When Leaders Ignore Trust Employees Play Games

These days business leaders are scrambling to figure out how to get their respective ships back on course. Good luck to them. Imagine not visiting a dentist for ten years and then the inevitable toothache happens. Years of neglect and decay can’t be fixed over night. The day of reckoning has come.

Let’s go back 25 years. What has changed?

My first post college job was in an office working for two men who defaulted into leadership by starting a company together. Neither had ever run a company before and certainly didn’t take the time for leadership training. Instead, they hired a demure older “skirt” to take responsibility for all the “soft stuff.”

Meanwhile, one of the partners had wandering eyes and hands, while the other was insecure, abusive and lazy. By their early thirties, both had been married and divorced. (Both subsequently married employees.) Transparency, accountability and respect were nonexistent. Th partners regularly lied not only to their employees but also to their clients. They believed that the only route they needed to follow to earn trust was via the employee paycheck. These two were a great match, both toxic in their own way until one out-gamed the other and kicked the other partner to the curb.

The office manager (also the head of HR and everything else) lacked leadership skills

She played favorites, made dumb rules and ultimately had no say in the owner’s decisions. The employees disrespected her because…