What is your defination of good leadership? To me, a good leader is one who respects his subordinates, takes ownership for his/her own mistakes, is patient to guide, takes on new challenges with gusto and makes sure everything runs smoothly.

I think I met a poor example of a leader on my flight back from Sydney to Singapore. There was a Taiwanese stewardess rostered for the flight and she was assigned to work as a steward. She has never done galley work before coz that's not the primary function of foreign crew. She was damn stressed out. So me and this other crew reassured her and said we'll help her and that the complex leader is nice. We told her he'd teach her and help her.

We were wrong.

When he realized she didn't know how to do the galley work, he was just downright nasty to her. He actually requested for a change in her work position. Now tell me, if you're a good leader, you'd offer to teach her, not run her down. It was a freaking light load for a Sydney flight to be honest, the perfect time to learn. However, I don't blame her for not being confident of doing galley work. I understand how the people you work with are so important, esp the so-called complex leader. Get a horrible one and the entire flight will be hell.

So I volunteered to take over, even though I was assigned that work position on the way up to Sydney. Believe it or not, I was the only stewardess in Economy Class who has done galley work before coz most of us were still relatively new. Yeah he was nice to me and the other gal coz we knew our work and didn't give him any problems.

There was something I couldn't accept.

The complex leader did not pass on some information to the Taiwanese crew even though he was supposed to. She should have checked with him with regards to that but there was some miscommunication. To me, they were both at fault and maybe mine as well, since I was working along that aisle. No one told me anything. I only found out after the flight. The inflight supervisor was damn angry. The complex leader conveniently shifted the blame to the poor Taiwanese crew. All of it. He did not mention that he didn't pass on the information to her. She was lucky the IFS was nice enough not to write her in, but he was damn angry and thought badly of her.

She was in tears and I felt really, really bad for her... *sigh* I was honestly disgusted by the whole turn of events coz the person blamed could have been me. After all, I was supposed to do that work position and we switched. I only knew everything when I bumped into her at the control centre and spoke to her.

My point is, he did not take ownership of the problem when he was half to blame. Conveniently saved his own ass. Doesn't integrity exist anymore?

Oh btw... in my earlier post, I said there was someone I detested doing this flight. I was so fortunate that I had to work with him when I was assigned a galley position. I was even more fortunate that I had enough practice to handle everything, WITHOUT HIS HELP. His half-hearted offers to help IS NOT COUNTED. HAH. He did not zap me this time and I hope he has eaten his words about not wanting to work with someone on their 3rd solo flight. What an exemplary example of fine leadership, don't you think?:)

Oh and the funny thing? He can remember he did a flight with me and my buddy when I was a trainee on a Shanghai flight and he can't remember that I did a London flight with him when he worked with me and zapped me. How is that possible?:)

Have I mentioned that I have no respect for such people?