🥷 Never any Bad Soldiers under a Good General

A great leader is not defined by their own success and growth but the transformative impact they have on those they lead. Great leaders are architects of culture. They embody reliability so it seeps into the DNA of the team. They nurture a shared sense of ownership and care by caring genuinely about their own people and business. Such leaders create safe spaces where everyone feels important and heard.

Spending a decade at work but also beyond it, I have had the privilege to work under as well as watch some of the most inspiring and caring leaders. But I have also had first and second hand experiences seeing “bad” leaders in action. I have seen one thing consistently. An individual and team under a good leader almost always excels. Suddenly, if you give the same team or people to a bad leader, they somehow become a shadow of their former self.

In this blog I am making an attempt to dissect how good leaders generally act in different situations and how it actually helps people excel.

Dealing with culture risks or mediocrity

The real battle isn’t against external competition, but against the quiet drift into mediocrity and absence of care, that happens when right guidance and support goes missing.

No good general wants their soldiers dead when a war comes and so they will push them in times to peace to discover their true potential, so when the fight comes to them, it seems like a routine drill. Their focus on dependability and collaboration ripples outward, showing that workplace excellence is less about innate brilliance and more often about consistent care.

Interesting thing is, such leaders will also be swift in protecting the culture they have created by actively eliminating what erode it. While often people confuse good leaders as someone who get soft when dealing with difficult situations, it is often a misplaced belief when their own team and culture is at risk which they care so deeply about.

Eventually the team becomes the best versions of themselves, support each other in times of need, and they themselves expect excellence from their counterparts. A rotten apple becomes more visible in such teams and are swiftly eliminated before it erodes the team brilliance and culture.

Dealing with bad outcomes

When the outcomes aren’t achieved, pointing to a struggling team member and assigning blame is an easy escape. True leaders take accountability and separate results from individual acts unless intentional sabotage is proven.

When failures happen, as they inevitably do, these leaders don’t hunt for scapegoats. Instead, they own the wrong steps, share an honest debrief openly, and treat setbacks as shared lessons rather than personal indictments.

How leaders respond to failures or mistakes makes a massive difference in whether their team takes bold risks towards mastery or they tend to defensive tactics to nowhere. I have written more on this topic here

Dealing with bad phases

So you don’t want great peacetime generals. You need these great leaders to also be able to navigate bad phases and when the team has to go to war with whatever shape or form of enemy is in front of them.

Great thing is that people will go to “war” only for great leaders. So if you haven’t been a great leader when times were good, people will hesitate to go extra mile just because you want them to.

When navigating a rough phase, good leaders simply need to be honest with their team and demand they are supposed to go through an intense period explaining why it is needed. People respond to these leaders because there’s dignity in striving, even failing, under someone who invests in your growth and trusts you with honest feedback.

They have already prepared a capable team by pushing them to greatness and surrounding them with a team that cares about each other and marching together. And with gracefully handling difficult outcomes, they have also prepared a team that doesn’t shy from taking bold risks when needed. Now a great sense of purpose only amplifies the already existing drive in their team members who are ready to win together being led by the right leader.

A bad General

We talked so much about what good generals do for their team. But, what are some of the ways you can spot a bad general now? There will be very obvious signs:

• They use lot of “I” word (all credit of good work by the team belongs to them)
• They throw their people under the bus when things go wrong
• Team members lack confidence in their own abilities
• No one cares about the work the team is in charge of
• “Must do” mandates without care of explaining the people “why” behind it
• They motivate unhealthy conflict within their team
• Team is running under a survival mode and offense mode ideas scare them
• Team members are feeling better on a day their leader doesn’t show up
• Team members cannot object instructions or ideas from their leader
• In most cases they have a high attrition

This is in no way a comprehensive list but you can almost always figure out a bad leader from how their team is feeling. When you see a team lacking spirit, don’t ask what is wrong with the team members but look at their leader and check what they are doing wrong.