Where Have All the Good Leaders Gone?

Didn't get an MBA? Same.

I have a lot of family members who graduated from business school. A couple of them went to the elites, graduate schools in the top 5.

Not me. An MBA wasn't really on my radar. I did attempt to get in once.  But I only applied to the elites and I wasn't accepted. (If you saw my math scores, you'd see why.) So, I shrugged and moved on to work my way up to senior leadership without the degree.

My family MBA holders can self-deprecatingly admit that the purpose of B-school is not to teach you to actually do things. It's to teach you how to get other people to do the things they need to do. As a joke, when we need something done, the MBA holders say, "AK can do it."  That's what they learned in B-school, how to manage through delegation. B-schools teach you how to run a business, but they don't spend too much time on leading the people in the business. 

So, no MBA. Surely, I went through hi-potential training? Or some intensive leadership training program?

Nope. I didn't have that either.

Then how did I become a Senior Vice President in a small global education technology company? And how did I get from there to Senior Director at a very large IT company?

I think it is because:

• I was good at my job. Very good at my job. My individual contributor roles, my lead-a-team-without-owning-the-people-management-responsibility-roles, my direct-plan-manage-without-the-title roles.
• I had some decent bosses who worked on developing me; one who was carefully cultivating his team and fought for my promotion.
• I tended to look at everything through the lens of ownership. Is this good for the company? Can we sell more? Could we be more efficient? And most important, how can we make this better for our customers?

The reality is that the reason I got into leadership in the first place is the same reason that so many of you get into it.  We are promoted into it. 

We show that we are very, very good at one thing. We get some awards and some accolades. Maybe we improve x and y. We're on the winning teams every time.

We get promoted to management. And that's where it all goes wrong. 

Because companies spend their budgets on the hi-pos and the exec programs, like exec MBAs. They spend it on top sales reps and sales events. Sometimes there is a big transformation initiative and they'll spend money on that. The larger ones will invest in new hire onboarding. Then they parcel out the remaining funds for training and educating everyone else on the workforce, usually trying to cover the most employees possible with the same generic training.

I know because for years I was the one they spent the money with. I helped craft and deliver those fancy hi-po trainings, the executive leadership summits, the sales conferences, the ERP and new system transformations, and, yes, the how-cheaply-can-you-build-us-training-for-everyone else?

And while I was in that business, I also got promoted multiple times and took on responsibility for more people and larger teams.

Meanwhile, I experienced some eyebrow raising leadership regimes. For a while, I thought maybe I had drawn the short straw. Maybe it was just my leaders who seemed uniquely inept and painful to work for? But because I worked with so many other leaders at different companies I consulted with, I began to understand it wasn't just me or my company. It was everywhere. And I heard it from everyone, how awful their boss(es) were and how much work sucked.  Then I noticed I had a lot of managers reporting to me who had no clue how to lead other people. 

And to be really candid, I wasn't a great leader for a while either. I followed the lead presented to me. I took care of my needs and mostly ignored my teams' needs. I continued to excel at the sorts of things that had led me to promotion. I was fairly good at producing results for the company's bottom line and for our customer NPS and CSATs. But I fumbled a lot when it came to managing and leading people.

Where have all the good leaders gone?

There are some great leaders out there. I've had a handful.  I meet people who say they have one now or had one years back. I read glory stories about industry titans. So, why are so many people complaining about their bosses?

Sure, there is an element of The Peter Principle. But I’m not 100% convinced it is only rising to your level of incompetence, or as Seth Godin posits in Tribes, rising to the level of incompetence and allowing fear to keep you there. Those play a part, yet I think there's more to it.

My supposition is that most managers and leaders are in the same boat as I was. They were good at their role, once upon a time. Then they got promoted. And they got little to minimal training and support. They follow bad role models and perpetuate the same behaviors they see from their leadership. Leaving us in an endless cycle of people who don't know what they're doing, and don't know what to do about it. Many of them lack self-awareness, meaning they don't even realize they're adding to the awful.  They haven’t developed the personal insight, the empathy, the compassion to step beyond their current chaos. They’re unintentionally making themselves and their teams miserable. (And are so busy and so tired that they’re leaning towards not caring.)

I was fortunate enough to have a couple of good bosses, some unofficial mentors, and to stumble my way into enlightenment through the help of a powerful program, an excellent coach, and a ton of books and courses. Plus, I had some uniquely forgiving and well-intentioned teams. 

I experienced it all. The horrible bosses and their terrible demoralized teams. I also saw incredible teams who work together, who have leaders among them and who are led by gracious, self-aware, and inspiring people.

I was able to learn my way into being a good leader and helping others lead themselves. While it's something I keep working on, eventually people started saying to me, "You're the best boss I've ever had."

I don't want work to suck for anyone and because I truly believe each of us can learn a better way to lead ourselves and those we manage, I'm on a mission to eradicate bad bosses, whether they have an MBA or not. 

Join me. No more bad bosses. Let's make it easy to find the good leaders. Cultivate yourself.