A technician in a factory where the management were all engineers. He rose through the ranks to run my group when nobody else could handle it. Never indecisive. Knew exactly what he wanted from us and trusted us to figure out how to make it happen. Sat through what I later discovered were absolutely hellish weekly managers' meetings where the directors would take turns raking the managers over the coals, individually and collectively. Didn't complain about it or take it out on his subordinates. When it was absolutely necessary to make us fall in line with B.S. from above, he was matter-of-fact about it. We were expected to abide by the policy, he was going to enforce it, but he wasn't going to expect us to like it.

When, in the end, office politics lead to him taking the fall for a large manufacturing incident, he accepted a lateral demotion gracefully. I worked for people with much more formal education both before and after, but he was both smarter and a better leader than any of them.