About once a month or so I have a reoccurring dream.
Not a “I Have A Dream” kind of dream, a literal, real, nighttime dream. I actually have two reoccurring dreams. One is where I’m in a large building, usually a hotel (like the Opryland in Nashville), or a massive conference center. I can’t find my way back to my room.
But the one that is pertinent to cowardly leadership is the one where everyone in the meeting, or in the room I’m in, knows what is about to happen except me. I anticipate it, and I can sense it, but I don’t know what they all seem to know: I’m about to lose my job.
It’s not a nightmare per se, but it’s obviously not pleasant.
Cowardly Leaders Affect Us For Years
Cowardly leaders impact our lives due to their decision-making that is based on politics. They personally impact those who are forced to work for them, and under their management.
It’s practically impossible to work for a cowardly leader and not be personally impacted. Stress is ever-present. Unethical and impractical orders are given routinely-sometimes daily. Those who have a high standard of ethics and morality are continuously placed in no-win situations: “Do I follow orders and keep my job, or do I take the ethical, moral, practical course and lose it?”
Either answer is a wrong one. Which adds to the stress level.
It Gets Better
I used to have that dream once or twice a week, and now it’s monthly, give or take. The setting is always a little different, and the players are usually anonymous, although not always. But the dream almost always follows the same script.
At least now, when I wake up, I immediately realize, “Oh, that dream again. I need to think about something else.”
I’ll never forget some of the best advice I got after I was let go in a politically-motivated move a few years ago. One of the most respected men in the Parks and Recreation academic world, Dr. Alton Little, Chairman Emeritus of the Parks and Recreation Department at Western Kentucky University, said this:
Brad, if you’re in this profession long enough in a leadership position, it’s going to happen to you. It happened to me. It’s happened to almost everyone I know at some point. It’s nothing you did. If you did the right thing, then it comes with the territory.”
I’m paraphrasing, since it’s been a few years ago, but that always stuck with me, especially since he offered it voluntarily.
Real Leaders Care About Their People; cowardly leaders Care About Themselves
There is no way to know how many employees the cowardly leaders I’ve worked for have impacted. Dozens, almost assuredly. Possibly hundreds to some degree.
And they don’t care, because a cowardly leader is all about him/herself.
And that’s the damnation of it all.
