Month: June 2017

Loyalty Part II Last week I introduced Loyalty and how loyalty interrelates with friendship and honesty and asked the question, "Where are the lines between them?" It's a timely topic.  Many people have strong feelings about it-me included.  So, I wanted to delve a little deeper into the topic. As it relates to local government Richard Clay Wilson, Jr. wrote an interesting article in Governing.com.   In his 38 years in local government, 29 as a city manager, he relates that he never had a loyalty issue.  He never asked about loyalty, never asked for  loyalty, and never even had it come up in any personnel evaluation.  I can say the same.  In my 30 years as a Director of departments in cities across the U.S., some with staff sizes of hundreds…

Loyalty and Cowardly Leadership "I need loyalty.  I expect loyalty."  How many times have we heard that phrase since the James Comey testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee? If we didn't know it before-and I think most of us did- we know it now:  What is one person's loyalty is another person's allegiance, and a third person's commitment to the job. Loyalty from two perspectives I think there are two aspects of loyalty.  The type most of us first think of is loyalty by the employee to the employer, to the boss, the company.  Your employer rightfully expects a degree of loyalty.  You should be on time, do the job you were hired to do, have some degree of concern and commitment to the organization.  If you are disloyal, if…

You might want to read a related post on this here Working For A Cowardly Leader Benjamin Snyder writes in, Five Signs You’re Working for a Toxic Boss, on CNBC.com, that two of the most difficult traits to deal with are when the boss is incompetent, and the boss is arrogant.  When an elected official immediately becomes a self-appointed expert, both incompetence and arrogance are on display.  And when a political appointment who has little knowledge or skill is in a position of authority, incompetence is most often the result. I've written about the fact that most Cowardly Leaders have the talent to talk a good game.  They have a gift, a flair in fact, of saying what the important person in the room wants to hear, regardless of the facts…

Cowardly Leaders can be likable! I've worked for leaders who fall into one of three general groups.  Those that are smart, capable, and dynamic.  Those that are average.   And those that fall into the Cowardly Leader category .  I've learned that some of the best leaders aren't necessarily likable, and some Cowardly Leaders are.  Or can be.  Especially when they need to be. Mistakes and Assumptions we make Travis Bradbury is a LinkedIn contributor and author and someone I read quite often.  He recently highlighted a recent study from UCLA where people rated over 500 descriptions of what were perceived as likable traits.  The top-rated were sincerity, transparency, and the ability to be understood. Too often we assume that likable-ness is related to attractiveness, intelligence, extroverted personality and the like.  But those assumptions…