Military and Business Leadership - Similarities and Differences - Term Paper Example

The study used both qualitative and quantitative methodology in gauging the responses of military soldiers particularly those who have been deployed to Afghanistan and business managers from different organizations. The online survey questionnaire was accomplished by a total of 250 respondents wherein 200 coming from the military group and the remaining 50 from the business group. The findings suggested that there are indeed a number of traits and qualities that business leaders could adopt from military leadership with regards to effective crisis management.

Moreover, there are major skills or qualities of military leaders which are admired most and are considered best applied in crisis management. In addition, business managers also stressed the need to adopt such skills and qualities from a military perspective of crisis management as they feel that these are needed to effectively address crisis situations in a business setting. These are comprised of courage or bravery, being analytical, intelligence, being influential, compassion and relationship-building.

Business and military leadership do have differences, particularly in the expected traits and qualities. However, when it comes to crisis management, a combination of traits from both realms is effectual.  In recent decades, leadership has never faced a challenge as big as it does now. The organizations that survived and flourished through periods of great uncertainty in the past are suddenly finding themselves bankrupt and are disappearing almost overnight caught in the great economic crisis that has engulfed the world today (Davey and Smith, 2009).

The centuries of research in leadership and management theories and practice suddenly seem to be found lacking in content. There is a great need for leadership lessons for the corporate leaders of present times, so that they may guide their organizations to survive through the ongoing economic and management crisis. Global executives of top multinational companies responded with eight answers when they were asked what according to them the most important leadership quality was. The eight essential leadership qualities identified were humility, energy, intuition, vision, perspective, passion, conviction and learning (Harvard Business Review, 2007).

This forms the trigger for this research study.