite clear that those for whom Tedder worked – Brigadier Herbert in Cairo, for example, and Charles Portal who was head of the RAF for much of the Second World War – had great trust in Tedder that he would use his position and power wisely and ethically. General Eisenhower also had great trust in him, eventually sending him to confirm the German surrender with the Soviet Union in May 1945. It was Tedder who, alongside the Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister, signed the final, formal surrender document. This was a huge vote of confidence in Tedder. The fact that Tedder did it also shows how much he trusted Eisenhower. Although these stories of Tedder in the Second World War are from a period when Tedder was, in his own right, a very senior and powerful man, they are used because they are well documented, and we have accurate knowledge of them. They are indicative of the trust Tedder engendered, both in those who worked for him and those for whom he worked throughout his career.

There is another aspect of political astuteness that all people need to remember: that of self-promotion, which is another contentious issue. We all dislike those who steal the limelight, especially when they do so by appropriating other people’s efforts and actions. Rightly so, this is not the way self-promotion should be done and only serves to get people’s backs up. It does not make for an easy or fun place to work. Unfortunately, it is often the case that just doing good work does not get you noticed. People need to be noticed for the good work that they do without undermining the trust they will need with their colleagues.

I have mentioned Leonard Cheshire before, the RAF’s greatest bomber pilot and leader. Yet he was in many ways a very humble and unassuming man. Nevertheless, there is a story of him, before he became famous, being singled out in a night club while celebrating with his crew.

I came across a leader in another organisation whose ethical stance and integrity were also of the highest order. On his promotion to run a large team, he was determined that those who did good work should get the credit for it, but he also picked up the responsibility for all that went wrong. Unsurprisingly, his team liked him and worked very well for him, accomplishing great things. What his bosses saw, however, was a good team with a hapless leader. He was moved sideways into a job that was not seen as ‘career enhancing’. The organisation was missing out on a great leader (although it did subsequently promote him). Yes, good people can achieve great things given the right conditions, and part of those conditions is good leadership. But good leaders need to be seen to be good leaders.

The emphasis on doing the right thing is no accident; it is vital that all leaders do so. At whatever level the leader is, people will always follow the example they set – so much so, that the phrase ‘leading by example’ came into existence. The truth of this phrase is never better exemplified than when people are being politically shrewd. If you don’t want your people to behave in a particular way, then do not do so yourself. Followers will very quickly pick it up if what you say and what you do differ. They will also consider what you do to be acceptable for them as well. But it goes further than this. If a leader tolerates certain behaviour in one of their followers, even if they do not behave like that themselves, then that is the standard that all their people will consider is acceptable. Leaders who tolerate Machiavellian behaviour in the political manoeuvrings of one of their people, perhaps because that person is a nominated high-flyer, are effectively driving that behaviour throughout their organisation. It will become a toxic place to work and far less efficient than it should be. The values and standards in an organisation are important and should be universally enforced.

CENTRALISED COMMAND, DECENTRALISED CONTROL

The RAF’s idea of centralised command and decentralised control allowed the commanders in the service to ensure that the assets needed in any one particular area were available to have the greatest effect possible. It is still part of the RAF way of command to this day. But it is often vociferously argued against by other service commanders who, understandably, want to ensure that they do not face enemy action without enough air assets to protect themselves. This worry is frequently exacerbated by a lack of understanding of the air battle by Army or Navy commanders – a lack of understanding that inevitably leads to a lack of trust. This lack of understanding and lack of trust led one British Army Para officer to castigate the RAF in Afghanistan as ‘utterly, utterly useless’.

It is instructive to look at the battle for France in 1940, before the Battle of Britain began. The available French aircraft in 1940 were put under the command of the French 2* army commanders all the way down the expected battle front, from the English Channel in the North to the Mediterranean in the South, to protect their armies from expected German air attacks. RAF fighters (Hurricanes) were mostly placed to support the British Expeditionary Force in the North East of France, but under RAF command and control. As the weight of the German attacks fell in the North East, across several French Army 2* commands as well as the RAF Hurricane squadrons, the French fighters there were overwhelmed. The French higher commanders continually asked the RAF to send more fighters to France to help in the battle, yet many of their own fighters were standing idle on the ground to the south. It was not their sector’s fight and they did not have the mechanisms to reallocate swiftly, with each army commander more than reluctant to allow their air assets to be taken away in case they too came under attack.

The demand for fighters from Britain was insistent and difficult for an ally to refuse, yet it would have been irresponsible to completely denude Britain of fighter cover when France herself was not using all her own assets. Eventually, Dowding had to write a letter, knowing that it would be seen by Prime Minister Churchill, a Francophile, demanding that the so-called ‘Hurricane tap’ was turned off. His final sentence was: ‘If the Home Defence force is drained away in desperate attempts to remedy the situation in France, defeat in France will involve the final, complete and irremediable defeat of this country.’ Extremely strong stuff for a military leader to write to his prime minister, but subsequent analysis of the battle shows that Dowding had the balance about right.

The trust of the British Army in the Royal Air Force to deliver the necessary airpower when and where it was needed was always shaky at best. During the First World War (when it was still the Royal Flying Corps – part of the Army), there were many complaints from troops that the RFC were nowhere near when needed – that is, when a German aircraft was attacking them. During the retreat and evacuation at Dunkirk in the Second World War, the Army nicknamed the RAF the ‘Royal Absent Force’ for the same reason. The fact that the aircraft supporting them were fighting desperate battles out of their sight over German-held territory was something that passed them by. Had they been seeing the RAF fighting their battles overhead, many more German aircraft would have bothered them. A fighter screen is obviously not a brick wall; some enemy aircraft are always going to get through it.

There are obvious, clear lessons for leadership today in all this, not just lessons for fighting long-past air battles, as these are modern leadership truisms. Leaders need to make the best use of the assets they have. This is self-evident, as no one wants to let expensive holdings lie idle, not earning their keep. However, if that means that some leaders, who will need those assets (including people and money) at some point, do not have them ready to hand, they need to trust both their superiors and their colleagues: their superiors in that they will get the assets in a timely fashion, and their colleagues (who have those assets) in that they are using them better than they would otherwise have been used. The superiors also need to have trust in those that do have the assets that they genuinely need them and are using them well. Wherever this distribution problem is happening in an organisation, whether it is an ostensibly hierarchical one or not, those controlling the assets must trust those who will use them, those who will use them must trust those who control them and trust each other that they will be distributed both fairly and in a timely fashion and be used well. In short, leaders need to know and trust the people around them well, know and trust those who work for them, those whom they work for and their peers. Only then will centralised command decentralised control, i.e. Mission Command, work.

KNOWING YOUR PEOPLE

There are two major reasons why leaders need to know their people well: first, they need to know their capabilities, including their morals; and second, they need to create that necessary trust, without which neither centralised command and decentralised control nor Mission Command will work, and without which any form of leadership will eventually falter. Trust is a simple concept in common parlance that we all understand, but it is notoriously difficult to define and explain. There are many definitions of it. For the interpersonal trust I am talking of here, it can be described as the extent to which a person is confident in and willing to act on the basis of the words, actions and decisions of another.3 Are they going to take the risk of acting without ensuring in some way that they will not be let down, or left to carry the can on their own? If they are not, the insurance that they will have to put in place becomes a drag on performance, whether that be hedging about with legal contracts, debates on contingencies or planning for alternatives, all of which carry costs, in time taken and in bringing in others (such as lawyers), that reduce efficiency.

Getting to know the capabilities of your people is the first step towards building that deep trust: what they are good at as well as what they are not so good at; what they can do without any concern about performance and where they might need a benevolent eye kept on how things proceed. And it must be benevolent. Also, getting to know where they might need an additional team member whose capabilities can complement their own. These are good first steps, but they are not enough. Good results are essential, but how they are obtained is equally important. Leaders need to know that their people act with integrity, that they will do the right thing even when they are not observed. This needs a much deeper knowledge of their people than their bare capabilities.

To get to this level of knowledge requires a closer relationship than an acquaintance in the office or over Zoom. In the RAF, people are encouraged to socialise together both informally and formally for this very reason. Whether you dress up formally and dine together in a ceremonial way or just get together after work, or do both, or go to sporting or other events, it does not matter. What is important is that leaders get to know their people, their peers and those for whom they work outside the confines of normalised behaviour in the workplace. In this manner, character and morals can be judged beyond the face that is presented at work. Good leaders take every opportunity to get to know the people around them, for it is in the mundane everyday words and actions over cups of coffee and so forth that people really reveal themselves.4 Leaders who demonstrate a deep knowledge of the people around them are the ones who are trusted. That knowledge must feel genuine and benevolent, as if it is forced, or a Machiavellian interest is perceived, trust will be eroded not built. It is much easier and quicker to destroy trust than it is to build it:5

Conversation beyond that necessary to get work done, at a deeper level of communication, is what builds trust. Alignment of interests, predictability and integrity give a feeling of greater security and also help build trust. The dissimilarities between people, the social and physical distance between them, are things that make trust harder and wear it away. These are all things that leaders need to consciously work on to nurture trust in those around them. They should also be aware that this works both ways: their people will also be looking intently at them, their abilities and their morals. Followers need to be able to trust their leaders:6

There is one further thing that leaders need to pay attention to, and that is the systems in the organisation that can be set for one reason but actually destroy trust, which would have been more useful. An example from the First World War best illustrates this.7 By 1914, various military technological advances, such as off-field artillery, machine guns and trench warfare, had given defence considerable superiority over attack. All three major European powers in the First World War, the Germans, French and British, came to the same conclusion: the only way that these advantages could be overcome was by the fighting spirit of the soldier.

In the British Army under General Haig, General Headquarters (GHQ) arrogated the right to promote or sack all officers serving in the field army in France. Thus, any officer who dared to tell GHQ that its attack plans would not work (for whatever reason) was, according to GHQ, clearly without the fighting spirit to make them work and so needed to be removed. This practice became so common that it was known as being ‘degummed’ – supposedly from the French dégommer, which means to unstick or dismiss from office. As a result, open and honest communication between the front line and GHQ all but ceased. GHQ thought those on the front line were incapable of military operations, while those on the front line thought those at GHQ were incompetent leaders. There is a story of one brigadier being asked by his brigade major why he did not tell GHQ of the conditions on the ground that would make the planned attack the next day impossible. He replied that he would be removed if he did. The attack failed the next day and he was removed anyway. Another story is of a Major General who, fed up with the situation, asked to be buried between a subaltern and a soldier. He was duly killed in action and his wishes carried out. This systemic issue, where GHQ had become the arbiter of what would work as well as the adjudicator of the result, destroyed any trust that the front line had in GHQ and vice versa. Communication between the two had notoriously become worthless because of the lack of trust.

While it is to be hoped that we will not face similar systemic issues while fighting such a destructive war again, similar systems in today’s organisations can be equally destructive of trust between the people in them. If people compete for bonuses, as was happening in one organisation I came across, they are unlikely to collaborate and trust each other. If the perception of why someone gets paid more, or has a greater bonus, than another is unfair, or who gets promoted or given a coveted position is seen as unwarranted favouritism, then trust will be destroyed. These things need to be done with complete integrity and reason clear to all. There can be many other systems in place in organisations that work against trust, and it is important that leaders think clearly about them in this regard so that they are aligned with creating trust. It is often in explaining these systems to those who are not familiar, such as newcomers, that leaders gain the necessary clarity to see the contradictions. The newcomers’ opinions should also be carefully listened to.

A more modern story about trust being lost comes from the interaction between the RAF and the Army in Afghanistan in 2006. One Major in the Parachute Regiment wrote an email that was published by The Daily Telegraph claiming that the RAF was ‘utterly, utterly useless’, as mentioned earlier in this chapter. That army officer’s trust in the air support given by the RAF had been totally lost. He specifically criticised one female Harrier pilot who failed to identify the target he wished her to attack while he and his troops were under fire, and said he would prefer the support of US Air Force A10s. For the record, the Chief of the General Staff at the time, General Sir Richard Dannatt, said that the Major’s ‘irresponsible comments, based on a snapshot, are regrettable’, and that ‘the way the RAF has performed in support of our operations in Afghanistan has been exceptional’. So, what went wrong? Who is at fault?

As an airman, I would like to rest on General Dannatt’s remarks and ignore those of the Major. General Dannatt is, after all, the more senior officer with the greater experience and wider perspective. But this would be wrong. Clearly, an important incident did not go well for the Major in very difficult circumstances, and we should try to work out why this happened in order to restore trust, as the lives of paratroopers on the ground depend on the delivery of airpower. First, it is not easy from the air, when moving at 400+ knots, to identify the targets on the ground and it requires good coordination and clear use of language between the air control officer on the ground and the pilot in the air. The capability of the aircraft and the weapons it carries, alongside the skill of the pilot in delivering them, will then determine the outcome. The relative skills of the A10 and Harrier pilots (and certainly not their gender) are not likely to be the biggest determinant of the outcome. The weapons systems and characteristics of the two aircraft are very different; the A10 is much slower for a start.

It is most likely that a breakdown in the coordination between the air control officer on the ground and the Harrier pilot, along with the weapons effects the Harrier could produce in the configuration it was carrying at the time, were the cause of the Major’s troubles. The Harrier would have carried a weapon load to cover the most likely targets it would be tasked against. It may not have been optimum for all the targets it would engage on that sortie, and the incident here may not have been the only attack on that sortie as the Harriers were in Afghanistan to support all operations across the whole country, not just the British Army ones in Helmand Province. I cannot say whether or not the Major was aware of all this in the moment; he had been fighting very hard for a long time, and it seems most likely that he was not aware. If that is true, then it is not his fault but that of the ‘system’, which should have ensured that he had that knowledge before he had to rely on airpower for his life. That is as much the fault of the RAF as the Army, and the way the ‘system’ structures training and what knowledge is valued.

If trust is nurtured, the system does not undermine it and it is brought to a high level, then teams and organisations perform so much better. The example of the airborne early warning and control aircraft shows this well. The aircraft has a large crew of 17 or so people and is equipped with its own radar and surveillance systems. It passes the information it gathers to many other people who need it, on the ground as well as in the air, and is capable of controlling fighter aircraft to coordinate and assist their attacks. There are a number of controllers and surveillance operators under the command of the mission commander, some technicians who monitor and look after the systems, and the flying crew (the senior pilot being the overall captain of the aircraft). The ranks differ considerably, both within the officers and senior NCOs on board, but this has nothing to do with the leadership being exercised at any time. Trust among the crew is very high: they know each other well, working and socialising together. The mission commander allocates resources consistent with the load of each controller or surveillance operator depending on the tasking. The resources are taken and given without controversy, being exploited to their utmost. When systems degrade, the technicians step in and lead the other crew members with no hesitation and complete authority. To the casual observer, as I have been, it is sometimes difficult to see when things change, so seamlessly do they happen. The abundant trust makes for a very well-oiled, efficient machine, with situations arising and being dealt with at lightning speed.

TRUST IN VIRTUAL TEAMS

Today, of course, many teams and organisations work remotely, with their contact being mostly or entirely through some form of electronic media, from the humble telephone to sophisticated videoconferencing. It therefore becomes so much harder for leaders to know their people in the way I have described, and for trust to be developed. However, this is not strange territory for the RAF. Senior commanders have led from operations rooms and bunkers for a long time. Keith Park, for example, led the Battle of Britain from his bunker at Uxbridge. But every evening that he could, he got out and flew his own Hurricane, OK1, to the front-line airfields and spoke to his people. He wore a distinctive white flying suit and became a well-known figure to the young pilots who put their lives on the line for him day after day. Similarly, Air Vice Marshal (later Air Chief Marshal Sir) Glenn Torpy commanded the RAF squadrons in the Second Gulf War. The squadrons were spread over eight different airfields and seven different countries in the Middle East. Once the fighting started, there was very little opportunity for him to visit most of the airfields and he commanded from the Air Operations Centre in Saudi Arabia. So, prior to the deployment and during the build up to the fighting, Air Vice Marshal Torpy visited his squadrons and station commanders as often as he could, discussing as much as he could. This made the rapport and trust during the daily video conferences so much easier. However, I did observe during these video conferences that unintentional discourtesies such as turning your back to the camera, for whatever reason, can cause problems (this was not the case, of course, when one of the airfields came under the threat of attack and the person at the other end of the camera disappeared without ceremony!). Interactions via media links therefore need a little extra thought to ensure emotions and egos are managed and trust maintained.

Leaders at a lower level have a similar problem when flying in combined air operations. These are made up of, say, 60 to 100 aircraft from many different squadrons and nations doing many different roles to provide the desired air effect. For example, fighters may be refuelled by aircraft of a different nation to theirs, be protected by electronic and surveillance and jamming aircraft of a third nation, be provided with a control service from another squadron and be giving air-to-air cover to yet another formation. All of these formation leaders, pilots and crews need to trust one another for the combined operation to work. Yet many of them will have never met. What will have happened is the training that all these squadrons and nations will have done with each other over the years. Nations’ air forces, their squadrons and the roles they fly in will gain reputations. During that training, and even on operations, the crews will debrief together as often as they can. You may not have the exact same people flying with you on this combined air operation as you trained with, but you do know their reputation – it is your business to do so. Your and their reputation is vital. For all organisations it is vital to maintain a good reputation. If you do, then working with others becomes easier; if you lose it then everything becomes very much harder and your partners quickly move on to your competitors.

Of course, mistakes are made, and things do not always go smoothly. When they don’t in the RAF, they are mercilessly picked over during debriefs so that lessons can be learned. Honesty here is vital to the reputation. On one combined air operation I was involved in, I was leading my formation of fighters in the air-to-air role and we were to be the first into the area to ensure the safety of others. However, we were not allowed into the area without one surveillance asset being in position. That day this asset had to turn back, which we could see on our data-link system, though most of the other aircraft did not have this advantage. We were making preparations to call for a mass withdrawal when a callsign we had not heard before cleared us to enter the area. We looked up the callsign in our guides and found out who it was. Their reputation, even though they were a unit from another country, preceded them and we happily carried out the operation.

For so-called virtual teams (so-called because the team exists, just not in the same time and space as more traditional ones), reputation is everything and guarding that reputation is vital. Mistakes will be made, nobody is perfect, and honesty and integrity to own that mistake and put it right is crucial. I worked with one man who moved from a normal corporate working environment to running his own virtual software company. He told me that he had never met the people he worked with, who were spread all over the world, except ‘online’. I asked him how on earth he trusted them, as he must surely do for their product to be made. He said that you just have to leap in and trust, you know their reputation and as long as they live up to it, you trust them. Legal contracts, he said, were too cumbersome, expensive and took too long. As far as I could tell, they were a successful organisation. There is some research that backs up this view. Of course, the risks are higher at the beginning, but as the old saying goes, ‘handsome is as handsome does’. Even so, in this sort of relationship it is hard to know people’s ethics, it is only their competence and results that can be seen, and I still think the risks over people’s ethics are higher. It is fine as long as the results stay good, but if ethical issues subsequently emerge then things can go badly wrong for all. Some clothing companies fell foul of this when the foreign manufacturers were accused of exploiting cheap labour. Because of this I would always advocate physical visits, whenever it is possible, to get to know people at a deeper level than workplace acquaintance. In essence, due diligence is necessary with people as well as organisations, and it cannot be done on paper or computer alone.

SUMMARY

The roots of the way the RAF leads can be seen to come from deep in history, yet this is a very modern way of leading. As Sir Michael Howard noted, the RAF quickly came to see that traditional rigid distinctions between officers (leaders) and other ranks simply was not good enough. That understanding has been developed and refined to meet the needs of the modern, interconnected world. People appointed to positions of management (or command) need to get to know their people well and through that knowledge to build and nurture a deep trust in and by their people, as well as between their people. Without that trust in their leader, mutual trust in their peers and their leaders trusting them, good people are not able to exploit their talent for the benefit of the organisation.

Trust is a fickle thing; it can be destroyed in moments and takes time and effort to build. It is built by deep knowledge of people in one another so that they know their capabilities and how they are likely to behave, particularly under pressure. It is nurtured by the feelings of respect that capable and good people have for one another. It is destroyed by creating social distance, by poor behaviour, or by the tolerance of others’ unethical conduct. It can also be ruined by organisational systems that, intentionally or not, set employees against each other – creating competition when collaboration is necessary.

When trust is high and people know each other well, an organisation can work like a well-oiled machine. Leadership flows seamlessly to whoever is best placed to deal with any situation that arises without fuss, ego or bureaucracy slowing things down. Precious assets are delivered to where they will have the most impact or return. The organisation works to the guidance, or intent, of its nominal leader but control is given to whoever is best placed to use it effectively. It is amazing how much can be achieved by good people who are enabled to use their talents. Create the conditions and good leaders will gain immense power by giving it away.

All this can be achieved in ‘virtual’ teams. Trust may well have to be taken up front, without prior great knowledge. It is likely to be built on reputation, and leaders need to build and guard their and their organisation’s reputation. What is promised should be delivered. Mistakes should be owned and corrected. When risks are taken, leaders need to take the rough with the smooth – that is, when things go wrong, not to blame those trying their best (true at all times, but especially so when dealing with people at a distance). Personal, face-to-face visits should be made with virtual teams whenever circumstances allow, so that a deeper understanding of people can be nurtured and their ethical stance gauged, and so that pressure to achieve does not trump the moral compass.

Good people are politically astute – they know how to wield their power within an organisation to influence the right people to get things done. (Note that power is gained from knowledge, expertise, reputation and control of resources, as well as your level in the hierarchy.) They know how to create trust with the people who would otherwise stop things from happening, and who to go to when something is needed. And they do it all with great integrity and clear ethical guidelines. They are also able to ensure that those in positions of authority know how good they are, without upsetting their fellow workers.

THE TAKEAWAYS

1. ■Know your people, build trust up, down and across the organisation:
   1. ■Nurture trust, don’t let organisational systems or setting leaders apart destroy it.
2. ■Use trust to stop the excessive build-up of bureaucracy.
3. ■With virtual teams, leap-in on trust and do as much face to face as possible.
4. ■Learn to be politically astute:
   1. ■Wield power ethically.
   2. ■Influence the right people.