Damage caused by leadership insecurity or ego?

A friend of mine just popped round and shared how low she feels about her current work situation.  A vivacious, talented individual, she is totally flat, demorallised and lacking in confidence and all down to how she is being  managed! 

When, you ask a few more questions, it is clear that she receives no feedback or recognition and as a home worker is called into an office 120 miles away to a weekly team meeting with no agenda apparently on a whim.  It is doing nothing for her motivation or engagement - but more interestingly to me, what is causing the manager's behaviour? 

How can it make sense to call people to an unstructured weekly meeting wiping out their day through travel without a clear purpose?  Is it power, ego or insecurity?  So hard to say but so bad for business...

Counterproductive strikes

I really don't understand how the unions can possibly think that it benefits their members by getting BA staff to threaten to strike over Christmas. In the same way as the Royal Mail was threatening to strike, it just seems to be missing the bigger picture that if they strike and drive customers away that may well mean the end of the business. Then there are no jobs or pay rises to be had at all and everyone loses - it would be nice to see Unions working more collaboratively for their members, creating long term win/win solutions

Festive furore

It's that time of year again, where we rush around in a frenzy of present buying and socialising, excessive eating, drinking and occasionally regrets for the effects of such overindulgence.

It strikes me that this is just like business life where increasingly every day is as busy as the build up to Christimas. It is rare that we have time to stop and see the wood for the trees and really think about the purpose or true meaning of our job role.

Excessive working hours or an unbalanced approach to leadership can lead to regret through stress, broken home lives or loss of valued staff members through lack of attention. Perhaps, we as leaders need to take stock every now and then and be wary of being swept along in the year long festive furore that is the 21st century workplace.