A Failure of Leadership

Friday, October 17, 2014
There's something about corporate culture (and especially sales culture) that just baffles me. And that's the expectation that employees should just suck it up and take whatever abuse is offered from customers and executives.

I'm not talking about confrontations related to poor service, poor performance or poor management. Such conversations are seldom enjoyable, but they're occasionally necessary to ensure expectations are being met. They're inevitable, and grown-ups approach them as a part of working in America, and try to manage them without becoming emotional hooked.

No, what I'm referring to is actual abuse. Name-calling. Yelling. Personal attacks. Threats. Such behavior isn't acceptable in personal interactions, so why is it perfectly fine when it happens in the professional arena?

There are a lot of failures of leadership out there. Bosses who are willing to throw their employees under the bus at any time if it serves their own ambition or hides their incompetence. Bosses who assume that an employee who has performed well during their entire tenure suddenly turns into a dirtbag because an executive asks about a project they're involved with. Bosses who take pleasure in laying off the employees with whom they don't get along.

But asking an employee to take verbal abuse just because the abuser happens to represent a customer? When one of your corporate "values" is respect? Asking an employee to roll over when some highly placed muckity-muck incorrectly assumes that a customer complaint is automatically the fault of the employees rather than the customer, and acts on that assumption?

Shameful. That's what it is. A complete failure of courage and leadership, and a moral disgrace. So why do so many companies think it's acceptable? I wish I knew, but I believe that a culture that encourages treating people like commodities gives us a pretty good place to start. When that's the culture, it takes a strong and moral personality not to be corrupted by it. Which is why you see so few true leaders in director roles. By the time they get there, their personal values have been beaten out of them, and they often feel they had no choice because of their financial obligations to their families.

But the fact of the matter is this. If you behave like a little weasel at work, and treat your employees poorly in order to serve your own ambition, that makes you an asshole. Not an "asshole at work." Just an asshole.

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