In most organizations, you will typically find two groups of people. Those that are desperate to lead and those that are not interested in leading. Most times, your best leaders are in the latter group. The question is, how do you convince the latter group to want to lead?
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The best way to keep good leaders disinterested in stepping up as managers is to make them sit thru 20 minute lectures by CNE Managers about right-sizing, pacing, providing optionalities, and aligning resources with strategic goals before all their staff report out the important work they have done that the manager has no clue about the importance of.
@mm A perfect example of MW’s spinelessness was that post Thanksgiving “do better” email that was the final straw with PB. If MW truly believed that message, and it was so important to take employees to task for all of our performance shortcomings, then MW should have had the courage AS A FU--ING LEADER to issue that message directly, instead of pushing PB into a corner and having him send it and face backlash and ridicule that has lasted years. That’s just one example of the la l of true leadership from MW. He is, by far THE most hated CEO in Chevron’s history. Ask yourself why we no longer do employee surveys. Employees are fed up with him, his ELT, and all their bullsh-t and constant berating of employees while these id--ts cannot manage to do anything but burn through wads of cash in McKinsey, BCG & Deloitte instead of doing the jobs for which they are very well compensated.
Our leadership is spineless. That’s why you get edicts from MW and the like about cascading bullsh-t messages.
Like him or not, KD, DJO, & to some extent JW had the ba--s to directly message what needed to be said and stood behind it. MW, MN, AW, and the whole lot of these 🤡s don’t understand the first thing about leadership. That’s why you will never hear a majority of CVX employees say that they respect them.
@b0 -totally agree, but will add that I found being responsible for sending and executing unpopular or ridiculous edicts to those I was directly responsible for really difficult. Also, having unclear future strategic direction - LT strategies clearly defined what we are not going to do, but not clear on what we are going to do was really difficult to communicate to a workforce in desperate need of direction and a hint of future opportunities to keep them excited about their careers. Also loved the initial employee survey results communication where mid level managers were asked to develop action plans to address the unsatisfactory scores in the employee survey associated with future direction - LT job to address company direction (or at least guide), not mid-level management. I still get a really bad taste in my mouth when I think about these things. JW never asked us to do these things, MW did.
You make the mistake of assuming leadership comes through title. Often the “latter group” is leading in its own way, and the more they are pushed to have to manage other people, the less satisfaction they find in their work. I’ve turned down multiple supervisory roles in my career so that I could stay close to the field. I don’t care if there’s the proverbial black mark next to my name.
Those who are "desperate to lead" are most typically egotists, who rarely if ever have positive impact on their company. Those companies who do succeed have those "not interested in leading" in the middle ranks.