CHAPTER  |  FOUR

The Seven Deadly Sins of Leadership

Peter Drucker set very high standards of ethics for leaders. He saw leaders as ordinary people who were “special” only because they had been entrusted with organizational and societal responsibilities. He knew that leaders were human and that they sometimes erred, and he was well aware that there were leaders who did not live up to the high standards he felt were not only necessary but also part of the code inherent in their acceptance of a position of leadership.

Some leaders fail to meet this obligation, whether to their profession, their organization, or the individuals they lead—or society itself. Some lose sight of the real goals they are expected to achieve and the reasons they became leaders in the first place. Others don't understand the implications of the responsibilities they have accepted, and they put their own interests above those they lead. Still others are seduced by the power and privileges that leadership brings. All of these failings pained Drucker, and he frequently wrote about them. His hope was that by exposing them, he could save leaders from falling into these traps.

The Seven Deadly Sins and Their Relation to Leadership

Peter Drucker didn't categorize as “sins” the character flaws that frequently cause leadership catastrophes. However, they recall the “seven deadly sins” about which the Roman Catholic Church has warned its followers since its earliest days. While Drucker's “sins” are not perfect matches for these, there are commonalities.

The Seven Deadly Sins is an ancient concept, mainly thought of today as a religious tenet originating in Christianity. Some say that they were based on an early interpretation of Israel's fight against the seven Canaanite tribes after fleeing Egypt. Others have found their origin in the book of Proverbs in the Old Testament, which lists the seven failings that God most abhors. What sins constitute the seven are not consistent; nevertheless, they point to important general beliefs. So it is easy to connect the old vices with the modern ones that Drucker cautioned against. Avoiding these “sins” might have saved many otherwise outstanding leaders or kept their organizations from disaster. In my opinion they are sins and they certainly can be deadly.

Is Pride Really So Bad?

The sin of pride is almost always considered the most serious, yet it seems so innocuous. My wife calls it “being full of oneself.” Leaders feel proud of what they have accomplished or are accomplishing, and that is perfectly acceptable and justified. The problem comes in when leaders feel this pride to the extent that they believe themselves so special that ordinary rules no longer apply.

In Christian doctrine, pride caused the angel Lucifer to fall from Heaven and be transformed into Satan—pretty nasty consequences. Pride can also easily lead one to commit the other six sins. Sometimes even the perception of pride can have awful results.

Where Did All the Lust Come From?

I once heard a retired leader of a large organization speak about the challenges he faced while head of his organization. “One of the biggest problems,” he said, “was newly promoted senior executives. I may be exaggerating a little, but it seemed almost as soon as we promoted a man to be a senior executive, he suddenly decided that he was God's gift to women.”

This individual spoke of a time when almost all senior executives were male. However, the situation might be the same with female executives. Some leaders feel that they have “arrived” and are therefore entitled to sexual gratification as a fringe benefit of senior leadership. In an online survey done by the White Stone Journal, lust was the most frequent of sins self-reported, often termed “my biggest failing.”¹ This sin is not uncommon. Moreover, it can have unfortunate consequences. In any workplace, sexual exploits create jealousies, feelings of favoritism, and a lack of trust. They damage people and relationships, and they also conflict with personal relationships outside of the organization.

As a basic human drive, sex is here to stay. However, when it is not confined to loving relationships outside of the office, there is trouble. We see newspaper stories about Roman Catholic cardinals being exposed for having covered up scandals of molestations by priests, followed by other stories reporting top Air Force generals testifying before Congress regarding extensive sexual misconduct by Air Force trainers at basic training in Texas. Who will quickly forget the foolish downfall of General David Petraeus, whom Secretary of Defense Robert Gates speculated history would regard as one of the United States’ greatest battle captains?²

Avoiding this problem may mean rechanneling your sexual energy into other endeavors, or simply keeping your mind on your work; to do otherwise risks your good leadership position.

Greed Is NOT Good

The sin of greed is one of excess. Greed frequently starts with power. Leaders have power, and unfortunately having power tends to lead to being corrupt if the leader isn't careful. This situation may start with acceptance of small favors but it grows into vacations, loans, and worse.

Randy “Duke” Cunningham, a real hero during the Vietnam War, was wounded in action and received a Navy Cross, the highest award next to the Congressional Medal of Honor for bravery in battle. He was one of a handful of ace fighter pilots who shot down five or more enemy aircraft in that war. Cunningham remained in the Navy for twenty-one years. After leaving the Navy, he was elected to Congress and served for almost fifteen years. However, on November 28, 2005, he pled guilty to a variety of charges and resigned his seat in Congress. He admitted to taking $2.4 million in bribes from defense contractors and was sentenced to eight years, four months in prison.

This was the longest sentence ever given a former congressman in a corruption case. On receiving sentence, he said, “I misled my family, staff, friends, colleagues, the public—even myself. For all of this, I am deeply sorry. The truth is—I broke the law, concealed my conduct, and disgraced my high office.”³

Laziness Is Unacceptable for the Leader

The sin of sloth causes an unwillingness to act. Sometimes this is due to laziness. More often it is a reluctance to take on work that the leader considers is now beneath him. I have seen leaders watching critical work that must be completed and that they were also qualified to do. Yet they stood around “supervising” when they could have pitched in and given real help.

In the last article that Drucker wrote for the Wall Street Journal, he stated that American CEOs were unique, having a position and set of responsibilities that did not exist in any other country. These responsibilities, Drucker said, included work that only the CEO could do but also that he must do.⁴ In Drucker's view, these responsibilities involve connections outside the organization and decisions on what to do about them. Unfortunately, some CEOs abdicate these and many other responsibilities—failures that fall under the heading of sloth. Yes, all leaders, from whatever country, are always responsible, must be proactive, and must take action.

Anger Is the Enemy

The sin of wrath has to do with uncontrolled anger. There is a time for anger in leadership, when it serves a useful purpose. As Kenneth Blanchard and Spencer Johnson taught us in The One-Minute Manager;⁵ you can take one minute to make a correction by including the words “I'm angry” and then tell the recipient why you are angry. Anger can mobilize another's psychological and physical resources to do something about a problem.

However, leaders need to avoid repeated and uncontrolled outbursts of anger because they will have major negative impact on leadership. Anger can destroy morale, while at the same time it does not guarantee a lasting result in correcting problems. Moreover, when someone is in an angry state, that anger causes the individual to lose the capacity for self-monitoring and the ability to observe objectively. In effect, the leader reserves the anger for times when expressing it can be both useful and appropriate.

Leaders Should Avoid Green Monsters

With the sin of envy, a leader allows his or her jealousy to override good judgment and integrity. Envy usually leads to decisions and actions that will put the object of that envy at a disadvantage. So a leader who falls victim to envy may deny an earned promotion to a qualified subordinate, attempt to destroy another's reputation, or in other ways try to make himself or herself feel better by lowering the reputation or situation of another. This is obviously harmful to the individual involved and to the organization. However, it is probably most harmful to the leader, who ultimately destroys his character and retards his ability to lead.

Good Leaders Seek Less Than Those Led

Most people associate food or drink with the sin of gluttony, but for the leader it has a far more ominous connotation. Of all the sins, gluttony was the one that most frustrated Drucker. Excessive consumption of any sort can be seen as a sign of status, and that's where the trouble begins.

Drucker defended perceived high executive salaries in his earlier writings. He knew how hard executives had to work to reach the pinnacle of their careers. However, skyrocketing executive salaries caused him to drastically alter his opinion. He said executive salaries at the top had clearly become excessive and that the ratios of compensation—top managers in relation to lowest paid workers—were the highest in the world. Moreover, this income difference wasn't slight—it differed by magnitudes. Drucker felt that this was morally wrong, and that we as a nation would end up paying a tremendous price for this. Indeed, in 2001, the ratio of average U.S. CEO compensation to average pay of a nonmanagement employee hit a high of 525 to 1.⁶ At that point, Drucker recommended a ratio of no more than 20 to 1.⁷

Interestingly, Drucker drew a parallel between high executive salaries and the demands of unions for more and more benefits without increases in productivity. He predicted we would pay a terrible price for these examples of gluttony from both management and labor. “It is never pleasant to watch hogs gorge,” he said. In fact, we have been paying this price for several years.

There are things that leaders must do, and things that they must not do. The seven deadly sins discussed here apply to leadership and are those things that Drucker maintained leaders must not do.