Fear of flying?

Does this account for the reportedly low-quality of the staff in the Prime Minister Gillard’s office?

CONCLUSION

Dixon was concerned with the competences of military leaders, but his observations have wider currency.

He wrote: “Notwithstanding …exceptions and at risk of over-simplifying what are really very complex issues, there are grounds for believing that high achievement-motivation characterizes highly successful (military) commanders.”

And: “There are grounds for believing that incompetent military commanders tend to be those in whom the need to avoid failure exceeds the urge to succeed.”

Dixon wrote that “a number of consequences follow from these differences in achievement motivation. The first is that while both the drive towards self-betterment and the drive towards professional excellence may take a man to the top, only the latter guarantees that he is fitted for the job of high command, for only in the latter case can we be sure that he has the requisite expertise. (He must have it then, because this was his only qualification for promotion.) Conversely, the man who reaches a position of great power as outcome of his drive to achieve greater self-esteem may not necessarily have any outstanding military ability, for his ascent did not depend upon professional excellence. More serious is the fact that even if he has the requisite military skills these may be rendered quite nugatory by those other traits that are part and parcel of his underlying personality-structure: moral cowardice, indecisiveness, secretiveness and sensitivity to criticism.”

Is this Julia Gillard?