A take on the term moron which I stole from Glenn Beck.  The military is rife with supposed "leaders" which are nothing but "managers" or what I term "careerists."  These people are more worried about their personal aggrandizement than mission accomplishment or their subordinates.  Their ultimate goal is the accumulation of rank and personal "power."  These folks are destructive because they only seem to have input on subordinates when it's a negative, they "knee-jerk" every perceived infraction, they have almost no sense of context and almost invariably take others words over their own people.  What makes these folks even more destructive is they "talk a good game" They are the first out of the gate in lecturing about Core Values.  They give great speeches and other talks on "leadership".  Almost everything they say is technically correct, but they have about as much credibility as a politician speaking about ethics.  Most people act out of a sense of personal need from time to time, it is human nature.  I am talking about those who consistently put their own needs (their personal careers) ahead of everything else. 

Hypocrites are the "swine flu" of the military.  Most of the time they are simply a nuisance, they pop up, cause some problems, but with some simple "hygiene techniques" or a "quick trip to the doctor" you can get them out of your life quickly.  Sometimes however (usually the higher the rank or the more senior the position) the hypocrite can cause serious damage, perhaps even "kill" the morale of the individual or even the entire unit.

Let's say we're enforcing "standards."  "Standards" when referring to the military means enforcing the military basics:  fitness, dress and appearance, customs and courtesies, enforcing regulatory guidance, to name a few.  Let's say we have a unit of folks who are told they must have a uniform inspection.  No big deal.  The rationale for the inspection however is what gets peoples dander up.  Suppose a junior ranking person failed to show at a military formation in the proper uniform; this person was called out by a senior base military leader.  The junior member tells the senior member they don't have a portion of the particular uniform in question.  The junior member has been in the military for a few years and should have all of the appropriate uniform combinations they are required by regulation to have.  The junior member is at fault for failing to abide by this regulation and showed poor judgment by not correcting the deficiency in a timely manner.  The only thing the junior member did right was admit they messed up (took responsibility). 

Once that junior member gets back to his unit, what is the reaction from his unit's senior leadership?  Not only to hold the junior member accountable, but to punish the other one hundred members of the unit.  The assumption was made since this junior member made a mistake, there was obviously a problem with his immediate supervision and leadership, the problem was systemic, therefore everyone needed to be held accountable for this one person’s mistake.  In this particular instance however the first assumption was that everyone had some kind of problem (which wasn't the issue) instead of one guy making a mistake (which was the problem.)  The question from a leadership position should be:  What happened, why, and what to do about it?  An effective leader does not punish one hundred men for the infraction of one.  An effective leader then does not attempt to disguise said punishment under the auspices of enforcing "standards." 

Addendum:  This is a good time to point out where individual responsibility comes into play.  What does an individual supervisor (low or mid level, or heck even a high level sup) have control over in his particular subordinates life?  Is the supervisor responsible for how the subordinate spends his off time?  Does the supervisor have ANY kind of control over how the subordinate spends his money?  Beyond duty performance or direct duty related stuff off duty, I would contend the supervisor is not responsible nor should they be.  For example: If a subordinate writes bad checks and gets in trouble for it, how in the world is that the supervisors fault?  Beyond offering personal advice when asked (or offering it sometimes by interjecting it into conversation, etc.) and trying to be a "good example" for his subordinate, a supervisor has no control over what a subordinate does off duty (the only caveat to that is if the supervisor is with the subordinate when something happens).  There is a tendency today to hold supervisors accountable for the actions of their subordinates.  Supervisors nowadays are standing right next to their subordinates when called on the carpet and receiving a piece of a butt-chewing they shouldn't be getting at all.  This has a tendency to breed resentment and can lead to micromanagement (more on that below).  Another problem is the military has become "help happy" - providing every measure of assistance for every conceivable event which could negatively impact a person’s life.  Perseverance and the individual "working things out" isn't even part of the textbook anymore I don't think.  Sometimes a person just needs "some time alone" and work things out for themselves.  There is an automatic assumption that it couldn't possibly be the individuals fault when something bad happens.  This is something which the military has absorbed from the civilian culture.  There is an overriding tendency to "blame" anything but the individual.  Eroding individual accountability has been nothing but a detriment to both the civilian world and the military.     

Back to my point:  Now assume this same senior leadership for this unit deals with an outside agency on a regular basis.  Yet these same senior leaders do not hold this outside agency to the standards of written regulatory guidance as it deals directly with the accomplishment of our particular military mission!  This speaks to a larger point, hypocrisy.  When one group of military members is held to a standard and another group is not (by the same senior military leaders) you lose credibility on every front when you try to enforce standards across the board.  It's a matter of consistency.  A leader cannot foster loyalty or followership when applying standards inconsistently.  If you add in the perception of favoritism, you create divisiveness as well.  It's also a matter of proportionality:  Is punishing one hundred men for the infraction of one man proportional to the infraction?  If it is not, then the leader’s judgment is also called into question by his subordinates.

Micromanagement is the death knell for loyalty.  It also kills trust.  If a subordinate cannot trust their leader to allow them to do their job without constant supervision, "butting their nose in", then why should the subordinate feel obligated to be loyal to the leader?  The subordinate will feel they aren't trusted.  If a leader can't inspire trust, in fact kills it through micromanagement, your result will be robots who will not "think outside the box".  The micromanager kills initiative.  If a subordinate feels they aren't trusted, they will simply show up to work and won't do anything without first being told to do it.  In these cases, the subordinate will give the "leader" all the rope they need, metaphorically speaking.  Eventually a mistake will be made.  The micromanaging leader will attempt to shift blame to the subordinate (since this type or "leader" refuses to take responsibility).  The subordinate in this case will have made sure to CYA:  they will provide plenty of evidence that the mistake was the cause of the leader and was probably directly caused or at the very least exacerbated by the micromanaging.  The "leader" will be hung up to dry and the subordinate will have learned that it's better to be vindictive than to "mow through" a bad leader awaiting the greener pastures which will eventually come.