FollowingFaye

Monday, September 23, 2024

An excerpt from TIME -

The Plague of Mediocre Leadership

By Barry Conchie and Sarah Dalton

Have you ever been taught by a teacher who couldn’t teach? We have, and it wasn’t the result of them lacking motivation and desire. Neither was it them missing a teacher-training course module on Friday afternoon one semester. These teachers, although well-intended, should be no where near children and education. They might have always wanted to become a teacher, but they lack the natural talent to be on—even an average one.

It’s the same for managers and leaders. Just like bad teachers, we’ve all met too many examples of these during our careers—bullies, narcissists, micromanagers, and those who graduated cum laude in crass insensitivity. Insecurity lies at the heart of their incompetence, and they see their position as an exercise in authority and control, insisting and directing rather than delegating and trusting. They inflict their mediocrity on everyone in their care. We have both experienced leaders and managers who, in different ways, nearly succeeded in destroying our sense of self-worth and caused us to question our whole reason for being. With managers and leaders, the vast majority are unfit for their roles.

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In our research, we have seen a disproportionate weighting of leaders in a narrow set of attributes and traits, such as action orientation (a predisposition to act before fully thinking things through) and relationship building (connecting to people because of a mutual liking of each other). As strong as these attributes are, they seem to come at the expense of other important traits and dispositions, such as strategic thinking. These two findings combine to produce outcomes that lead to ineffective execution and project missteps.

An example of this occurs when leaders, because of the relationships they build, find it hard to performance manage team members by holding them to account for sub-standard work. Rather than terminate these employees, weaker leaders never address the performance issues and poor behavior and unacceptable performance is tolerated.

Why, then, do so many mediocre managers and leaders get promoted to the highest positions where they fail in large numbers?

Let’s frame our answer by making one thing clear: Exceptional leadership is rare. Mediocre and poor leadership is the norm.

(Bold is mine. This is an excellent article that is spot on. I hope that you have the opportunity to read it in its entirety. - Faye)

https://time.com/7022677/mediocre-leadership-essay/