Early in my Marine Corps career, I worked for a NCO who should never have been put in charge of people. He was unpredictable. Some days he wanted everything done by the book, other days the rules didn’t matter at all. Standards changed depending on his mood. Problems were ignored until they blew up. And when something went wrong, someone else was always to blame. It drove everyone crazy. Young Marines would gather in the smoke pit complaining about him. Some stopped caring, others just counted the days until they got out. One day a Gunnery Sergeant overheard the complaining. He didn’t raise his voice. He just said something simple: “He may be a bad leader, but that doesn’t give you permission to be one.” That stuck with me. Because the truth is, almost everyone will work for a bad leader at some point in their career. Sometimes it’s incompetence. Sometimes it’s ego. Sometimes it’s fear. But the real test of leadership isn’t when everything is running smoothly. The real test is what you do when leadership above you falls short. Here are four things professionals do when they find themselves in that situation. 1. Control What You Can Control You cannot control your boss. You cannot control the politics inside an organization. But you can control your own standards. Maintain professionalism. Maintain discipline. Maintain the quality of your work. If your boss lacks structure, create structure for your team. If communication is poor, communicate clearly with your people. Leadership is not a title. It’s behavior, and your team should never suffer because someone above you is failing. 2. Solve Problems — Don’t Feed the Drama Bad leadership environments always create rumor mills. People gather in corners complaining about management. You’ll hear the same conversations every day. “This place is a mess.” “Leadership doesn’t care.” “Nothing will ever change.” Complaining might feel good for five minutes, but it fixes absolutely nothing. Professionals bring solutions.

A lot of people misunderstand tact. They think it means being nice. Avoiding tension. Softening standards. That’s not tact. Tact is controlled delivery. It’s the ability to correct, challenge, and hold the line without damaging the relationship or the mission. In the Marine Corps, you don’t develop responsibility in your people by humiliating them. You develop it by setting clear standards, correcting privately when possible, and making expectations unmistakable. If you crush people publicly, they shut down. If you avoid correction entirely, standards collapse. Neither develops responsibility. Tact allows you to say: “That’s not the standard.” “Walk me through your decision.” “We’re going to fix this.” Without attacking the person. Developing responsibility means people own outcomes without being forced every time. That only happens when they understand the standard, believe it’s fair, and know you’ll enforce it consistently. Tact protects dignity. Standards protect performance. Together, they build responsible leaders. Question: When you correct someone, are you trying to prove you’re right — or develop them to operate at a higher level?

Everyone has an opinion. On leadership. On what’s wrong with the company. On what’s broken in the world. Opinions are cheap. Discipline isn’t. The world doesn’t change because you said something sharp. It changes because someone decided to live at a higher standard — consistently — when it would’ve been easier not to. You don’t fix broken systems by complaining about them. You fix them by becoming the standard inside them. That costs something. It costs comfort. It costs popularity. It costs energy. You already know what you’re capable of. You’ve always known. You know where you’re cutting corners. You know where you’re tolerating behavior you shouldn’t. You know where you’re staying quiet when you should speak. The question has never been can you. It’s will you. Ronald Reagan once said: “Some people spend an entire lifetime wondering if they made a difference in this world. The Marines don’t have that problem.” That wasn’t about a uniform. It was about responsibility. And just because you may not have served doesn’t excuse you from making a positive difference. You don’t need a title. You don’t need perfect conditions. You don’t need permission. You need standards. And the courage to live by them. The world is changed by example — not opinion. So ask yourself honestly: Will you?

This community isn’t here for you to just read what I write. It exists so all of us get better. Post your wins. Post your losses. Post the leadership situation you’re stuck in. Post the question you’ve been turning over in your head but haven’t asked out loud yet. Leadership development doesn’t happen by consuming content. It happens by engaging, reflecting, and putting your thinking on the table. Someone else in here is dealing with the same issue you are. When you share, you’re not just helping yourself—you’re sharpening the group. We get better together. If you’re leading something—anything—you have experiences worth discussing. Question: What’s one leadership win or challenge you’ve had this week that the group could learn from? Let’s make this a working room, not a reading room.

Let’s be honest. Pursuing real leadership—holding standards, making hard decisions, developing people—is exhausting. Especially when you’re pushing uphill. Especially when peers cut corners or leaders above you tolerate drift. You will: - Have hard conversations others avoid - Upset people who prefer comfort over standards - Lose popularity - Feel mentally drained - Question whether it’s worth it That’s part of it. If leadership were easy, everyone would do it well. When you decide to carry the torch, you accept friction. You accept that not everyone will like you. You accept that some days you’ll be the only one holding the line. The real question isn’t whether it’s hard. The question is whether you’re willing to do it anyway. Only you can decide if it’s worth the energy, the tension, and the responsibility. Only you can decide if you’re going to develop the people around you—or drift with the rest. Leadership isn’t comfortable. It’s deliberate. So the question is, when leadership gets exhausting, what keeps you from lowering the standard?