Have you ever heard a person in a leadership position say this,

“There are four ways of doing things: the right way, the wrong way, the Navy way, and my way. If they do things my way, we’ll get along.”

…or maybe this,

“Aboard my ship excellent performance is standard, standard performance is sub-standard, [and] substandard performance is not acceptable.”…

If you have then you are dealing with a Captain Queeq personality. A leader who makes calls by the book and is a task master who is always goal orientated…almost to a fault. At times these over-bearing leaders can seem domineering, perhaps even tyrannical. At other times their eye for perfection produces great results.

As we can see in The Caine Mutiny, authoritarian leadership, while helping to move agendas, can breed mutinous behavior among staffers.

However, detail-oriented leadership can produce results, and, as Captain Queeq says, “Big things are made up of details. Don’t forget, if one nail goes then the whole horseshoe is lost…then the battle.”

When is madness visible in leadership? Captain Queeq in The Caine Mutiny