What the RAF leadership model can do for your business

Leadership is different in your organisation, right? Wrong. By Dr John Jupp

My experience of learning about leadership and helping people with it started in the RAF. It has since ranged across the public, private and charitable sectors.  Some things about leadership are able to work everywhere.

The RAF leadership model

The RAF has been successful for over 100 years, it was created in a crisis and surmounted that.  It flourished during huge downsizing in the 1920s, as well as the predatory efforts of the Royal Navy and the Army.  It successfully rebuilt itself during the lean inter-war period to be ready to fight and win the most important battle in the world for the whole of the 20th Century, the Battle of Britain. I am not alone in my belief that it was leadership that created that win. It has operated successfully in many operations in every decade since.

The essence of this success is good strategy and leaders leading at every level, even though this may sound like chaos.  Surely, you say, it would be better if everyone knew just what to do and got on with it?  The essence of the production line, Fayol’s ideas of management.  But we all know the failures of the production line: boredom and lack of attention leading to poor quality product.  The leader-full organisation avoids this.

To avoid the chaos of everyone leading in their own direction, organisations need a framework that applies to all.  A framework that allows leaders at all levels to self-synchronise with each other.  In the RAF, this is called Mission Command.  Everyone must understand the context in which they are leading, their leader’s intent, what their own contribution is and why.  The why is most important as purpose is the single biggest driver of human behaviour.

You must allow leaders the freedom to find a way to achieve their mission.  They have to be imbued with a determination to achieve their set goals.  It follows that everyone must act with integrity to an ethical code.  Senior leaders must provide sufficient resources for the ends to be met.  Junior leaders have to return unused resources or be able to request more as the situation develops.

Senior leaders set strategies, allocate resources and make timely decisions.  They must not constrain subordinate parts of the organisation any more than is strictly necessary.  Boundaries of action have to be set, but they should be as wide as possible to allow the maximum freedom for junior people to explore ways of achieving the ends by using fleeting opportunities.  If boundaries need to be crossed before leaders can be contacted, leaders must be told as soon as possible.  At this point, leaders need to understand that their people are trying to achieve the strategy, not stop it.  They must own the outcomes, not blame subordinates.

All this requires that leaders trust their people and their people trust them.  Leaders must work hard at getting to know their people and to be known by them.  The more people know of them, the more they will trust them.  Without trust, people will not act independently, leaders become tied down with the day-to-day, the ability of the organisation to act with speed and take the fleeting opportunity is lost.  The ultimate end is that the chance to set a good strategy is lost with the organisation finally lurching from crisis to crisis, and leaders only able to try to put out the fires.

With leadership working in this way throughout the organisation, it is so much easier for organisations to deal with the ambiguous, complex and volatile world we all live in.  It has been proven within the RAF just how effective and efficient such organisations can be.

Although, there is so much more to leadership than just this.  Leaders also need to understand the system that is their organisation, the system within which that organisation sits.  They must develop the morality of their organisation and be an example to all.  They have to lead change, to understand new technology well enough to know what it can do, where it can help and where it cannot.  They need to be able to influence people to communicate with them, not just tell them what to do.  They must be able to handle the ever-increasing ambiguity.

Above all though, leaders must allow others to lead.  Their job is to make others work easier.  While all this sounds like a job description for Superman, leadership is about you.  Your personality.  About knowing yourself and how you come across to others.  All the rest is about improving your leadership.

Dr John Jupp OBE is a former fighter pilot, Squadron Commander and founder of the RAF Leadership Centre. His new book Rise Above – Leadership lessons from the RAF is published by Pearson, £14.99.

Written by John Jupp OBE

Prepared by Ebony Ximines-Parke