REFLECTIONON

MILITARY LEADERSHIP

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WHAT LEADERSHIP MEANS TO ME

If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more,

do more and become more, you are a leader.

~ John Quincy Adams

I believe that other than accomplishing the mission/ tasks, leadership

means taking care of the soldiers' well-being. To me, leadership means giving

H.O.P.E.

Heart, Ownership, Passion, Exemplary Conduct

A leader must care for the soldiers, and seize their Heart. He needs to

provide motivation for them to reach higher.

A leader must empower the subordinate, give them a sense of purpose

and give them a sense of Ownership.

A leader must be Passionate about what he does, and he need to infect

this passion to the people around him.

Most important of all,

A leader must be deeply rooted in the foundation of moral values, in

order to lead and inspire by Exemplary conduct.

Leadership definition in the SAF focus on the “process of influencing”,

and to me, H.O.P.E was my way of influencing the people AROUND me,

including my peers and my superior (as oppose to only the people working FOR

me).

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WHY DOES LEADERSHIP MATTERS TO THE SINGAPORE ARMED FORCES?

Leadership is especially important to the SAF. Unlike other Nations,

where they can rely on volunteers to join the military, Singapore's limited human

resource pool meant that the military is made up of conscripts. While one can

argue there may be a multitude of reasons why a volunteer may choose to join

the military, the crux of the matter was that the volunteer had a choice, and they

chose to serve the nation11. Conscripts doesn't. As such, it would be harder to

lead the conscripts and inspire their commitment. Conscripts need to be lead

well in order to instil a sense of purpose during Nation Service.

Secondly, due to globalization, the future battlefield is morphing from a

linear, contiguous terrain to a highly complex and urbanized one. Juxtapose that

with the expansion of operations along the peace to war continuum to include

Homeland Security, Civil Contingencies, HADR and PSO22, the SAF would

need to place higher emphasis on leadership as we strife to remain flexible in

peace and decisive in war.

1 MAJ Tay Kwang Leong. The True Warfighter in 3rd Gen SAF, BTC Essay. Aug 2009.2 Army Information Centre (2008). Building Our 3rd Generation Army. pp 10-11.

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L-M-C. NOT MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE DICHOTOMY

Managers are people who do the things right, while leadersare people who do the right things.

~ Warren Bennis

So what does Command fit into this Manager vs Leader debate? Much

time have been invested during lesson 2 to discuss the difference between

Leadership, Management and Command, and the following was presented.

Having rotated through command (PC, OC), instructional (Instructor/ PC

in OCS) and staff (SO in Mindef and Div HQ) appointments in my short 14 years

career, I realise that in the military, L-M-C overlaps, and that it is very unlikely

one would be in a situation to be only leading, managing or commanding. L-M-C

are not mutually exclusive dichotomies.

In Martin Van Creveld's “Command In War”, he offered that “...command

must arrange and coordinate everything an army needs to exist its food supply,

its sanitary service, its systems of military justice...”, and that “...command

enables the army to carry out its proper mission...”33. The former connotes a

resource management sense (management), while the latter focus on the

mission (leadership). As such, to answer to the question posed earlier on where

is “command” in “leadership” vs “management” debate, I offer the following:

If to manage is to do the things right, and to lead is to do the right things,

then, it follows that to command is to do the right thing right.

3 Martin Van Crevald (1985). Command In War, Harvard University Press 2003. pp. 6

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Table 1: Differentiating L-M-C.

To effectively command is to find the happy medium between Leadership

and Management. Simply put, to command it to do the right things right (Figure 1).

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Figure 2: Command = Doing the right things right.

CONTEXT! CONTEXT! CONTEXT!

~ Recognize different stroke for different folks ~

The amateurishly H.O.P.E. that I had was my “process of influencing” the

people around me. However, there exist numerous leadership theories and

models such as the Situational Leadership model, Path-Goal Theory, and

Transformational Leadership. These are some of the leadership tools that I now

have inside my “tool box”, ready to be used at different situation.

Reflecting back to my Company Command tour from Apr 05 to Jun 2006,

I find Situational Leadership II4 (Figure 3) a model that I was able to relate to.

When the recruits first came into the Battalion, most were excited young kids

with low competencies in military operations (Directing style). As they progress

through Guards Conversion Course and other training, the style of leadership

shifts to one that is more coaching in nature, especially after they receive their

Guards tab and the khaki beret. During the lead up towards Army Training

Evaluation Centre's assessment, leadership style exhibits a more supporting

approach, and in the last quarter before they ORD, many tasks were delegated

to them with minimal supervision.

4 The KenBlanchard Companies. Situational Leadership II, Teaching Others. (2000) [Online].Available from: http://kenblanchard.net/files/pdf/SLII_Teach_Others.pdf, [2011, Mar 8]

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Figure 3: Situational Leadership Model.

The timeline or different phases depicted, in reality, are not so clinically

clear. One does not shift from a Coaching style to a Supporting Style overnight,

and a transition period is normally observed. Also, it must also be added that

during the application of SLT, it is possible that more than one style is in

practice at any time. While one may be applying a supportive approach during

the lead up to ATEC, there are a few soldiers that require a more coaching, or

even directing style. This is also in congruence with Northhouse, that SLT does

not “fully address the issue of one-to-one versus group leadership”55.

Recognizing that different strokes for different folks, even when one applies a

broad leadership style to a group, he/ she must remain cognizant of the

“minorities” of the group that may respond better to a different leadership

approach.

5 P. G. Northhouse. Chapter 5, Situational Approach; Leadership Theory and Practise, Fifth Edition.SAGE Publications Inc. (2010). pp. 97

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QUERY 1: IS THE SAF READY FOR MULTI-DIMENSIONAL LEADERSHIP?

The SAF 24/ 7 leadership framework6 is a comprehensive Leadership

model that the 3rd Gen SAF subscribes to. However this framework still retains a

one dimensional, leader-men approach to leadership and does not account for

leading peer teams of the same hierarchical standing, and/ or the reverse

direction of leadership, i.e. leading upwards. Adding a lateral influence element

and an upward influence aspect to the existing 24/ 7 model, we would get, what

I call, the multidimensional leadership.

Leading Up.

~ You are no smarter than a “kopi kia77” ~

When I graduated from Company Tactics Course with Honours, I showed

my dad the award. Sensing that I was getting a little “big-headed”, and knowing

my penchant for coffee, he asked me if I knew how to brew one. When I replied

that I don't, he said that despite my award, I am no smarter than a kopi kia!

6 LTC Chan Kim Yin, COL Sukhmohinder Singh, MAJ Regena Ramaya, Ms Lim Hwee Hoon. Pointer Monograph No. 4, Spirit and Systems, Leadership Development for a Third Generation SAF, Pointer, Journal of the Singapore Armed Forces. (2005). pp 18.

7 Local slang for “coffee boy”.

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Figure 2: SAF 24/ 7 Leadership Framework for 3rd Gen SAF.

That taught me a lesson of humility. A lesson on listening to the ground.

Are we ready to be influence and “lead” by the ground? That's a principle that I

adopted while in Company Command. The OC do not own the company.

Everyone in the company have a voice. Everyone have ownership (H.O.P.E.) of

the company. Are we, the de-facto leader, ready to be lead up?

Is the Army Leadership ready to be lead up, especially since majority of

our soldiers are made up of conscripts?

Peer Leadership.

~ Too many cook spoil the soup ~

Throughout my career, there were numerous projects that need to be

accomplished. Having been someone that men look up to all the time, do we

have the necessary skills and competencies to lead a team of leaders in a peer

setting? Does the leaders in the team know when, and how, to step back and

follow a fellow peer? These skills need to be learnt, especially when the leaders

themselves have been in a leadership position for too long and have forgotten

how to follow.

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AS A CONSCRIPT ARMY, HOW DO WE SUSTAIN MORAL QUOTIENT (MQ) IN THE SAF?

From the video “The Warrior”, we see that under intense stress, the

“right”s and the “wrong”s are often differentiated by a very fine, yet blurred line.

This problem is exacerbated by the NSF and NSMen who comprise 80% of our

fighting ORBAT. How do we influence the values of the enlistees, the same

resource pool that would eventually contribute as our NS leaders? In response

to the query in class if a leader was born or nurtured, Prof Chan's reply was

“You can take the best seed from a tree, but if you failed tocultivate it by giving him sunlight, water, fertilizer, the best

seed will also die”.

The same applies to leaders. If we do not nurture our leaders, our “best

seeds”, it would not be able to lead the soldiers well. So how do we ensure that

the “best seeds” are nurtured well, given the right MQ training and that they

behave ethically and morally under stress? Behaving within certain values

system is a problem that confronts even an volunteer military. In a sharing

session with an Ex-USMC General, a question was posed to him on how can a

tactical soldier make a right ethical decision within 3 seconds before shooting at

an innocent civilian or a suspected insurgent. His reply was that the soldier did

not make that decision within the span of the few seconds, Rather its was years

of training that took place before the few seconds that help made the decision.

But yet, the “years of training” did not prevent the Abu Ghraib prison scandal

from occurring in 2004, thereby highlighting the need for strong MQ inculcation.

As such, how do we sustain the MQ inculcation and training especially

when the touch points, comprising a 2-year active service, and an annual In-

Camp-Training, are limited? How do we ensure that, when placed under intense

stress, our NSMen have the sufficient MQ to make right values decision?

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REFERENCES● Army Information Centre. Building Our 3rd Generation Army. (2008)

● LTC Chan Kim Yin, COL Sukhmohinder Singh, MAJ Regena Ramaya, Ms Lim Hwee Hoon. Pointer Monograph No. 4, Spirit and Systems, Leadership Development for a Third Generation SAF, Pointer, Journal of the Singapore Armed Forces. (2005).

● MAJ Tay Kwang Leong. The True Warfighter in 3rd Gen SAF, BTC Essay. Aug 2009.

● Martin Van Crevald (1985). Command In War, Harvard University Press 2003.

● P. G. Northhouse. Chapter 5, Situational Approach; Leadership Theory and Practise, Fifth Edition. SAGE Publications Inc. (2010)

● The KenBlanchard Companies, Situational Leadership II, Teaching Others. (2000) [Online]. Available from: http://kenblanchard.net/files/pdf/SLII_Teach_Others.pdf, [2011, Mar 8]

BIBLOGRAPHY

● MG Neo Kian Hong. Value-based Leadership in the SAF. Pointer Vol.33 No.4 (2008)

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