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100% agreement about leadership being about caring for others. There's also a lot to be said about modeling behavior for others, especially in difficult times.

My problem with leadership today is it's confused for leaderism. Leader worship. A sense of entitlement that it brings. Leaderism, and the supporting Leaderism-Industrial Complex, needs to die. And I'll take that servant leadership a step further and blow it up saying that the whole hierarchical notion of leadership needs to be buried to be replaced by a networked, systemic one. We no longer live in worlds where the lone person at the top of the Christmas tree has all the answers. Good questions over answers today. Taylorist approaches of separating the thinking from doing are now self-destructive in modern organizations. In complex worlds full of uncertainty, this is becoming a necessity.

Yes, vulnerability is part of that newish leadership vibe. You have your Brené Browns and all. And sure the boss shouldn't dump their marital problems on their teams. But there's an inauthenticity in that too. That you stress cracked was a teachable moment. The toxic cost of impervious leaders is that you suck the oxygen out of the room for anyone to have a bad day, to feel sad because their mother died and it's hard to concentrate that month or more.

Perhaps it shouldn't be surprise that it's the Brené Browns who are women, because a lot of this stiff-upper-lip mantra is a classic manifestation of what some would call toxic masculinity. Work shouldn't be your therapist. But people need the permission to be vulnerable. Without it, everybody cracks because none of us have jolly lives every day. And none of us will take risks on the job, which are necessary in safe-to-fail ways to learn and grow and adapt.

Treat humans like robots, and people will even more horrifyingly react like robots in return. That's the death of life, not just slave work.

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I agree with the major points about leaders more interested in the prestige than actual leadership (glares at my province's premier), but I think there's a dividing line between "bring your whole self to work, and don't be averse to showing emotions" and "add unpaid therapist to your staff's duties" that you could have called out.

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Had a tech lead at a summer internship once that casually told me, while chatting about the company as I was leaving, that the supposed company value "speed" wasn't really reflective of the company and team lately.

Truth be told I had felt the same, things didn't feel like they were quickly developing around me. The important part is that I, prior to that conversation, never felt that my boss was unhappy with anything. Even after we talked about it, I still felt he was happy with the team, only looking to improve his leadership.

Had he been even muttering about slowness the last months, I would have been constantly aware and tried to work faster to make my boss less stressed. Instead he knew what kind of effect sharing grievances would have on the team, and instead tried improving his own leadership in his own head. Great guy.

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The root of this, IMO, is that people of these generations (including mine) were encouraged to forge their identities in the workplace instead of in the world at large. The workplace, then, isn't a place to go do something -- including lead -- it's a place to get enough power to create a microcosm of your own neurosis and force other people to live in it.

More than one toxic manager I've worked with cited "how my parents treated me" as guiding how they treat their employees and how they believe their bosses should treat them. They genuinely did not see that these preoccupations mean they need therapy. They believe the workplace IS where they're supposed to work on these problems.

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Much of this could have been summarized thusly: "bitching goes upwards." Leaders should never inflict their complaints about organization, staffing, strategy, process, or any other aspect of the company with their teams. And the whole "let's be sad at work thing"… man, I don't even know what to say. If forcibly sharing your personal emotional burdens is part of "bringing your authentic self to work," then no thanks, I'd rather not.

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Good one.

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That Hertz part infuriates me. I still can’t get over that.

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