TTLS S1 7 | Leadership Gap

 

Dr. Lee Meadows is an adjunct professor of Management at Walsh teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in Human Resources, Management, Leadership, and Organizational Design. His career portfolio includes having served as Area Director of University Housing Programs at Michigan State University, a supervisor of Human Resources at General Motors, a Senior Consultant for Change Management at EDS, a Management Change Consultant for A.T.Kearney, a Manager of Training and Development for the Kellogg Foundation and Director of Training for Con-Way Transportation He has been an active consultant for leadership development, management training, and change management for several profit, nonprofit and government agencies.

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Dr. Kevin Sansberry II is a behavioral scientist and executive coach with expertise in toxic leadership, human capital strategy, and creating inclusive cultures of belonging to enhance organization performance. Over the years, Kevin has focused on providing research-informed solutions in various settings such as higher education, nonprofit, sales, and corporate environments.

Follow KEVRA: The Culture Company on Linkedin to keep up with your favorite behavioral scientist, Dr. Sansberry. At KEVRA: The Culture Company, we partner to effectively evolve your organizational culture by focusing on competency development, best practices, and leading research to deliver systemic and innovative solutions for company success.

Have a question for Dr. Sansberry? Visit askdrkev.com to send your leadership and organizational-related questions.

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Closing The Leadership Gap With Lee Meadows, Ph.D

We have Lee Meadows. Dr. Meadows is a retired Professor of Management at Walsh College and a consultant with many years of experience working in, consulting for, writing about and presenting on human resources issues. He has a strong background in human resources and is at the forefront of identifying trends that will impact the profession. As an HR professional, his practical experiences include progressive leadership roles at Michigan State University, General Motors, the Kellogg Foundation, A.T. Kearney Consulting Services and Con-Way Transportation Services.

He is the President of the State of Michigan Chapter of the National Association of African-Americans in Human Resources and Cofounder and Co-Leader of the Walsh College Annual Human Resources Summit and the HR Analytics Conference. He has presented sessions at Michigan HR Day, Michigan Society for Human Resource Management, the Minnesota Society for Human Resource Management, as well as the Detroit Society for Human Resource Management. He’s also presented at the American Society of Employers, the Association for Training and Development and the Detroit Administrative HR Day.

He publishes monthly articles on his LinkedIn page, Forbes Coaches Council, Advisory Council and TrainingIndustry.com. He remains active in designating, designing and developing leadership and HR curriculums for both for-profit and not-for-profit organizations. He is the author of the business leadership fable Take the Lull By the Horns! Closing the Leadership Gap. He is a sought-after keynote speaker and brings insight, experience and humor to his platform. Let’s get to it.

We have a special guest. Lee Meadows, how are you doing?

I am doing well. It is nice to be here with you. I’m looking forward to us having a great conversation on this topic.

I’m excited to talk to you, especially with your vast years of consulting experience working with many different organizations. Before we jump into that though, I do want to give you space and opportunity to share with readers a bit of your background, where you came from and what work you’re doing.

The most difficult person to talk about is always yourself. I’ll be brief. I was born and raised in Detroit. I’m a product of Michigan State University in undergraduate, graduate and PhD. I’ve had a chance to work in a number of different industries like automotive, finance and philanthropy. I’ve enjoyed a wonderful career of working in various organizations. Fortunately for me, there has always been a level of progression from supervisor to manager to director.

Along the way, I’ve always enjoyed the notion of leadership and it became a fascinating topic to me way back in the day. I’ve studied it, led it, consulted on it and there’s a lot of writing about it. It’s one of the most fascinating topics in behavioral sciences from where I sit. The mere fact that we’re sitting and talking about toxic leaders, toxic work environments and all that. There’s a whole body of research that’s been done on that but I’m going to address it from a practitioner standpoint, as someone who’s been the recipient, the observer and the consultant. I’m here to enjoy this.

The most difficult person to talk about is always yourself. Click To Tweet

As we jump into it, I’m curious. Talk to us about your experience in toxic leadership as a practitioner or an observer. Tell me more about that.

The very first time I experienced a toxic leader, I didn’t know that’s what that was. It was an afternoon custodial job on the campus of Michigan State University. The person I had was a supervisor. When I looked at it later on, she was a tyrant. One of the things we’ll get into when we talk about toxic leaders is what’s the motivation that dragged them to what they were doing. I wasn’t astute enough at the time to realize that what was driving her behavior was her own insecurities around who she is.

Oftentimes, what you’ll find in terms of what your research and others will say is that when folks are acting out that toxic behavior, they are typically operating out of their own insecurities and projecting those insecurities onto anybody who happens to be in range. Over the years, I’ve had that as an experience in a couple of different places, seen it in places where I’ve worked in and I always end up scratching my head going, “What was that all about? Why is that person doing that? Why are they being so mean? Why are they harassing this different individual? Why are they bullying certain individuals?”

As my career evolved, I’ve got a chance to progress into other positions and get a broader view of what’s going on in an organization. That’s when I started focusing on the fact that in order for a toxic leader to flourish, they have to be in a toxic environment that allows that to happen. Once that become revealed, it’s like, “What I have to do is start spending time writing about it, talking about it, consulting on it and helping individuals know how to adapt to it.” One, how to recognize it? Two, what are strategies for working with it? I’ve been around long enough so when I say things like this, it’s almost with a sense of shame.

Some of the stuff that we’re experiencing in 2021, I would have bet that we would have eliminated it in the workplace back in the early ‘90s. When I look at how this thing ripples out and I see the behavior again, I go, “Did they not see this back in the ‘80s or ‘90s? Why is this still here? We were supposed to have evolved as something else.” That’s been a lot of it. In my role as a consultant, I work with different organizations around leadership practices. One component of leadership practices is how to avoid being a toxic leader and some workshops and seminars that we do around there. That’s my string through this.

TTLS S1 7 | Leadership Gap

Leadership Gap: Any organization in self-preservation mode puts aside leadership, training, and development because they are much more important than the individuals that they employ.

 

Thank you for sharing all of that. It’s great to hear. One of the things I want to lift up is the common theme that I hear is the fact of a lot of this is about introspection as a leader. It’s about how can a leader look inside of what their insecurities are. One question I have as a follow-up, as we think about some of the stuff you’ve seen in the ‘90s and some of the stuff you see now, riff on that a little bit. I want to hear more about that. What are some things that come up that you’re like, “That again?”

When I say, “That again?” I’m always asking the question, “It didn’t go away. What kept it alive?” Oftentimes, what keeps those things alive is the social context in which businesses are operating. When I talk about businesses, I’m not eliminating nonprofits, hospitals or institutions of higher education because we all get impacted by the social environment. When something like that hits, it tends to hit businesses first and then will pull out when the social context changes, external factors start to impact the economy and businesses start to react to it.

Keep in mind, it is a reaction. It’s not a proaction. The thing that they typically do to begin is to wind down the organization and move bodies out of the organization because when a business is doing it, it’s in self-preservation mode. Any organization would argue that its own self-preservation as an entity is much more important than the individuals that they employ.

Oftentimes, what begins to happen is things like leadership, training and development get thrown out of the window and put aside. All those practices around making people better get put aside because the organization is in self-preservation mode. When it stays in that mode for a while, many companies turn around because it always does. What’s happening is those individuals who’ve been put in leadership roles have been allowed to, for the most part, do their thing with no guidance, direction, expectations and accountability.

They learn to self-preserve. They are essentially survivors who weather that storm. When I look at it from the ‘80s up at this particular point, that seemed to be the common thread. When the company goes awry, it creates this self-preservation mode for organizations. Inside of that, the tendency is always to hang on to those individuals who self-preserve, not guide them and move the other talent out.

When I see it in 2021, I go, “What’s triggering that? Our pandemic in 2020 that completely ripped the economy.” When I started to see this stuff again, I know where it’s coming from and why it’s there. It’s almost like this theme that keeps repeating itself. We don’t seem able to pull out the right lessons so that the next time there is something like that, we can move past that.

I’m going to throw out an example and see how this resonates. In 1988, we had a recession. In 2000, we got the dot-com boom. COVID, disruptor. During these times, the organization needs to survive so the behaviors in the environment may be reinforced or the behaviors that are more self-serving. It’s like, “I’m not micromanaging you. We ran out of the money.” We use words like, “We’re trying to be efficient.” Efficiency is a mask.

You hit it. That’s code, “We got to be efficient.” Efficient is code for, “I’m going to bully you and mask it behind his word called efficient.”

For toxic leaders to flourish, they have to be in a toxic environment that allows that to happen. Click To Tweet

I’m glad you said it like that because one of the things that I’m hearing even with COVID, from a social standpoint, is we want to make sure we’re humanistic and all that stuff. I’m hearing the code nowadays being productivity. It’s like, “We got to put all these trackers on your computer. We want to come back to all of this productivity.” To me, I’ve not seen any measure of anybody saying that they were less productive per se by increasing flexibility or not.

Gallup started following this the moment that it happened because they knew that that’s the fear that organizations had when they sent everybody home and said work from home, “How do we measure productivity? People are going to be less productive. They’re going to be lazy and doing all that.” Gallup tracked that over several months. What they found is that people were just as, if not more productive because they had the flexibility to do certain things and they learned how to manage their own time.

When folks are throwing these productivity trackers, that’s another way of saying, “We don’t trust your judgment enough to know when to work and when not to work. Here’s how we can hold you accountable.” All that did was send a number of people in different directions looking for other forms of employment. It’s still a form of being toxic. We mask it behind the code word called productivity.

Unfortunately, as you know as a fellow researcher, people cherry-pick their data. You’d bring something like Gallup to somebody and that person’s whole argument is like, “Let’s look at the data. Let’s look at this cross-section of data from the domestic United States.” What have you learned from working with toxic leaders?

One, I’ve learned how not to work with them. Let’s start with the premise that I’m in a workspace where I have to work with one. One of the things that are important in terms of working with toxic leaders is to recognize that that’s what you have. One of the things that I want to clarify for your millions of readers is that there is a distinct difference between someone who is a toxic leader and someone who is a tough leader. That’s not the same thing. When individuals are looking at behavior, one of the things I want them to keep in mind is to evaluate whether or not the person is toxic or they are just tough.

As individuals, we can handle tough leaders. It’s the toxic part that tends to mess things up. Let me talk about comparison. If you’re dealing with a tough leader, this person has a high personal standard. They’ve already set themselves up as someone who achieves a great deal. What they want from the people who report to them is to meet that standard, where someone who’s toxic tends to have standard-centric insecurity. What they recognize is that people can get work done but oftentimes it’s done in spite of the fact that they are inept leaders. That insecurity tends to drive them.

TTLS S1 7 | Leadership Gap

Leadership Gap: We’ve set up the entire planet so that anybody can work anywhere at any time, as long as they’ve got the technology. It has created a lesser tolerance for micro-managing bullying.

 

When someone is saying, “I don’t know if my boss is tough or if they’re toxic,” that’s the question I want to ask, “What’s that person’s personal standard?” If they have a high personal standard, they’re not just holding you accountable to that standard. They’re also holding their self accountable to that standard versus that individual that when they are giving out directives, you can hear the insecurity in their voice. You can hear the fact that they aren’t certain about what they should be doing. When they are uncertain as to what they’re doing, they tend to fall back on things like yelling, bullying, harsh tones and not giving feedback. You talked about you being from Kansas City. What side of Kansas City?

The East Side.

I went to Northern Detroit. One of the things I had to learn how to do with a toxic leader is from time to time, I had to go back to Northern Detroit. It’s done in such a way that it’s not coming off as a crazy Black man just tapping. It’s done in such a way where you have to let the individual know, “I don’t know how you want to talk with everyone else but when you’re dealing with me, this is what I expect.” You can do that very professional and use the right language and tone.

When a leader is toxic, it’s like they’ve been allowed to run amok, because 99% of the time, the person they’re reporting to allows them to run amok because toxic leaders get stuff done. The person they’re reporting to is not concerned as to how they got it done. They’re just glad that the work has gotten done and it makes them look good. What they fail to understand is the cost that comes with having that person in that role.

Toxic leaders have people who protect them. I don’t call them sponsors, mentors or advocates. They are people who are selfish in that as long as the work is getting done for them, they don’t care how it’s done. One of the measures that they typically don’t look at is the amount of turnover that this individual has. Oftentimes, the toxic leader will attribute turnover to the fact that, “They don’t make them like they used to. People are too thin-skinned. They’re too PC. They’re too Millennial. They were babied.”

Toxic leaders get stumped. Click To Tweet

That’s got nothing to do with it. More people sustain themselves very well under a tough leader with strong standards and who is outcome-focused than someone who is a toxic leader who tends to bully, yell, give negative feedback and never do anything that’s developmental to those individuals who report to him or her.

If I were creating a dichotomy between that tough leader and toxic leader, the way I would look at that in the workplace is you can have high standards and also be a perfectionist. That’s different. Those are two different things. I want to lift up one nice lesson learned that you lifted up was set boundaries for how you want to be treated as a direct report.

Here’s the thing. A lot of times, people don’t realize that they have the right, discretion and bandwidth to do that because what are you doing? You’re letting a person know how you wish to be treated.

That’s not rude. It doesn’t have to be a rude thing.

When I made the reference to you may have to go East Side Kansas City or North Detroit, that is going back to your roots and recognizing that you are all a particular experience in which that kind of behavior wasn’t tolerated. You learn how to deal with it early. That same thing applies when you get into the workplace.

When I say you’re focusing on how you wish to be treated, it’s not that you wish for everyone else to be treated a different way. If you go on a lane with a toxic leader, you have to start with the basic respect in a relationship. What you’re supposed to tell that the person is, “I will get stuff done but in the process of doing that, this is how I wish to be treated. We’ll come to some agreement around.”

One of the things that exist in a lot of these workplaces you talked about was the environment. As we think about the environment, I always go back to the selection process, hiring and how you get people in this environment. How do toxic leaders make it through the selection process? Talk to me about that.

They make it through because the selection process isn’t a formal, objective, criterion-based selection process. It is nepotism-based, objective-based, favoritism-based. Hiring managers have the final say who brings the human resources forward. People like working within their own zones of comfort. When a toxic leader makes it through a selection process, it’s because the selection process was inept right from the beginning.

I’m saying that very intentionally and deliberately. If anyone of your millions of readers wants to challenge that, they can feel free to do that. I guarantee you, where there are toxic leaders, there is an inept selection process or one that is so anchored in favoritism, nepotism and bias. It’s not a selection process. It’s more like a fraternity rush. That’s nothing against my frats. I’m just saying that there’s a different selection process.

The environment allows for that. That is a human resource nightmare. My colleagues who work in human resources have to deal with that all the time. They will tell you time and time again because they don’t have a strong selection process. Where they will end up spending their time is internal. They’ll recruit, bring folks in, get them onboarded and get them placed. 30, 60, 90 days later, these people are leaving. It’s this revolving door of individuals coming in who decide that rather than put up with this individual, they’ll just find another job. Often, that gets that left out of the discussion as well.

A lot of times, these managers or toxic leaders think that this is that person’s only choice. What they don’t realize is individuals have a range of choices. One of the ranges of choices is to not work. They will look for others. The door will continue going around until someone or something in the environment says, “This is too big of a problem. It’s costing your organization too much money and you as an individual in this leadership role.”

One of the things I’m thinking about is, in that selection process, as we think about tools or the antidote to this problem, I know some organizations do reference checking, diversify hiring committees, ask questions and do realistic job previews. There are a lot of different things. What would you think about as we look to some tools or antidotes for an HR department?

You have to ask people the what if, “What if you were faced with this particular situation?” Listen to how they logically worked their way through it. “Give me an example of a time when you,” and listen to how they worked their way through it. “Confronted with this particular situation involving these two individuals, what’s your best approach?”

TTLS S1 7 | Leadership Gap

Leadership Gap: If you really want to lead, lead with the idea of developing people who can step into a leadership void as you move on.

 

I tend to shy away from the standard interview questions. I know they have to be asked but the standard interview question is, “Tell me something about yourself.” You know from your research, that’s part of the mask. There are websites and career cultures that teach people how to do that, how to wear an interview mask. The mask can’t hide your motivation and thinking when presented with certain kinds of problems.

Those individuals make themselves known in the selection process. We tend to ignore it because sometimes it’s got to be fixed in a hurry or the hiring manager has already decided, “That’s the person that I want.” It doesn’t matter what the selection criteria happens to be. If it’s operating like that and that’s consistency in a workplace, that’s because it’s embedded in the culture.

Thank you for that. You reminded me of something I want to lift up. It’s one of my biggest pet peeves in the hiring processes. I am not a fan of how we try to rush through hiring. I’m sure you’ve met plenty of people who are, “We need to fill this position yesterday.” As you know from a research standpoint, that ends up inviting bias if we’re operating with such speed. It also invites us to hire based on comfort because we’re not willing to slow down and be reflective. What would you have to say about the organizations that are focused on the speed at which they operate versus the quality?

Look at the history of that pattern. I’m willing to bet that, more often than not, when operating with speed, you have a higher turnover at certain levels than you do when you think about quality. The truth of the matter, when the individual says, “We need to fill that position yesterday.” They don’t. They’re trying to get that off their plate so they can go about doing other things.

As a rule, most organizations do not invite the reflection, introspection and self-examination process to leadership roles. Those things need to happen right at the beginning of that career process in which you’re looking to move from the person who’s doing the work to the person who’s supervising the work and then everything that follows after that.

We don’t spend enough time or use enough tools, having individuals sit and reflect by putting them through some scenario, having them fill out some diagnostic survey and then talking through what that means. When those tendencies show up, there’s nobody there to address it. In that sense of, “We got to have it done now,” versus the quality of it, the organization will pay every time. There was this wonderful Muffler commercial where, “You can pay me now or you can pay me later.” If you’re in a hurry, you’re going to pay now and later.

Let’s jump to another part of the environment. Let’s talk about the ascent of the ladder, promotions and progression. Talk to me about what recommendations you have related to minimizing the ascent of toxic leaders.

People don’t need to put up with toxic leadership anymore. Click To Tweet

Merit, outcomes, history of problem-solving and consistent quality in the delivery of their work, all that is objective criteria for helping people ascend up the ladder. Likability, this is one of my favorites, is way down at the bottom of the rung. The problem with that is that it’s difficult to get people to think like that. You don’t want to say, “All things being equal. I’m evaluating you against this particular person who I pretend to like or know more so than the others.”

The odds are pretty good, the person you don’t know is the more gifted or has more talent. You’re just trying to get someone in there who’s going to help make you feel comfortable about your own inabilities and insecurities for getting the job done. We’re not talking about the external selection process that brings people in.

To your question and very valid point, the internal selection process that moves people up the ladder. If it’s not merit-based, outcome-driven and if it’s not the consistency of the ability to deliver, here’s another one, if it’s not their ability to develop people who can step into that void once they move forward then the organization is operating from a disservice. Human resource people and folks in accounting are going to go crazy. It’s not just the recruiting piece but there’s a cost that comes with that.

Accounting and finance are responsible to try and figure out, “You keep helping the organization lose money. We’re not an unprofitable organization. We have to make a profit.” There’s this discretionary misuse of funds by constantly creating this turnover. At some point in time, the organization’s got to stand up and take notice and go, “What’s causing that? We can’t have that many people who disliked working here. What do you have with that many people who dislike working for that individual?”

That’s the pattern that individuals should be looking at. Every manager or anybody who was in a supervisory or leadership role needs to be evaluated. One of the criteria for evaluation has to be the amount of turnover. I can take you back in the day. I remember working in an organization where it was not unusual for supervisors to brag about the fact that they have high turnover rates. They would say, “That means I’m a tough supervisor.” It makes you an SOB but it doesn’t make you tough.

At the same point in time, the organization has to stop looking at that as bragging about their particular prowess as a supervisor and examine it from the standpoint of, “There’s something that you’re doing that’s causing this consistent pattern of turnover, which is a cost to the organization.” For my human resource folks out there who are reading, they’re going to say, “Amen. Hallelujah.” The issue is why is it allowed to flourish?

The nugget that I heard there of if I can start tomorrow, like in your promotion and progression processes. What I heard from you was to look for objective criteria, first of all. You also listed out that we need to have objective, people-focused criteria, like succession and power. You’re looking at how do you develop your staff? How do you look at succession planning, turnover, culture and climate? Make sure it’s objective because we don’t want to, with the selection process, continue the frat and nepotism types of behavior on the internal process either. We want to avoid that.

You want to go like that at all costs because when folks have been talking about a global war for talent, that’s very real. People with skills and abilities have options that many don’t even pursue. One of the things that I have seen emerge over the years is what I call this free-agent mindset that individuals bring into the workplace.

That is, “I’ve got credentials and these kinds of experiences. They are the embodiment of me. Why wouldn’t I be trying to market that to an organization that is looking for that particular skillset? If you’re not, that’s fine. If it turns out that I don’t like working there, I can still free-agent my way into other things.” That’s a stark reality that any organization that has toxic leaders in place, they’re going to bump up against that every time. Believe me, the individual has got nothing to do with their inability to work with a toxic leader. They just don’t see the value.

They don’t have to anymore. One of the things I’m thinking about is since 2020 and COVID, now that a lot of workplaces are seeing a benefit of flexibility and remote, the world’s talents are about to increase rapidly.

In Gallup’s research that I read, they were looking at people coming back into the workplace. While no one has written about this yet, I’ll refer you to do something about it. What I’m looking at is we sent millions of people home to work remotely. There are many numbers of organizations that were reluctant to do that because of the things we talked about like productivity, “You haven’t done this,” and so-and-so.

We have taught millions of people how to work from home. In teaching millions of people how to work from home, what has emerged are three different kinds of employees. You’ve got that group of employees who have learned how to work from home. They only want to work from home. They’re not coming back to the office. For them, the flexibility of working from home is such that if their current employer isn’t offering that, they can find that at another location.

You’ve got that employee who I call a hybrid, a 322, 232 or however that works out. They like working from home but they like coming to the office too. They become that workforce that’s a little easier to lure back. There’s an individual that made it home and they don’t want to work from home. They want to be back in the office. Beyond the essential workers, these are individuals who welcome the opportunity to be back in the workplace.

They will exist simultaneously. That means anyone who’s in any kind of leadership role will be simultaneously trying to figure out how do you leave these three distinct groups and still get productivity levels. If you’re a toxic leader, you’ve already lost the folks who are working from home. For those folks who are coming back to the office, you’re already starting to lose some of them. The ones in the middle will say, “I’m only dealing with them for a couple of days a week.” That’s fine. They’ll do that.

If we were looking at those three categories, how would you rank where you think most people are falling? I want to be clear. It sounds like we’re talking about people who have a choice but for those who work from home or fall into one of these three categories, what are some of your hunches related to work from home?

My hunch is you’re going to see the biggest numbers of folks who want to work from home permanently. Having a flexible work culture is going to be critical to retaining those individuals because they’ve learned how to work from home. Like a lot of other folks, there are so many organizations that are operating remote work as a primary attraction to come to work for their organization.

You even got other countries now that are getting in the act of saying, “This job is here in Bangladesh but you don’t have to be here. You just need to get it done remotely.” That particular group, the ones who like working from home and figured out how to do that in such a way that it’s not overly stressful and they get a chance to manage them, that’s going to be the group.

It seems to me like one of the behaviors that evolved from COVID is let’s say most people work from the office. You might’ve had some bullying but then you flip onto remote, that bullying shifted virtually and now you’re getting micromanaged. What are some recommendations related to that micromanaging behavior that I’m sure you’ve dealt with?

We’ve heard some things around people micromanaging and they’re doing that remotely. There are those productivity measures that they put in place. One thing that’s been going on, if individuals will find themselves in that scenario, they just move on to other jobs because it’s so easy. Essentially, we’ve set up the entire planet so that anybody can work anywhere at any time as long as they’ve got the technology. My hunch is that what it has created is a lesser tolerance for micromanaging, bullying and all that stuff. I don’t have to put up with it because I can find employment anywhere on the planet with organizations that want people to work remotely. I don’t think that’s going to go away at all.

In the meantime, our HR departments need to equip themselves to be able to recognize this virtual toxicity even more efficiently. I want to thank you for our time. You had a lot of great insights. If you could leave us with some words of wisdom, what would that be?

TTLS S1 7 | Leadership Gap

Leadership Gap: The true gift that anybody in the leadership role has when they have direct reports is the opportunity to positively influence their lives.

 

Leadership is about not what someone else is doing but what you’re doing. If you want to lead, lead with the idea of developing people who can step into a leadership void as you move on. It’s not just about what you’re doing in that space but how you’re preparing others to step into that space. That’s the true gift that anybody in the leadership role has when they have direct reports. You have an opportunity to positively influence the lives of so many people and influence change in so many ways.

Don’t step into it if you don’t want to do it. A lot of times, the emergence of toxic leadership is also the fact that they stepped into a role they didn’t want to be in in the first place and don’t know how to get out of. If you like working with people, fine. If you don’t, don’t do it. Tell the organization, “I don’t like working with people. Can I do something else?” That’s it.

That’s okay.

We’d rather have that than a lawsuit.

Every time.

That’s a lot of it. The time has gone by too quickly.

It always does. One of the things I’m thinking about is how can we reach you. What are some other things you’re working on that we can check out?

I’m riding the wave of diversity, equity and inclusion. I’ve been getting a lot of work around that particular area and with good reason. I know it’s trending. I know some organizations are trying to come to grips with that. I’ve enjoyed developing programs, delivering programs and doing consultation around it. That’s been a lot of fun. I always fall back to my primary love, which is leadership and leadership development.

I have an opportunity where I’m developing a couple of leadership curriculums for a couple of clients who have also recognized that because of this pandemic, we don’t have a good leadership program in place. I’m helping folks deal with that as well. I can be reached. I’m on LinkedIn. Lee Meadows is on LinkedIn. My email address is LeMeadows@ComCast.net. I’ve got a book out there called Take the Lull By the Horns! Closing the Leadership Gap. Feel free to find that on AuthorHouse.

I haven’t enjoyed the pandemic but I’m enjoying what I’m able to do as a result of it and hopefully make a difference in a lot of ways. If individuals need a diversity, equity and inclusion consultant, feel free to give me a call. If they want to look at their own leadership development curriculum, feel free to reach out on LinkedIn and touch base with me because you’re allowing me to do stuff that I love.

I appreciate being able to cross paths with you and sharing with you.

Kevin, continue success in your work, young man. Congratulations on getting your doctorate done. You and I are joined at the hip now so you have no reason to hesitate if you need to reach me.

Thank you. I want to thank everybody else. Thanks for reading. Until next time.

 

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About Lee Meadows

TTLS S1 7 | Leadership GapI have spent 30 plus years presenting training, consulting, coaching, team building, facilitating seminars/webinars and providing keynote talks for clients in the corporate, non-profit and governmental sectors. My business has expanded to include Executive Leaders, Middle Managers and Frontline Supervisors to build their leadership skills, provide insights on problem-solving and resolve career decisions. Fortunately, the pandemic has not been a deterrent to providing services.

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