Supreme Court Justice Stewart offered in attempting to define pornography, you know it when you see it. Sadly, the same applies to bad leadership. It simulates the act of leading, but does so with total disregard for the heart and soul of the act. It’s cheap, dehumanizing and degrading. It’s leadership porn and it is indecent.
Indecent leadership manifests itself in a variety of manners: governmental bodies that consistently spend more than they take in; state and federal congressional and governmental leaders who fail to uphold their sworn duties and leaders in organizations who abuse their customers and employees in the name of profits or personal gains regardless of the impact.
We hear it in the empty promises of those seeking elected office. It titillates; it intrigues us, yet the individuals (all of them) claiming to be able to do these things that sound so enticingly good or bad and provocative, are impotent when it comes to delivery. Thank goodness for separation of powers.
We read it in the annual reports of many of the businesses we frequent and we hear it in the words of top leaders as they passionately describe missions and values and then proceed to degrade them when it comes to delivery to the customer. Spend the next three seconds and I suspect you can think of monthly bills to firms that resemble that description.
And we tolerate it. In fact, we’re in danger of becoming mired in it.
What if instead of tolerating indecent leadership in our society and organizations and in the businesses we frequent, we said, “No!” Instead of accepting this garbage that passes for leadership:
- Demand accountability to common sense. We will debate common sense, but at least we will be debating closer to goodness.
- Demand that our elected officials require our governmental bodies live within their means.
- Cry b.s. on the ridiculous words of wannabe political leaders that wouldn’t pass the credibility test in a middle-school student council election.
- Penalize businesses that fail to deliver for their customers and employees by patronizing businesses that do. Seek every opportunity to yell loud and long about blatant abuses of the relationship.
- Raise hell over the backstabbing, duplicitous manager in your organization. They expect you to not stand up and fight. Surprise them.
We’ve tolerated the spread of indecent leadership for too long. It is time to take leadership back, one politician, one lousy organizational leader and one issue at a time. Easy words to write, yes, but nothing worth doing is ever easy in this world. Take a stand on something today. Rinse and repeat.
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