At my place of employ I work for a Nazi with a Napoleon
complex. I call him Frag.
In the military, there’s a long tradition of handling
superior officers or members of one’s unit who are ineffective leaders to the
point where they endanger the unit as a whole.
Wikipedia defines it thusly: “Fragging,”
assassination of an unpopular member of one's own fighting unit, occasionally
using a fragmentation grenade. While it
might sound a bit harsh and extreme to have to resort to killing one’s own
leader, sometimes it’s necessary to preserve the fighting integrity, and
especially the safety of the unit.
The object of the
fragging is often an imperious, officious, prick who believes leadership is all
about rules and regs, and especially domination
of one’s subordinates, at the expense of respect and dignity, and especially
attention to the real nuts and bolts of what makes up a fighting unit. They try to rule by intimidation and waste
too much time and energy on spit and polish, at the expense of both learning,
and teaching the craft of warfare.
There’s a TV
mini-series that I have on DVD, and watch at least once a year, that I think
illustrates this perfectly. I think it
should be mandatory viewing in every organization as a training tool for both
effective…and especially, ineffective leadership. “Band of Brothers” is a multi-part series
about a company of paratroopers in the 101st Airborne during
WWII. In it, we see two officers
exhibiting each of these leadership styles.
Captain Sobel,
played with exquisite foppishness by David Schwimmer, is a prime example of
ineffective leadership. He is a also a
prime example of just the sort of officer who would have been “fragged” at
first opportunity by his men, before he had the chance to “lead” them to
slaughter in battle. Captain Sobel rants
and bellows, belittles his men, embarrasses his junior officers and non-coms in
front of the men, punishes them all by cancelling leave for minor infractions of
buttons on uniforms and scuffed boots, and relentlessly forces them on marches
up Mt. Currahee. In one scene, he
deviously “rewards” the men with a nice dinner of spaghetti and meatballs,
before interrupting the meal and demanding the now pasta engorged men run up
that mountain yet again, hoping that the ensuing agony and mass vomiting will
bend them to his will. To the men’s
credit, they rally together against their common foe, and instead the hapless
Captain Sobel is only made to feel foolish before them.
In England, while
preparing for the D-Day invasion, where the paratroopers are to make a drop behind enemy lines the night before, Sobel
further exposes himself as a feckless military commander, getting lost and
confused while trying to lead his company to rendezvous points. The troops are so horrified by his ineptitude
that they actually risk court-martial to mutiny against him in order to not be
lead to inevitable slaughter when the real battle begins.
A subordinate
officer, Lieutenant Winters, is ordered to take command of the company on short
notice and what we witness through the remainder of the movie is how he evolves
as a true leader, gaining and building on the respect of his men to the point
where they will follow him into and through the most hellish battles
imaginable.
The difference
between Winters and Sobel is that Winters leads by example. He is only forceful when he needs to be, but
he is always fair. He does not ask his
men to do what he could or would not do himself. He never treats them as inferior beings and
is always instructing and drilling on the aspects of soldiering that have real
practical application. And always,
always, he looks out for his men and tries to keep them as safe and cohesive as
possible. By the end of the campaign, he
has risen to the rank of Major and battalion commander.
I’ve worked for
too many Captain Sobel’s, especially it seems, in this business of health-care
and nursing where I’m at today. My
current Sobel is without question the worst Sobel I’ve ever encountered. Sometimes I call him the Wizard, because like
the phony “man behind the curtain” in Oz, he rarely comes out of his office or
from his position behind the computer screen on his desk. He’s been in his position as Director of
Nursing Services at our facility for 3 months and yet not once has he taken it
upon himself to circulate amongst the staff and get to “know his people.” Despite being utterly clueless, or caring, of
what happens on the long-term unit I work on, he delegates reprimands and
discipline to his underlings to execute on us based on what the personnel files
show on his computer screen. Worse, he
seems to actually enjoy pulling people into his office to belittle and demean
and even threaten them. People have been
told: “you’re worthless,” or, “you should look for another profession.” He told one aide, a 62yr old Filipino woman,
not even five feet tall, who shows up every day, never calls out and does her
job to the best of her ability, that he had to cut her overtime hours because
apparently she was too “tired” to do her job properly. Then in the next breath he inquired as to her
financial situation, asking her if she had money troubles, insinuating that as
the reason for her picking up so many OT hours.
Seriously, never mind the inappropriateness, and grossly unprofessional
tone of such a remark, or the fact that her financial situation is none of his
damn business, is he aware that she still has family in the Philippines, and
that they’re still reeling from the devastation of the typhoon?!
So what has Frag
wrought with his campaign of bullying intimidation of nurses and aides? What does he think his open contempt of LPN’s
(he’s stated that he considers them inferior to RN’s) and his obvious disdain
for the frontline grunt LNA’s who do the bulk of actual care for our residents,
what does this he think his “leadership” style will cultivate? The answer is obvious; the answer is the same
for those men on Currahee. And I can
tell you it is not one of reverence or respect.
Intimidation, in any situation, breeds only resentment. Those oppressed will only do what they need
to do to make the whippings stop. Only escape,
and/or mutiny are the true byproducts of this methodology of managing
people. It is so blatantly
counterproductive to actually urging the best from your charges. Yet so many, so damn many people in “leadership”
positions, resort to this style. It is
lazy. It is ignorant. And it is utterly ineffective.
The problem here
is that positions of management, of leadership, of “power over people” too
often attract only those Sobels who are least suited or qualified to perform
the task. Real leaders, almost always
have leadership thrust upon them. And
the best ones often come from a background of remembering what it’s like to be
a subordinate, an underling, a frontline grunt.
And those who don’t, at least have a sense of compassion and respect for
those who do the heavy lifting. They
remember that we are all humans, first and foremost. And that respect and
credibility are two things you must first earn
from the people you are charged with leading, lest you turn around mid-way
up that hill of Currahee, or worse yet, in a fox-hole in battle, surrounded by
the enemy, and find yourself alone with no one to either lead...or save your ass!
Frag will get his
in the end. They all do eventually. It is only distressing that so many good people
will go down before him; like Custer’s men, scalped and defiled, all in the
name of his own vanity, this Sobel will only lead his “troops” to inevitable
slaughter. And worse yet, in a business
that’s supposed to be about caring and compassion, the most vulnerable in this
whole scenario, the elderly and infirm people that we are supposed to be providing
care, will suffer the most...
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