As much as it galls me, I am going to have to turn a manager into a leader. This just came to me on a Friday evening with the St Kilda v Brisbane game on television, so I grabbed my tablet and started typing emails aint leadership. It was a Fermoy night, we started with a 2022 Fermoy Estate Semillon Sauvignon Blanc, or SSB moving on to a 2017 Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon. Needless to say, the Reserve Cab Sav is a pretty special wine, refined with subtle oak tinges and great fruit flavours.

This was based on [of all things] an email we received on a Friday regarding an interaction between a staff member and an officer of the business. I have no issue with the person witnessing the interaction reporting the matter to our management. I encourage this type of feedback, this is how we learn and improve. We really need to improve as we are sub-par, take the criticism, prepare the learning outcomes, change our behaviour and set the improvements.

I think a scene out of A Few Good Men sums up where we currently are. No it isn’t “you can’t handle the truth” although it involves Jack Nicholson’s Colonel Jessop where Lieutenant Kaffee is questioning the code red on Santiago. If Jessop had to transfer Santiago off base to ensure his safety, then wasn’t Jessop’s authority was not worth what he claimed it to be.

This directly challenges his authority, if he gave an order, then that order should be upheld if he was respected as a commander and leader. If Colonel Jessop had to transfer private Santiago off base to ensure his safety, then Jesdop’s authority was not just diminished, it was so degraded he had to take steps by transferring private Santiago off base to ensure his safety. Just like my workplace, the standards the management sets and the minimum acceptable standards of behaviour. The manager created the workplace environment so this toxic environment was created by their actions and he needed to be held accountable to the standards of behaviour.

Ok, the US Marine Corps is not the Australian Defence Forces, but the same principles apply. Leadership is influence and this lack of influence is clearly manifesting in the toxic behaviour. You cannot sit in an office, type out the odd email and expect to change the result that you allowed to occur. If you create toxic conditions, then the manager should be held accountable for any actions arising from that toxic work environment. A leader needs to be proactive, an authentic leader needs to step out of the office frequently and meet with the staff. There must be dialect, there must be interaction and there must be honesty – I saw none of that.