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If you want to fix rumors, cliques, and back stabbing...it's not a leadership problem.

It's a people problem! Hire better people that won't engage in petty crap like that...

At some level it is always a people problem :-). But my experience has been that people trying to get things done (leading) who are being interfered with by other people trying to get other things done (also leading) can trigger conflict. And if you've taken a conflict management class, all of the kinds of things we think of as 'office politics' are variations on low level conflicts in action.

You "fix" that by putting everyone on the same page going in the same direction. That is leadership.

If you've got someone who comes in at 10AM and leaves at 4PM and takes a 2hr lunch break. But they start no rumors, nor backstab, nor empire build, that is a management problem.

It's been my experience that those negative social phenomena are emergent with any sufficiently large group of people. You need structural components in place to prevent them, or you need to not grow.

I'd rather not grow ;-)

So youd rather fail? Or stay lifestyle?

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