Madison’s Mission

Madison, a highly successful and respected leader, in both the organization and the community. She was mission-minded and her people were fiercely loyal. Well, at least it appeared that way. 

Madison was charismatic and an excellent communicator and this made her seem larger than life at times. She never seemed to get down even when she experienced really hard things at work like the suicide of one of her employees. She was appropriately sad, of course, but she stayed strong and exuded power even in the most difficult of spaces.

Over time, I began to recognize a pattern in this organization that was a counterfeit to true leadership and loyalty. 

People were truly passionate about the mission of the organization. Madison, as CEO, was a strong and powerful leader who her team believed was the perfect leader to turn their vision into reality. So when Madison seemed to be hard on people, it was easy for her inner circle to brush it aside and focus on the mission instead. After all, Madison was forwarding the mission. Wasn't she? 

It started to become clear that Madison was unwilling to enter into negative reality. The loss of the suicide was looked on as an opportunity to create better programs to help people struggling with this pain. The program became the focus and the loss was pushed aside. There was very little time given for people to grieve, instead they had to move themselves into high gear and design a program to ensure this never happened again. 

Turnover sky rocketed on the front lines as people began to feel disillusioned with Madison's lack of attunement and her relentless focus on driving results. What was Madison's response to this uptick of turnover? She saw it as a lack of grit or resilience in those who chose to leave. She was completely unwilling to acknowledge the cost to the organization and the loss of morale that was happening as the organization was losing key people who were also known and loved. 

As I coached the executive team I could see that some of them saw the truth. Yet not one person was willing to confront it. The organization was doing great things in the community and  so most were willing to overlook the lives of the people on the front lines who had given years of service and care to the people they served; people that were being marginalized and thrown to the curb if they spoke up about the problems. 

The executive team was unwilling to confront the negative reality happening in the organization because of Madison's drive and pattern of putting people in her crosshairs if they dared to speak up. A few of the executives had conversations with me, “off the record”, about what was happening but their commitment to the mission overrode their sense of responsibility to the people they were leading.

People on that team were afraid. Leading with fear is not the mark of a powerful leader; it undermines the mission and creates discouragement and disengagement in our people. Strong leaders can handle both the positive and negative realities that come up on every team. We can use these challenges as opportunities to build morale and loyalty. Or, when handled poorly; not acknowledging what’s hard, dismissing people’s perspectives, cheerleading instead of inspiring, over-spiritualizing the mission, etc… The challenges become true barriers to the mission and the team.

Madison is still CEO, and her organization is working hard in their community, however turnover continues to be a costly challenge that remains largely ignored. This is a good organization. However, the CEO’s struggle with integration keeps them from being a great organization. Learning to grieve what’s hard with your team is a critical leadership competency.