Describe a leader you admire.

Rather than a famous figure, I would like to talk about the head of the department where I did my first job, a man called Joseph. He ran a team of about thirty people in a company that was, frankly, in a bad state, and half of what he did was absorb pressure that would otherwise have landed on us. I only understood that years later. At the time I thought he was simply calm. What made him a good leader was that he was completely specific. He never gave anyone vague encouragement. He would tell you exactly which part of your work was weak and exactly what to do about it, and then he would leave you alone to do it. He also took the blame publicly on at least two occasions when the mistake was mine, and corrected me privately afterwards in about four sentences. I admire him because that combination is rare. Most leaders are either kind and unclear or clear and unkind. Doing both, consistently, for years, in a failing company, is a genuine achievement. I have worked for four managers since and I still use his habit of saying the specific thing rather than the encouraging one.