Dysfunctional Leaders Don't 'Get It.'

Dysfunctional Ways Produce Bad Predicaments

I am a dysfunctional business owner.  It took me years to learn how to get better organized.  It took me a lifetime to learn how to manage my work in an orderly fashion.  It still works me over.  I still get frustrated to do the things I need to do in an organized way.  Thinking ahead to anticipate how to avert minor problems is still a major chore.  I find I need to think about a lot of what I plan to do well before I place anything into action.  I find it helps me to reduce the volume of challenges I make by being disorganized if I work in a more organized fashion.  Solving problems takes a lot of valuable time chips to do.  Reducing the frequency of those problems is a better way to operate.  Being dysfunctional from the beginning was a great disadvantage to my business operations.  The only thing wrong with that point is that I did not know how great the disadvantage was.

Dysfunctional leadership kills the potential to efficiently run business models.  A business model that is not efficiently managed in today's demanding markets is a model that is financially struggling to survive.  The problem with this truth is that dysfunctional leaders don't 'get it.'

I know.  I was one of them.

It took me years to recognize how damaging my dysfunctional ways would hurt the effectiveness of my business success efforts.  Once I 'got it' I could see how much damage I was creating.  I could see where I was diverting my success potential.  I could see when I damaged my success efforts.  I could witness when I was producing double and triple work.  I could identify where the most corrections in my dysfunctional methods needed to occur.  Once I 'got it' I could now begin the work on fixing it.  I could now begin to learn how to mange my efforts in a more organized way.  I could anticipate how to become more efficient.  I could reduce the double work, the triple work and the effort to provide better customer service.  I learned how to drop fewer balls, how to remember important things and how to plan for better leadership trust.  All of those improvements helped my business models perform a ton better.  At one time, I was like a lot of lost business leaders.  I was dysfunctional and did not 'get it.'

I have been placed into some very trying positions in my business career.  Those tough positions were my choice to choose.  My career has been filled with doing repair work on messed up business models.  I have been hired to help those models fix what they feel is going wrong.  In each case, different reasons have caused those models to become near their death in each operation.  In the very first case, dysfunctional leadership was the cause for the troubled path that business traveled.  In the second one, it was the owners greed that was the source of the troubled business model.  The third one was caused by a combination of disrespect, greed, selfishness, favoritism and a load of dysfunctional concepts on how to operate.  The fourth one is loaded with a terrible dose of dysfunctional leadership.  In all four cases, the second one was the best business model I have ever witnessed.  It was the most successfully operated one I have ever been a part of in my business leadership career.  The owner was highly organized.  He was very functional in his leadership ways.  He just got very greedy in how he wanted that model to offer him the returns he felt were his to receive.  His greed got completely out of whack.  It nearly destroyed his family and his business model.  The rest of the troubled business models I helped to operate were models littered with dysfunctional leadership.  They did not recognize how badly their dysfunctional ways would hurt their profitability chances.

Dysfunctional leaders don't 'get it.'

The business model owned by a dysfunctional leader is a business model operating with a terrible limp.  It is a model that is littered with added and unnecessary costs.  It is a model riddled with disjointed plans.  It is a model filled with impatience.  It is a model that struggles with the group dynamics of its staff and human resource management efforts.  It is a model that inadvertently delivers poor customer service to its best customers.  It is a model that runs high on troubled excuses.  It is a model that attaches much of its leadership efforts onto the strides of 'friendship' components in its human exchanges.  Absolutes, organized systems, management respect, dignity, profitability and trust are usually absent.  Dysfunctional leaders do not see this side of their business efforts.  They become blind to the importance of these components.  I know, at one time I did not 'get it.'  I was very dysfunctional in my business leadership.  I also denied how badly it hurt my performance success.  I did not 'get it.'

Make Sure Your Plans Bridge Your Business Gaps Well

There was a time that if you told me I was dysfunctional I would get upset with your assessment.  I would actually argue that fact with you.  I would tell you how successful I was in spite of it, but I would continue to deny it.  I operated like that for many years.  I had certain ways to help me over come what disorganization would bring to the surface of my business efforts.  I did not work on eliminating the dysfunctional methods I used to operate my business model.  Instead, I would create this long list of unique ways to perform extra steps that I used to get done what needed to get done.  I was successful in complicated and expensive ways.  It was not as efficient as it needed to be.  It was not as respectful as it could have been.  It was not has much fun as it should have been.  What did I know?  I was dysfunctional and I did not 'get it.'

When I look back at how my dysfunctional ways worked my business models in the past I see a completely different person at the wheel.  I see a disrespectful leader who cares about himself more than anyone else.  I see that leader doing the things that create more work for the rest of the staff to pull.  I see a lot of sweeping up the messes created by the dysfunctional leader.  I see the lies created, the stories to cover up the wrongs and the anxiety expressed by the pressure a disorganized operation produces.  When I step aboard one of these dysfunctional ships I know what I see and I know what needs to be done.  I can now move from the positions of knowledge on this subject.  I are one!

Dysfunctional business leaders are their own worst enemy.  They create messes that need to be addressed that waste company dollars.  Double and triple work patterns become more the rule than the exception.  Their inconsistencies create disruption patterns that interrupt the work done by the staff to develop teamwork connections.  The conquer and divide techniques over-run the organization.  Junk begins to happen.  Customers get unnaturally burned.  Disrespect catches on fire.  The business model is too busy working on itself that it forgets how to improve its relationships with its customers.  Volume sales suffer as a result.  Growth becomes stagnant.  Discounts become routine.  Profitability disappears.  The dysfunctional leader soon begins to hide from the visibility of the business model.  The uncomfortable air that follows the operation is typically avoided at some very high costs.  I know this is true.  I am a recovering dysfunctional business leader.  I are one!

I needed help.  I needed to change the way I operated.  I needed to do all of the things I did, much more differently.  I needed to teach myself how to become more efficient.  I needed to teach myself how to get better organized.  I needed to teach myself how to recognize where I was playing incorrectly.  I needed to square up with my business operations.  I needed to take better care of my customer's desires.  I needed to respect my employee efforts more deeply and more often.  I needed to care more about what I was not doing.  I needed to get more functional.  I needed to become more predictable.  I needed to honor routine patterns more often.  I needed to make more effective lists.  I needed to change how I cared about what customers thought.  I needed to find better ways to become better organized.  I needed to develop better habits.  It was not easy.  In fact, it is still not easy.  Dysfunctional minds operate too loosely to recognize how important a functional stride can become.  If you want to consistently run your business model for profit, get better organized.  Kill the dysfunctional approaches you work so hard to protect.  Kill the lies and the prevarications.  They are only making your situation worse...not to mention how much damage they are doing to your bottom line.

I know exactly what I speak of here.  I are one.  I was one of those dysfunctional business leaders who did not 'get it.'  It was a damaging place to operate.  It kept my business career from exploding into something very productive.  It killed my efforts to produce nice incomes.  It cost me a lot to operate my wares, my life, my equipment, my staff, my home and my life.  Dysfunctional business leaders need to 'get it.'  If they continue to refuse this truth they will eventually destroy their business career.  I have and I can assure you it is not very much fun.

Get better at becoming more organized.  Make each day a serious attempt at making better strides to eliminate the dysfunctional ways.  It will be one of the most difficult things a business owner will do.  Dysfunctional business leaders often do not know they possess this set of terrible habits.  Breaking bad habits is one of the most difficult exercise anyone can put themselves through.  However, it needs to be done.  Get started on it right now.  Find a way to respect everything around you.  Start sharing with what you see, say or do.  Become a better server.  Do for others more than you could ever think you should do for yourself.  Get out of the 'me' syndrome.  It is feeding your dysfunctional ways with a ton of wrong food.  Change the diet of your leadership.  Work harder and more consciously on becoming better organized.  Stop the silly selfishness that comes with a dysfunctional pattern.  Start caring more about what your paths, decisions, actions, efforts and work habits are doing to the others around you.  This is where you will find how damaging your dysfunctional ways have grown.

Get over yourself and begin to work more on how others benefit from the work you do.  Grow up.  Become a better organized adult.  I had a good business mentor once ask me if I knew why they had little tiny tables and little tiny chairs in the kindergarten classes where my children attended.  I said I thought I knew why those tiny items were placed in that classroom.  They were there because the kids were little, too.  He said I was wrong.  He told me that they were little to remind the adults that they need to move on.  Grow up.  Become more organized because it is the adult thing to do.  Quit acting like a child by doing what feels good.  Do what you are supposed to be doing instead of the things you want to do.  Grow up.  Become better organized.  'Get it' and operate more profitably.

Until next time...