Leadership Styles and Power Bases of CO,

¶ … leadership styles and power bases of CO, XO, Chief of the Boat (COB)? (Consider the full range of possible styles.) Cite specific behaviors and statements, with specific reference to the leadership literature.

The CO's leadership style is very much ad hoc -- in terms of his contempt for what he sees as overly theoretical book knowledge, it is also firmly based on his own long experience. To some degree it recalls the fascinating research done by Malcolm Gladwell in his book Blink: Gladwell researches the possibility that snap decisions in many circumstances are more likely to be correct than laboriously researched and deliberated ones. Gladwell estimates that ten thousand hours of intense activity are required to gain real competency or fluency in an activity, and it is clear from the captain's age and the length of his command that he has seen many years of service and can now afford to make his decisions based on pure instinct. The Cob rather memorably sums up the CO's leadership abilities in his attempt to mollify the XO early in their conflict: "I think we have here is a difference in management styles. But as unpredictable as he is, there is a logic to it. He navigates by his own star, not many men can do that. Cob's rules of Navy leadership: One, you've got to look like you know what you're doing, Two, the men have got to believe you know what you're doing, and Three -- and most important -- everybody's got an opinion, but the captain's got to make a choice. You live and die with that. And that's where the Skipper's earned his stripes, Sir. I've seen it time and time again." In other words, Cog justifies the CO's initial high-handedness to the XO by explaining it as a matter of keeping up appearances for the sake of shipboard discipline, but essentially being flexible enough to evaluate any potential situation for its full ramifications, no matter how far fetched. This is why he controversially at the start of the film orders a weapons readiness drill even in the midst of a galley fire -- the incident that sets off his quarrel with the XO over their differing managerial styles.

The XO is depicted as being almost the polar opposite of the CO -- as another character tells the XO after his friction with the CO begins, the XO needs to remember how he looks to the CO "Annapolis…Harvard…Well-versed in theory," in other words lacking in the kind of practical experience that Malcolm Gladwell sees as requisite for actual expertise. (The XO gets precisely this kind of practical experience over the course of the film, after he has assumed command -- even to the point of making a wrenching life-or-death decision regarding three crew members who are sealed off and presumably drown in order to prevent the sub-from collapse.) In the latter half of the film, after the CO has been removed from command, he scornfully notes that he is reading the XO's personnel file while under house-arrest and "the closest he's been to combat has been in a classroom." But the XO's job is to provide nuance, and that is why -- with the particularly tricky question of partial orders received followed by combat-related radio silence -- he ultimately prevails against the CO's desire to follow the first fully-received order to fire. The CO's analysis of the XO overall is that he is too full of nuance and scruple: in a pointed exchange early in the film (before the situation onboard the sub-has escalated) where the CO sums up the XO as being overly circumspect and reliant on theoretical knowledge: "You qualify your remarks. I don't mean to suggest you're indecisive, Mr. Hunter, not at all -- just complicated." The withering contempt for this "complicated" psychology that Gene Hackman evinces is not unlike George W. Bush's contempt for "nuance," and in both cases it indicates the same sort of leadership style. The XO's leadership style in this regard is perhaps more like Barack Obama's -- with the same risk run in both cases of seeming overly professorial and unmanned by scruple. It's worth noting that XO's power base includes the more sensitive and intellectual members of the crew, and although he loses Weps's loyalty (all the more poignant because of their closeness out of uniform) he more crucially gains Cob's loyalty over the course of the film, which perhaps says more about XO's increasing facility in handling the sort of practical real-world experience that CO is well-seasoned to handle.

The COB's leadership style is altogether different from the other two. Although the CO and the XO each have names which are used -- Captain Ramsey and Mr. Hunter -- COB is simply known as "Cob," and he is portrayed with the jovial corpulence of a Union Boss or a Blue Collar Worker, not unlike the husband on the sit-com "Roseanne." This fits well with Cob's own leadership role on the vessel, which is not unlike that of a union boss. The concerns of the CO and the XO are beyond his purview, in a sense. But when the conflict between the two of them reaches a crisis and he is forced to decide, he decides in favor of the XO because he felt the CO's behavior had crossed a line when he tried to remove the XO for behavior that, though displeasing to the CO, was certainly not insubordinate on the part of the XO. But after siding with the XO in deposing the CO from his command, he is keen to remind the XO bitterly that he is not automatically the XO's friend or yes-man for having given him his support. He gave him his support in the quarrel between the XO and the CO because, according to the rules of command, the XO was technically in the right, and the CO overstepped his authority.