Atten-shun! Why military leaders are the most ‘brain-friendly’
It seems the stereotypical yelling and order-barking drill sergeants in the army are no more. A study released yesterday showed the armed forces have the best leaders in the UK when it comes to managing change.
The research, carried out by Orion Partners, a management consultancy, reveals strong leadership in the armed forces has helped 49 per cent of staff understand why change is good for
them, compared to a UK average of just 35 per cent. It suggests that this profession’s leadership is most ‘brain friendly’ when it comes to managing change. In other words, they understand why their employees react the way they do and use this knowledge to manage their teams more effectively. They ask their employees lots of questions about how they’re feeling, which minimises feelings of threat and promotes feelings of reward and helps drive better performances.
This is despite deep spending cuts and organisational changes in the Ministry of Defence. The 2010 Spending Review stipulated an 8 per cent cut in defence spending by 2015 and has resulted in 4,200 redundancies this year alone.
In contrast, the civil service – also in the midst of upheaval – has the least effective leaders at explaining change. Only 23 per cent of civil servants understand why changes to the civil service are good for them personally. This is not helped by an unprecedented turnover of senior civil servants, with a majority of ministers now in posts for longer periods than their permanent secretaries – staff turnover rates in some departments are now as high as 30 per cent.
The turnover at the top is having a destructive effect on the quality of leadership in the civil service, which could be very damaging to the success of the reforms. The study concludes while armed forces staff are embracing the reforms, the civil service has ‘brain-fried’ leaders who are not explaining the changes to employees, which increases negative feelings and makes it difficult for it to overcome problems associated with deep spending cuts and major organisational upheavals.
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Very interesting indeed.
It might be that the changes are not good for civil servants personally (eg getting fired); that would help explain the 23% figure. And being slightly mischievous, might it be that the leaders in the armed forces got the drill sergeant to instruct the troops that they understood why change was good for them?
Ex-army officers are only rarely successful when they move into the real world…
…or it might be that civil servants have a lot of degrees in ‘day-dreaming’…
Armed forces are taught strong discipline and are autocratically managed, often with the threat of punishment if anyone disobeys orders.I would imagine in the Armed forced you know better than to answer back to your boss, or query his strategy ! In a democratic office you can’t use such tactics, for fear of a rebellion, so much more diplomacy would be required.
Interesting, but where can I find the study?
You need to get in contact with Orion Partners directly to ask for the findings. All contact details are on their website.
These studies are useful at illuminating the real cause & effect of behaviours, including leadership styles and acceptance of change. However, the responses above appear to exhibit a variety of stereotypical viewpoints, eg “degrees in day dreaming” & “armed forces are autocratically managed”. The armed forces use a variety of leadership styles to suit the circumstances at the time, including autocracy in battle, consultative in strategy development & change management etc. Also the degree subject of any leader is a very minor conditioner to their leadership style compared with the culture of the organisations they have experienced, the style of the leaders above them etc.
You are absolutely right Roy. However the nature of exchanges of thoughts within blog media, warrants snap shots of potentially longer need to explain what behind the used notion. Although ‘degrees in daydreaming’ seemed to be stereotypical expression, the idea was to indicate potential issues with application of’change concept’ amongst civil servants, who, and this is another generalisation, not aimed at anyone in particular, are better in talking subject through and even come up with potential solutions, than with an action plan.
Anyone who thinks that Army commanders lead and manage by shouting everything with 100% obedient troops have seen too many films
Interesting research. The most interesting, however, would bo to clarify why.
Two factors might be important:
- the military leader is used to manage change. The organization of the unit and its tasks might change; in battle the situations change quickly.
- the military leader is taught to lead. Unlike many of his civil counterparts he has been handpicked for his leadership abilities not for his specialist expertise in a specific field.