Many articles are written about leaders and leadership, with an eye to being a good leader, but there is a need to recognize if you have a good leader so that you can avoid organizations that will either cause your ruin or their own. Leaders set the tone and prospects for their organization, and sometimes the people with whom you work matter at least as much as what you do. It has been said that most people don't quit their job; they quit their boss, and it's time we understood tersely why that is so. Leaders boil down to two attitudes when it comes to their position relative to the members of their team. The first group doesn't care who they had to step on in order to get there and who they have to step on to stay where they are. The second group remembers and venerates those who helped them rise and reaches down to help other people rise to better opportunities like they did. As long as people find some reason to stay, they will put up with bad leadership. If the leader offers them some token, they will take it. If the leader lets them do their job without interference or the way you want to do it, you'll stick with that job despite the leadership. If not, you'll find a similar job with different leadership and hope and pray that you get lucky enough to find someone who lifts you.
Far too many people in leadership positions constitute a kakistocracy, or rule by those who are least qualified. They usually achieve these positions by bullying others into choosing a different path. Some are belligerent bullies; the rest are manipulative, conniving people who engage in character assassination as a way to ablate your superior qualifications. In many cases, they also form coalitions and draw upon the power of others to climb up, promising them spoils, and then flip them the bird once the achievement arrives. They backstab, backbite, back peddle, and like back rooms. Surely, you can think of at least one person right now that you know in leadership who you think does not deserve it. They care nothing for the people. You are a means to an end. You are a "resource" to be consumed for their advancement. They will step all over you to get the position and then step on others to make sure they can't. They were the bullies in grade school who pulled down your pants to embarrass you, slapped your tray to the floor to starve you, and ganged up on you to make sure that even if your team won, you went down. These are vile people who follow the admonition of Voldemort that "there is no good and evil, only power and those too weak to seek it." BY their logic if you aren't willing to do whatever it takes to have power you don't deserve it. This kind of leadership is typified in the tyrant, the dictator, who tells people to fall in line or get in line. His organization is full of yes men who never compromise on a narrow vision and as a consequence miss opportunities and the warning signs of danger. Usually these organizations collapse under their own weight, unless they are government entities, which are borne up by law.
Small-minded leaders will hold other people back when they reach higher ranks out of fear of losing that rank. Some of them fear that if anyone else is promoted, it will reveal their weaknesses or ineptitude, so they make sure that nobody better than they are makes any progress. Some of them depend on their "underlings" for their numbers, bonuses, and performance, so they make sure you stay there so that they can continue to look good. In a few rare professions, they view it as a badge of honor to make sure that they "save the company money" by keeping people from being promoted, because it would cost the company. They forget that attitude of employees reflects leadership, and if the employees don't feel the leaders care, the employees won't work as well as they could if they thought their leaders cared about them. This petty group of people is usually the group that loads up responsibility on the best employees until the employees leave for other jobs and then wonders why they can't get good people to work there. Everyone wants to move up and advance, not just the people who are currently leaders. This kind of leader encourages and breeds mediocrity, because the only people they keep in the end or for the duration are people who have nowhere else to go.
In rare but blessed events, you find a leader who acts like a mentor and finds a way to help their people rise with them. The best of leaders look for people who would help the organization grow, improve, and excel, because they are not insecure in themselves enough to think that they're the best the company will ever have. They know that if the company improves, it will also be to their benefit in some way, even if obliquely, so they find ways to give their best employees the best shifts, first pick for overtime, first choice of vacation days, or whatever other incentives they can. When possible, they help those employees compete for promotion, knowing that if they surround themselves with better people the team will improve. The best of leaders groom their own replacements and help the best people to rise, even if they don't know those people and if those people don't owe them favors. Maybe you've met some of those leaders, who try to do whatever they can to keep you, even if they can't do what they would like or what you would like. At least they make an effort. They find a way to improve your lot. They find opportunities for you to advance. Maybe they pay for classes or let you out early or provide daycare or provide a company vehicle or let you go to conferences in exotic places. Point is, they do something to make it worth your while, to show you that they value you, because they know that if they spin the roulette wheel and have to replace you in a hiring process, they're likely to get a blase replacement.
When you have a bad leader, you have a choice to make. Are you satisfied by the work even if the promotions and raises don't come? Many people are not, and so they flit from organization to organization only to find that most people who aspire to leadership are the ones least fit to be there, and they remain miserable because they don't find joy in the job. Although it is true that the cream rises to the top, so often does the scum, and the scum thinks it's the cream. If you are motivated by rank or pay or the esteem of colleagues, then an organization with bad leadership, however laudable their goals may be, may ultimately cause you misery. Perhaps this is why Thomas More gave Richard Rich the advice to be a teacher. He knew that power and position and pelf would change his young protege as it had most of his colleagues in parliament. Rich, unfortunately for More, was more interested in the rewards of man than those of God, and ultimately his testimony condemned More to death. The good leaders are very rare, because most bad leaders don't let those people infiltrate their organizations. You have to work somewhere, and maybe moving elsewhere will help, but ultimately in most cases you find that no matter who plays the part, Brutus is still Brutus and still stabs Caesar in the back eventually. People are people, and wherever you go you will find crappy leadership and crappy comrades. If leadership fails, the joy must be in the job. In conclusion, the leadership track in any organization invites you to consider the following poem- what kind of person will you be?
Edgar Guest: “I watched them tearing a building down, A gang of men in a busy town. With a ho-heave-ho and a lusty yell, They swung a beam, and the side wall fell. I asked the foreman: "Are these skilled-- And the men you'd hire if you had to build?" He gave me a laugh and said: "No, indeed! Just common labor is all I need. I can wreck in a day or two What builders have taken a year to do." And I thought to myself as I went my way, Which of these roles have I tried to play? Am I a builder who works with care Measuring life by a rule and square? Am I shaping my deeds to a well made Plan, Patiently doing the best I can? Or am I a wrecker, who walks the town Content with the labor of tearing down?”
