People FEAR power. CEO’s and business owners tend to think their teammates are some how the exception. They cannot imagine the terror of their position. Your people are scared of you. You are surrounded by enablers and yes men/women. Lead anything and this is your reality. You are surrounded by bullshit artists filled with fear. You’ve had so much sunshine blown up your skirt, you kinda like living in this information vacuum. Funny, huh.
I led a team of high performers for twenty years at CompuServe. I thought they were the exception to the norm. I thought they were telling me the truth. They were not. I didn’t want to know the real, hard truth. I didn’t ask the hard questions. I didn’t push them till they got pissed enough to come clean. We underperformed as a result. We were good but not good enough to avoid extinction. So, we died a premature death of our own making. Now that’s some truth that hurts…
People FEAR power and it hurts performance, period. Your system is filled with normal people unwilling to tell you the truth. You are going to have to dig to get the kinda truth you gotta have to lead ’em toward excellence. They know. They just don’t know how to tell you. Fear causes their words to somehow get caught in their throat. They move their lips. Nothing comes out. Normal.
Your problem is you don’t get dirty enough. You don’t dig. You don’t push. You don’t listen and beg them to tell you more. Instead, you shut ’em down early and often and they quickly learn to stop moving their lips except to pucker up and kiss some butt. Bummer all around.
Eventually the leader loses it. Usually they get pissed whenever the nums aren’t what you want and by then it’s too late. Every day I am a witness to this kinda FEAR and to this kinda neglect. The fear piece aint going away…
People in power gotta dig. Are you?
BUILT TO LEAD 
I know he based this a on a meeting he and I had Monday about authentic teenagers. Let me know what time to look for you. Hopefully my phone won’t be dead.
Sent from my iPhone