Leadership by Neglect

This past weekend I drove from Cortland (NY) to Raquette Lake in the Adirondack Mountains. One of the images which struck me was the number of neglected and rundown barns and other structures. Upstate New York is littered with these eyesores.
       As I was looking at these buildings I began relating them to what I call "leadership by neglect." It's a bit like allowing a building to fall apart. Leaders sometimes get the attitude that it is easier to avoid issues or conflict with someone in their organization and just allow the relationship to slowly deteriorate.
       Sometimes leaders are uncertain what to do with a specific person on their team or in their congregation or organization so they simply ignore them. It's easy to do when you feel that you are busy with more pressing matters.
       I have been on both ends of "leadership by neglect." Being the leader and neglecting people has not been painful for me until someone pointed it out to me. I was fairly shocked by how hurt people felt by this sense of neglect. It was like a slow death. I am grieved by my own shortcomings as a leader that I have sometimes been neglectful of people.
       This hit home for me when I felt neglected as a part of a team/organization in recent years. It was difficult medicine to swallow - humbling, frustrating, confusing. Ultimately I have felt very sad at the lack of leadership on some people's part, but also understand it well.
       So I have renewed my focus to be an engaged leader - to be prayerful and mindful of the people who I am called to lead, to ask for feedback regularly from these people, to work on my communication in its various forms with people I am leading, and to find ways to be available to them formally and informally.