Leadership

[dimsum]

Wouldn't it be interesting if we could gather some data on who/ which organization produces the best leaders, and then reward those who do a good job while punishing those who do a bad job?

I'm sure there would be no complaints about the metrics used and/or the results in the end  :

 

[SupersonicMax]

While it no doubt adds an extra challenge, it is not black and white that the bilingual person is going to be more effective as a whole.

I can think of a few examples of people who couldn't communicate effectively in our mother tongue and was quite sure I'd rather be following a competent person whom needs to communicate to me via hand signals due to a language barrier.

Leadership is contextual.  A good leader in a given setting may not be as good or good at all in a different setting.  What I am saying is with equivalent leadership traits, someone speaking both languages, in a unit with unilingual Anglophones and Francophones will fare better.

 

[daftandbarmy]

Leadership is contextual.  A good leader in a given setting may not be as good or good at all in a different setting.  What I am saying is with equivalent leadership traits, someone speaking both languages, in a unit with unilingual Anglophones and Francophones will fare better in Canada.

Lots of other countries have linguistic issues in their militaries and still do a good job, without an official bilingualism imperative. It's too bad we seem to prefer 'box ticking' over actual performance sometimes ...

 

[dapaterson]

If government gave an order forty plus years ago and senior military leaders still haven't figured it out, the problem is not with the check-in-the-box, but with the military leaders who haven't figured it out yet.

Perhaps they could be professionals and work at the skill they've been told they need, and actively work to maintain and improve the skill they are paid to acquire.

Or they could moan and complain.