September 5, 2023
Did You Know That Weasels Can Climb Ladders?
My blog post for August 23rd was titled, Know Your Team & Look Out for Them1 and my blog for August 30th was titled, Are You Reinforcing Bad Behavior and Poor Performance?2
Both articles are related to taking care of the people who work for you. The emphasis of the first is knowing the team and taking care of them. The second article revolved around the differences between taking care of the team and creating more problems by protecting and enabling bad behavior.
Taking care of Number One
No, this article is not about fitness, better eating habits, or a personal development plan. This article is about weasels. Weasels who are ladder climbers, only take care of themselves, and only look out for Number 1.
Individuals such as this are simply interested in their own good and how quickly they can get ahead of others. Some of these weasels are more adept at climbing the ladder than other weasels, but both have only one goal in mind: get ahead and do it as fast as possible regardless of who or how they step on others.
According to www.livescience.com, “To kill its prey, a weasel will clamp down on the prey’s neck and keep biting until the animal is dead.”3
This is also how the human weasel works. If you get in their way, these people have a toolbox full of tactics they use to clamp down on the neck of their competition and gnaw away until the weasel comes out on top of the ladder.
Another type of weasel
The animal form of weasels “stay warm by lowering their metabolism and curling into balls inside their burrows.”3
This is the same type of behavior exhibited by human weasels. These supervisors constantly duck questions, dance around issues, hem and haw, their favorite phrase is, “Ah, uhm…I’ll have to get back to you,” and they run to their burrow for protection.
They lack the courage and intestinal fortitude to stand for what is right and they are afraid to stick their necks out to protect the troops.
Help is one click away.
Don’t be a weasel! I invested 37-years of my life in the fire service, and now provide mentoring and career development opportunities for fire officers and aspiring officers. You can read my book The Furnace of Leadership Development and you can also join a community of like-minded individuals who desire to develop personally and professionally. Click this link to learn more Tailboard Talks – Fire Officer Leadership Academy or send an email to [email protected].
1Know Your Team & Look Out for Them – Fire Officer Leadership Academy
2Are You Reinforcing Bad Behavior and Poor Performance? – Fire Officer Leadership Academy
3Facts About Weasels | Live Science
©2023 Rick Davis. Artificial intelligence (AI) WAS NOT used to generate this content.
