I was never an officer, but I was led by both very good and very bad officers. Confidence, is huge, competance is also a good thing. Having compassion yet being prepared to make harsh descisions is what I wanted to see in an officer. I had all of the drinking buddies I wanted, I didn't need my LT for that, I needed him to be on top of the situation, and calling shots in a military manner. As others have said the NCO's in your unit will be very helpful, but you cannot lean on them to much, they have thier own job to do, that may sometimes seem to contradict yours, an officer has to remeber that the NCOs are suborbinate to the officer, not the other way around. In korea I has a female LT, she was a West Point grad, and as useless as they come, she had to defer to the Plt Sgt on every descision, and that scared the crap out of me, if the N Koreans had decided to some south she wouldn't have been able to order us out of the motor pool without asking a NCOs permision.

At Ft. Bragg I had a great LT, he had gotten to the unit (his first assignment) about a month before me, and although he was green and occasionaly made questionable descisions, he had self confidence, and was not scared to make a descision and stand by it on his own. He was smart enough to learn from the NCOs in the unit, and as time he gained the experience he needed, but most importantly he was a leader of men, not a yes man who always felt the need to defer to someone else on every subject. This guy was a ROTC officer from some second rate college by the way.

Like I said I was never an officer, so I have no idea it is like to be in thier position, but I do know what it is like to have a indescive leader, it is scary.