Year: 2017

I've written before about power, authority, and leadership.  The blog Power Is Not Leadership is particularly relevant. Another previous blog post discusses the challenge and difficulty of Speaking Truth to Power.  Simon Sinek has excellent advice when he says, "The most important thing you will ever do as a leader is tell the truth.  It's also the easiest.  Just tell the truth." When Power Doesn't Listen All leaders answer to someone.  Regardless of how many people you lead, you answer to someone.  So you have multiple opportunities to speak truth to power.  However, I heard an interesting question posed the other day: What Do You Do When Power Doesn't Listen? I still firmly believe that the most difficult challenge any leader faces is speaking truth to power.  And when that power is not…

Cowardly Leaders don't lead teams.  They create teams (or what they might label as teams).  They refer to their team.  But they don't lead a team. Michael Schneider, writing in Inc., reported on a study that Google performed with 180 internal teams to determine just what makes a successful team.  His article is here if you're interested in reading the entire piece. Successful Teams have the following: Dependability Structure and Clarity Impact Meaning Psychological Safety The last trait was the one that surprised the researchers at Google.  They supposed that successful teams were comprised of what you would expect.  Smart people, well-rounded, had the requisite number of people from different departments, diverse, etc.  They also confirmed that teams routinely had their marching orders, had agendas, had a timeline to meet, knew (or reasonably…

The most difficult leadership position I've ever been in has actually happened twice.  Both were large department directors.  They were 14 years apart, but in both cases, the challenges, frustrations and angst were remarkably similar.  Working for a cowardly leader, on a day-to-day basis, can, and does, cause ulcers, stress anxiety, and other health issues. In the first scenario, I lost about 15 pounds in two years due to the stress, so I suppose that is a silver lining.  The second time I wasn't there long enough to lose any weight, but the stress was definitely the same.  Many of you have worked for cowardly leaders, or do so now, and you know that sick feeling in your stomach you have every morning when you have to go to work and face the boss…

If you’ve worked for a cowardly leader, you know the challenges.  How do you disagree respectfully?  How do you point out decisions that violate long-standing policies?  Are there ways to suggest alternative courses of action and scenarios that may accomplish the task?  Often, any disagreement with a cowardly leader is taken as a personal challenge to his/her status, power, and authority. Some possible workarounds I’m not going to promise that all of these will always work, or that any of them will always work, but I would suggest at least considering them.  I’ve worked for two power-tripping “my way or the highway” cowardly leaders, and they were both remarkably alike in how they reacted to any challenges to their edicts.  It’s likely other insecure cowardly leaders have the same traits. …

  Someone once said, "To a hammer, everything looks like a nail." Cowardly Leaders are hammers As we have explored over the past several months, cowardly leaders have very little actual Leadership talent.  To a cowardly leader, their employees are nails.  All of them.  Everyone is there for one purpose- to be beaten down, driven down, pushed back, and shown that the "hammer" has the power.  Sometimes, if the nail-I mean, employee- is lucky, the "hammer" reconsiders.   He actually pulls the nail up and straightens it out. Employees are hammers too? As you know, I'm a fan of James Altucher  In a recent blog, he had a twist on the hammer/nail theory:  "Employees aren't hammers. You pick up a hammer when you need to pound a nail and then you put it down…

Happy Independence Day! Today's blog could be about historical leaders in our country's history that showed courage in the face of fear and serious personal jeopardy.  Since so many examples are readily available, I wanted to keep that theme, but write from a different perspective. Who is the real Cowardly Leader? I enjoy reading books about leadership.  I have twenty or so on the bookshelf (and it being our Independence Day, a few of those include 1776 and John Adams, both by David McCullough, and Team of Rivals, about the Lincoln administration, by Doris Kearns Goodwin).   Between those and the many magazine articles and discussion blogs about leadership, I am confident that I know at least as much as the average bear about what constitutes a good leader.  Based on the research I’ve…

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…