Today Our Crises Are Leadership Crises
Seems like one of those CWT (Colossal Wastes of Time) matters.
Why would anyone care about, much less think about how unhappy you may be with your boss and workplace when you’ve most likely been (happily?) sequestered away from the everyday in-your-face encounters with that person?
Why am I feeling so stirred to begin writing about the systemic (now there’s a hot word these days) lack of healthy and quality leaders — at every level of our country?
Well, it’s not that I haven’t been thinking about, decrying, even railing against bad leaders for a very long time. But events of the past days, weeks and months have brought this topic to a volcanic point of eruption.
Pre-Covid, of course, survey after survey found large numbers of Americans very dissatisfied with their boss and workplace. In fact, a 2015 Gallup poll revealed that, at some point in their career, one in two U.S. adults had left their job to get away from their manager and improve their overall life. And worse, a more recent poll found that 85% of people hate their jobs. Who’s to blame?
Toxic leadership has been a pandemic in my own career. In fact, as I look back over my years working in the media and academia, I can honestly point to two — yes, only two — healthy leaders. Leaders for whom today, I’d take a sword. Almost all the others fall into Bad Leader categories like
· Incompetent
· Untrustworthy
· Narcissistic
· Incapable of vision
· Insensitive, or
· Threatened and threatening
If any of this rings true in your experience, I’d like to hear about it. Full disclosure, I’ve been encouraged for years to write a book on this topic. It may be time to do so.
Even if nothing else of substance materializes, I have a great title in mind which I’ll reserve for another time.
Meanwhile, I plan to begin working through and sharing my own list of bad leader experiences.
I hate negativity, so I’ll also hope to be prescriptive in an effort to help heal the pandemic of awful leaders that has overtaken our businesses, churches and government.
Want to ride along? Love to hear from you.
Norm Mintle
Dr. Mintle holds an earned Ph.D. in Organizational Leadership. He has served in executive positions across a broad range of media organizations and as a dean in two universities.
