Things I Have Learned About Leadership
There are literally libraries full of literature on the subject of leadership. I would not dare attempt to corral the pearls of wisdom from the pages of those books or essays an try to regurgitate them here. What I have is far more pedestrian…learned experiences. I’m confident that others have additional thoughts on leadership; some may even quibble with the points I have below. But these are the things I learned on my nearly twenty years of leading teams of all sizes — not from a classroom or an online course. Hopefully a tidbit or two may help you on your own leadership journey.
- That on any given day, you never know what your employees may be going through in their personal lives.
- Empathy is not a weakness provided it does not become an overwhelming aspect of one’s management style.
- Common sense, while a dying philosophy, is the best weapon against rampant stupidity.
- Don’t trust irrational leaders.
- Be thoughtful, not impulsive. Thoughtful does not mean slow.
- Involve your team in every aspect of your business as possible — it’s the easiest way to get them to buy in to your program.
- Dictators will lose the best people, all the time, every time.
- It costs far more to replace good employees than it does to keep them.
- An unhappy team is an unproductive team.
- Be honest…always…no matter the circumstances.
- In reference to the honesty aspect…it is ok to tell your team that you would share the sensitive stuff if you could — they will understand when you can’t.
- Trust is everything; your team must know that. If you don’t have trust, you don’t have a team.
- Be willing to take the bullet when your team does not achieve your goals. It happens. It’s not the failure of achieving a goal that should matter most…it’s how you deal with that failure that will define you.
- Share the vision – but be prepared to make adjustments based upon the feedback from the team.
- Be a fabulous listener.
- Thank them. Always. Your team will welcome praise and appreciation even more than money.
- Be willing to do the dirty work.
- Keep focus on the goals. If you have to change, walk them through the change. And it helps to be prepared with the answers to the “why” questions.
- Train. Teach. Mentor. INVEST.
- Deal with problems and issues that arise as quickly as possible. Letting issues fester is a sure recipe to cook up resentment and distrust.
The Second Most Atrocious Leadership I ever Witnessed
A few years back, I was witness to some of the most atrocious leadership I may have ever seen. OK…that’s an exaggeration. It was the second most atrocious leadership I have ever seen.
The owner of the business and his chief lieutenant displayed a constant penchant for beating down the employees. No matter what they did or how hard they worked, there was never anything that anyone did right…ever. Nothing was ever good enough. They had unnecessary meetings where clear objectives were vague or impossible (there was no SMART involved). Middle managers took the brunt of the beatings, accepting the bullets, and attempting to be a buffer against the hurricane of constant negativity.
The consistent outcome was a revolving door of managers, who simply gave up, because they knew there was no possible way of escaping the incessant barrage of negativity. And there was no trust. Anywhere. The lack of trust led to micromanagement, which fostered distrust of ownership, which continued a vicious cycle of distrust. Goals achieved were rarely if ever acknowledged. The style of leadership was oppressive and dictatorial. And the middle managers were never involved in the process of truly helping to contribute to a growth strategy. Their feedback was not respected or accepted. So they became discouraged shells rather than effective contributors.
Now don’t get me wrong. Not every one of the middle managers were effective. Some were also inefficient, poor leaders who did not have the commitment of the front line employees. There was no training involved in helping them improve in a positive and lasting way, nor was there a reasonable environment of honest engagement.
Hot mess inside of a dumpster fire at a train wreck.
The Most Atrocious Leadership I Ever Witnessed
In another example, a senior manager was able to either fire or chase away more than 22 middle and lower level managers in a 30-month period. For those of you doing the math, that a management departure every 1.4 months. They had a total of 17 management positions at this job site. So what was happening?
The Stage
This was a subcontract environment. The on-site general manager (we’ll call him “Joe”) reported to a parent company, but also to the on-site client. This manager had a highly connected relationship with the client. Normally, this would be a good thing. But in this case, Joe was able to convince the client of 2 key concepts:
- Joe could do no wrong; everyone was out to get him from the contract company or inside his own on-site team.
- All of his middle and lower-level managers were incompetent and could do nothing right.
It didn’t help that the client was naïve enough to believe that. And with the client on board, Joe could use that as a tool to keep regional management and company officers at arm’s length from the account. The client, anytime Joe was involved in an investigation, would threaten ending the contract if the parent company continued down a path of discipline with Joe — remember, the client believed Joe was the victim.
The leadership style was one of fear and oppression. Employees were so terrified, that while they would chatter amongst themselves about how the wayward leader behaved towards them, they refused to offer formal testimony when an investigation began into the happenings at the job site. They went completely silent, offering non-committal statements or even false soft praise for how much they liked working there.
To complicate the situation even further, Joe used his race and religion as a weapon, threatening to use it legally as a way to slow or eliminate human resource investigations, get his superiors reassigned to other territories, and keep the attorneys for the contractor petrified with fear over the remote possibility of a discrimination lawsuit.
The Fault Line
The failure was ultimately with the parent company. They knew what was taking place, and in spite of the employee interviews yielding little in terms of concrete evidence, the exit interviews of the managers relieved or voluntarily departed were replete with anecdotes and common threads to have easily ended Joe’s continuing employment at the site. The organizational paralysis of the contractor, regardless of the relationship with the on-site client, was the ultimate cause of the systemic dysfunction that resulted.
The entire operation was infested with distrust and atrocious morale. Productivity was low, program execution was ineffective, and the account never realized the full revenue potential that was possible there. Employees, namely the middle and lower managers, were constantly mistreated, in many cases blamed by Joe for problems they neither caused nor had any control over, and “thrown under the bus” by their boss with their client (reinforcing Joe’s contention of incompetent employees). In some cases, this would prompt the client to endorse their removal, either voluntarily or involuntarily.
The Result: Catastrophic Chaos.
Had the parent company simply removed the Joe and subsequently dealt with any potential legal repercussions, the situation could have resolved itself. The parent company had enough talented senior management candidates available on the bench that could have established a positive relationship with the client to neutralize that threat. And there was enough testimonial and circumstantial evidence to make any potential court cases involving race or religion a non-sequitur. But fear drove policy.
These are just two examples where poor leadership devastated an organization’s effectiveness. I’m not sure there is any medicine available to solve the issues in the first example, short of the complete failure of the business, which may be likely. In the second, there were ample opportunities to cure the environment with the proper antibiotics. The overarching failure of the contract company to deal with the situation is the real tragedy there.
Post Mortem
In the end, the client retired and the company ultimately lost the contract — millions of dollars of annual revenue. New individuals hired to oversee the contract were not fooled by the misinformation, but were stunned that a large company would fail to take adequate ownership of the on-site management problem. Joe was finally removed and as expected there was litigation in the courts as a result…as far as I know, Joe never won any of his cases.
The bottom line is this: effective leadership is everything in a competitive business environment. Without it, no matter the product, the market demand, or any other factors — the business will never reach full potential, and could even fail. Perhaps a nugget or two in my list at the top may be helpful…perhaps not. What I would encourage is to be reflective in considering your own leadership or management style, and seek out those who have learned experiences. I would like to believe they have something to share that we can all learn from — even me. 👍
This article first appeared at robertgriffin.net in September of 2017. It is republished here, with minor edits to improve clarity or accuracy.
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