The Courageous Follower....

[catscradle]

Or How to Buck Up and Take One for the Team when your Fearless Leader is a Royal Fuck Up.

So last week the Dean scheduled a meeting for the department. We got reading material for this one. I shit you not, it's called How to be a Courageous Follower. It's about 45 pages worth of total employer propaganda wherein they get the pass the buck and blame the employees when the "leaders" fail. I'm reading this stuff and.... I like have all the margins totally filled in with remarks like "building a dysfunctional environment of social darwinism in which the perfect specimen is the sychophantic yes-men. Total collapse of organization inevitable." - which stands to reason that our Dean would give us this to read as that's exactly what he's done. Of course it's wrapped up pretty and presented in a positive light, but not a single one of us that's bothered to read the document has walked away with warm fuzzy feelings.

There's about 10 lines in this article that make the employees accountable for not only themselves, but the success of the leader and the organization. Which would be fine, except that when the "leader" is spoken of, it's always in light that the leader must be coddled so that their good qualities shine through. Bad employees will cause fractures in the leader thus making the leader less effective. At no time at all does the article hold the leader accountable for bad decisions and failures. Because if the employees were courageous and took risks that could get them fired or blacklisted, that wouldn't happen. Amazing. There's nothing in the article that holds the boss accountable for anything.

I honestly can't believe that the Dean passed this out to us. I don't want to think about what this meeting will be like on Wednesday. There better be coffee and food supplied if they don't want a riot on their hands.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/_darlingnicky_/]

There's something seriously Orwellian about this concept. It's like the old joke of shooting one employee a day until morale improves.

[catscradle.livejournal.com]

I think this guy's head is too stuck up in the clouds to "get" Orwellian. I suspect something closer akin to blatant studipity. Now if it were the assistant dean that I originally thought was behind it, I'd say Orwellian because he's a Dick Cheney clone, but the actual Dean is just clueless ivory tower type. =P

[babaca.livejournal.com]

Cripes! Talk about making an employee "feel good". Did the drafters of this article/policy bother to actually read it or run it by someone who would read it and tell them how anti-employee it sounds?

Good luck with your meeting, if the folks there are anything like the folks around here it should be a rather lively meeting.

[catscradle.livejournal.com]

It's thankfully not policy. It's a chapter from some book that our Dean thought would be food for thought for the meeting. I think he might have just caused an intellectual food fight. I thought that maybe the secretary found it for him and he just signed off on it without really reading it - but no. In this morning's news letter he actually quotes it.

The part he quotes is not bad per se, it's actually quite sound. Which makes me wonder if he just didn't get the underlying message and thought it was a more "We've all got to get along and work together" type article. But that shows gross ineptitude at analytic reading skills. Or at best very selective reading skills. But I suspect he did "get it" and thought that "the herd" would not. I predict he's going to be shocked when people protest the blame being shifted over to them.

Heil, everybody!

[gimme-that.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that sounds like something our Dean would do - the President of the uni is just as clueless. Kind of makes you wonder how they get these top jobs. It sure as hell ain't natural selection.

I'm thinking there's a big ship that comes along at periodic intervals and drops a few of these people off. They have to be aliens - stupid aliens. I mean, hello, how to be a courageous follower? Heil, everybody!

Re: Heil, everybody!

[catscradle.livejournal.com]

I think the only thing that saved the man in today's meeting was that he brought in a facilitator that basically told him the burden of responsibility was on him. If he wants "courageous followers" he had to create the environment of actually welcoming our thoughts, ideas and help. He also pointed out the inconsistancies that sent us mixed signals and created a hostile environment. I don't think he thought this was going to tun on him the way it did. It's was sweet that none of us had to actually be the ones to do it - and now we all have back up where he states he wants us all to be honest and speak up when we think something's wrong. Oops.