I've said this often and I will say it again here: You want leaders, go military. Combat facing only.
Why?
Despite the (incorrect) Hollywood caricature of military leaders being shoot first ask questions later seim-psychotic blowhards, the military rewards everything you want in a leader and at the same time aggressively weeds out all but the strongest performers.
A good military resume will almost without exception create the following person:
1. Analytical observer - the fog of war keeps these people asking "what don't I know" even when it seems clear that they have all the information about a decision point.
2. Good Planner - Data gathering is important in order to make the right calls.
3. Decision Maker - These folk are always able to make calls - yes sometimes the wrong one - without knowing certain details.
3. Decisive Action Taking - Once the call has been made, these folk see that the Action is executed immediately, and attempt to gather information regarding the effectiveness of the action as soon as possible.
4. Results focused - These people appreciate and reward high quality results, which means they tend to breed people like them.
However, the most important quality is:
5. "In contact leadership" - Combat leaders tend to have a significant ability to think on their feet in reaction to the changing environment. In my experience, this never seems to be properly learned in a civilian in the same way. I suppose it has something to do with the magnitude of the choices being made, but even non-combat military folk seem to be better at this than the average manager.
Yeah, I'm a veteran. But I spent five years working in uniform, and have spent about 15 out. Based on my observations, and excluding outliers, the difference is noticeable.
That's perfect if you've got a top-down command-and-obey culture. However many organizations do not look like this. Veterans that I've known often have not developed their abilities at building a consensus, getting people to buy in, or pushing responsibility and decision making down to the people in the trenches. In some environments that can be a real problem. (Ironically the problems seem to be invisible to the people causing it.)
This is not a slam on veterans. My point is that many different corporate cultures work well. However a mismatch between employee and culture tends to fail badly. And graduates of the military culture are not going to work in all corporate cultures.
It is worth re-reading the article with this in mind. Many of the companies listed that recruiters avoid are great companies. Companies like Oracle, Coca-Cola and Intel are world class and clearly work very well. But they breed people who don't fit into most other US corporations.
Veterans that I've known often have not developed their abilities at building a consensus, getting people to buy in, or pushing responsibility and decision making down to the people in the trenches.
You're right on the first two, completely off on the last one. Military leaders will view building a consensus and getting buy in as politics, and avoid it. They will most certainly delegate properly, especially if surrounded by proven performers. In fact, you can pretty much observe what they think of their colleagues by observing who they delegate to. If they don't delegate at all, odds are likely that they would also consider their staff lacking in skill if asked.
That being said, without being too draconian, I'm learning more and more that assessing the first two items as politics is accurate. Sometimes necessary, but not fun.
Employee/Company culture matching is tremendously important as you point out.
There are as many bad "leaders" in the military as in any other organization. Viewing military experience as providing some kind of extra leadership credentials is naive. Veterans like to think this is true. There is no real evidence it is. (feel free to provide some).
Your list provides a handful of characteristics good leaders have, irrespective of field of activity. Such leaders exist in all fields where competition among groups of people exists. Military history is full of incidences where rigid, dogmatic commanders led their men to disaster, alongside many instances where inspired leadership made a difference.
As btilly pointed out above, the military "leadership" style depends on a command and control organization where orders are (ultimately) obeyed even when they seem senseless.("take that hill", the charge of the Lighr Brigade). Hardly good training to lead a group of free thinking professionals.
At least in the software industry the best leaders by and large don't have military experience. For good reason. Leading people who can "vote with their feet" anytime is a very different kettle of fish from leading a group of people who are duty bound to obey you even at the cost of their lives. Good hackers in particular don't "take" well to military style command.
"You want leaders, go military." makes about as much sense as "You want leaders, go politics.".
In both fields there are good leaders and bad leaders and there is a "ruthless weeding out process". (As a reductio ad absurdum argument) A case could be made that people who've been successful in politics (sure, frontline only, if you want it that way - in this case people who've stood for elections and been elected to office) are much better placed to lead a team than people who've been successful in the military. After all they know how to listen to people, harmonize interests, evolve a consensus, communicate decisions and so on.
"A good military resume will almost without exception create the following person:"
replace military with "sports" or "community organizer" and the list remains unchanged wrt to the leadership qualities required (though their expression will change depending on the filed of activity).
The key word in your sentence is "good" not "military".
"A good X resume will exhibit leadership qualities" where X is any group activity with a competitive element.
Why?
Despite the (incorrect) Hollywood caricature of military leaders being shoot first ask questions later seim-psychotic blowhards, the military rewards everything you want in a leader and at the same time aggressively weeds out all but the strongest performers.
A good military resume will almost without exception create the following person:
1. Analytical observer - the fog of war keeps these people asking "what don't I know" even when it seems clear that they have all the information about a decision point.
2. Good Planner - Data gathering is important in order to make the right calls.
3. Decision Maker - These folk are always able to make calls - yes sometimes the wrong one - without knowing certain details.
3. Decisive Action Taking - Once the call has been made, these folk see that the Action is executed immediately, and attempt to gather information regarding the effectiveness of the action as soon as possible.
4. Results focused - These people appreciate and reward high quality results, which means they tend to breed people like them.
However, the most important quality is:
5. "In contact leadership" - Combat leaders tend to have a significant ability to think on their feet in reaction to the changing environment. In my experience, this never seems to be properly learned in a civilian in the same way. I suppose it has something to do with the magnitude of the choices being made, but even non-combat military folk seem to be better at this than the average manager.
Yeah, I'm a veteran. But I spent five years working in uniform, and have spent about 15 out. Based on my observations, and excluding outliers, the difference is noticeable.