The effects of the leadership we tolerate.
As a psychotherapist, executive coach, and clinical supervisor, I have to pay for my own clinical supervision.
That matters, because supervision is a form of leadership.
So here is an uncomfortable question:
would you pay, out of your own pocket, for the leadership you are currently receiving?
Most people never think of it that way.
But in one sense or another, you are paying for the leadership you tolerate.
At work.
At home.
In relationships.
In institutions.
In politics.
This is the fourth in a short series asking what would have to happen within people, families, cultures, and societies to make war less thinkable, less tolerable, and less recruitable.
One answer may be this:
we become much clearer about the kind of leadership we are willing to organise ourselves around.
Because people do not only suffer under bad leadership.
They adapt to it.
They normalise it.
Excuse it.
Placate it.
Organise themselves around it.
Learn to survive it.
And then, often, reproduce it.
I see versions of this everywhere:
a volatile parent
a bullying boss
a controlling partner
a grandiose founder
a manipulative politician
Different settings.
Often some of the same dynamics:
fear in the system
walking on eggshells
silence replacing honesty
self-protection replacing trust
people becoming smaller to stay safe
Because bad leadership does not only create distress.
It reshapes the people around it.
It teaches them:
don’t speak
don’t question
don’t dissent
don’t need
don’t confront reality
stay useful
stay quiet
survive
That is not leadership.
That is psychological occupation.
And the cost is not only emotional.
It is developmental.
Bad leadership makes people less clear, less courageous, less self-trusting, less reality-based, and less able to stay human under pressure.
So the question matters:
what leadership will you tolerate?
And what will you do about poor leadership when you meet it?
Because one part of building a society that is less vulnerable to abuse, domination, and war is this:
raising people who are less willing to organise themselves around fear, distortion, and diminished humanity.
Good leadership does not merely direct.
It reality-tests.
It creates safety for truth.
It supports thought.
It allows difference.
It helps people remain human under pressure.
That is not rebellion for its own sake.
It is psychological health.
And it may also be one of the skills a mature society needs most.
Fourth in a short series on war, development, and what makes people more or less recruitable by fear, domination, and dehumanisation.