The "bad leader" does not think they are "bad"
How to navigate misaligned leaders
Hello, it’s Ethan & Jason. Welcome to a *paid subscriber* edition of Level Up: Your guide to grow fast, avoid mistakes, and make optimal career moves.
Here’s what newsletter paid subscribers shared on why they joined:
“I landed my promotion in part to your content. It means the world to me.”
“I’ve taken some of your recommended actions and it’s working so far.”
Many paid subscribers expense this newsletter to their Learning & Development budget. Here’s an email template to send to your manager.
The "bad leader" who is frustrating you does not think they are "bad."
You must accept this in order to navigate those relationships.
"Bad" leaders have different values and think of you as "naive" and themselves as "practical."
Labeling them EVIL in all capital letters and expecting them to change is foolish.
My takeaway saying you can remember is:
"We are all heroes of our own story."
Your key actionable lessons:
The human mind is incredible at rationalizing things.
We all practice selective memory, emphasizing points that support our choices and minimizing evidence that conflicts. This is called "confirmation bias." Once we make a choice, our mind works hard to help us feel good about it. This includes choices that hurt others.
We all spend most of our time thinking about ourselves. That "bad" leader who hurt you... was mostly thinking about the benefit for themselves of whatever they did.
When you ask yourself, "how could they do that to me?" you are asking a sucker's question.
They didn't "do it to you" — they did something for themselves and you were collateral damage.
When a "bad" leader takes an action that they know hurts you, they do not say to themselves, "I'm just an evil tyrant."
Instead, they say "it's just business."
Their internal excuse is that you are naive and it is a regrettable sacrifice, but people like you who are idealists and do not understand the real world are a dangerous liability. So unfortunately you need to be removed.
To quote Roger Rabbit, "I'm not bad, I'm just drawn that way."
Some people will read what I have written and conclude that I am advocating just letting bad leaders get away with being bad, or never "speaking truth to power."
Not so.
You can speak truth to people who share your values or outlook but disagree with your view of the facts.
You cannot usefully speak truth to people who disagree with your values.
If you have a relationship with a leader who largely respects you but disagrees with your particular view on a project, or is unaware of something important and so sees a situation differently, you can absolutely bring that leader "bad news" successfully.
With someone who is manipulative or dishonest, and sees the world as them versus a bunch of other dishonest or gullible people, "speaking truth" to them has the opposite effect.
In this case, it simply alerts the leader that you are on to them and that you are willing to openly disagree with them.
That makes you a threat.
Since you were "speaking truth to power," what that means is that this other person has more power than you do.
What do people with power do with threats?
The eliminate them.