It's Time to Take a Stand Against Leadership Indecency

Leadership Indecency is an admittedly awkward, uncommon phrase.

I like it. It’s the perfect phrase to describe the many amoral examples and practices of leadership we encounter in our organizations and institutions.

Sadly, these practices are curable if WE stop tolerating them and build accountability at all levels. Consider this a personal call to action for you to do your part in stomping out indecent leadership.

Leadership Indecency in Action

For examples of leadership indecency, think:

Mass layoffs.
Ethical breaches.
Disengaged workforces.
Toxic cultures.
Micromanaging managers.
The absence of accountability.
Bosses that take micromanage.
Lack of transparency on the organization’s situation.
Open doors that are always closed.
The supervisory mentality that still exists in too many workplaces.

I suspect you can add a few items to this listing.

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The list of indecent leadership practices grows voluminously if you begin incorporating the dumb a@@ decisions, policies, and processes intended to pare costs at the expense of customer, patient, or stakeholder stress levels.

Raise your hand if you’ve sworn at an endless, aggravating phone tree or incredibly dense voice recognition system when trying to gain support for a billing or technical problem. OK, everyone can lower their hand.

Remember, some genius thought this up, and the organization’s leaders embraced it. Those systems are proof of organizational idiocy. The silver lining is that the horrible voice recognition technology employed in these systems proves that the robot takeover is still in the future.

The Robots are Still Coming, But We Lost the Zombie Revolution

The good people at Gallup who thrive on our organizational disengagement misery regularly remind us of how bad it is in the office. With somewhere near two-thirds of us allegedly disengaged and barely going through the motions of working, it appears the Zombie Revolution happened…and we lost.

Even if Gallup’s surveys are half right, the fact that we have so many individuals checked out is one of the greatest examples of leadership indecency in front of us. Sadly, disengagement is easily cured, but after decades of evidence and over 1,000 books on leadership published yearly, we’re seemingly no closer to creating engaged cultures.

You Must Be in the Office to Prove You’re Working!

Much of the return-to-the-office movement exemplifies leadership indecency. There’s a supervisory mentality—I have to see you working to trust that you’re working—that still permeates our organizations and reflects the misguided thinking of too many managers. If you need to supervise your people to ensure they’re working, there’s a lot wrong with this situation, starting with you.

New Manager Development Exemplifies Leadership Indecency

How we identify, develop, and then advance our managers reeks of leadership indecency. The high “failure” rate of new managers is a testament to this misfiring. (I’ve written extensively on what goes wrong with manager development and how to fix it.)

Did You Buy Those CEO Tears at the Mass Layoff Announcement?

The mass layoffs following the Covid-era hiring boom reflect leadership indecency at an appalling level. Individuals were hired in a mass grab for talent with no real strategy for deploying them and brutally flawed assumptions about the future. The part that should gall all of us is the apologies of CEOs at the mass layoff announcements. Seriously, CEO, you made the call; own it. You should be the first out the door without compensation.

From Rave to Action

OK, I admit this topic fires me up and ticks me off. As bad as the transgressions above are—and the many more I didn’t mention—the reality is that the biggest problem is that they are tolerated.

Where are the boards of directors when it comes to employee disengagement or mass hirings followed by mass layoffs? Deming was right—a layoff is a sign of management failure. The apologies are just…indecent.

Who advocates for customers when new cost-cutting policies are identified that are guaranteed to frustrate and even anger customers? Give the customers a seat at the table to help you solve your cost problem and identify innovations to help service them.

Why are bad managers tolerated and even advanced? Why is fear so rampant in our organizations? (They forgot Deming’s Point #8: Strike out fear.) These managers, who mostly lead by fear and intimidation, must be identified and exorcised. Ideally, this problem is solved at the source by radically overhauling manager selection and development. And hint: leaders, you can’t outsource this work to HR or a learning and development group. You own it. Work it.

The Bottom Line for Now:

Among the many things Deming taught us, management is a system. In his famous Red Bead Experiment, the flawed system breeds gamesmanship, toxicity, and horrible decisions. Our system of leading our organizations is mostly broken, and too many of us tolerate gross examples of leadership indecency. What’s missing is someone—you—cultivating the courage to say “No.” Start small. Ask questions, challenge decisions, and propose ideas. If you believe you can manage and lead more effectively, get involved. Beware of becoming part of the problem. Ask others to hold you accountable. And do your part to strike out leadership indecency.