Hi, Mary:

First, I confess to the world that I have never STARTED to watch an episode of "Jersey Shores", let alone made it all the way through.  I am a popular culture deviant ....

Second, I really enjoyed your thinking around the issue of leaders who aren't ... people who have somehow moved into positions of authority and responsibility, but do not have the talents, skills, or resources to adequately fill their role.  Corporate America is chock full of examples of this phenomenon.

It reminds of the Peter Principle (Lawrence J. Peter) of many years ago, where a person who was competent at one level continued to be promoted until reaching a level where they were incompetent ... and then often left to fester and infect others.

I once provided leadership development in a corporation where the exponential growth over a decade had resulted in hundreds of newly-created management positions from front-line supervisor up to the vice-presidential level.   Most of these positions had been filled by internal candidates who were experts at the technical processes and products of the organization ... and most of them had little or no background in managing and leading people.

Imagine your lady who thought because she was in a leadership role, that she knew how to do it.  Now multiple her by hundreds ... almost everyone in a management role at that organization could look around and see three things:

1)  Everyone else in management came from the same background as me.

2)  No examples of effectively leadership or even very good management are visible.

3)  The corporate structure accepts this leadership environment as "OK".

That place held some frustrations for me:).

Thanks as always for a thoughtful and enjoyable glimpse of leadership wisdom:)

John