In my time with this team, one of my bosses has been consistently insulting towards my other boss. He willfully misinterprets the actions and statements of the latter to cast him in the worst possible light, and then uses these misinterpretations to denigrate him. While the man is indeed a poor communicator and often makes poor decisions, there is a difference between pitching him shit for this--a fairly standard behavior for a soldier--and attacking him at every turn.
This morning, I had the audacity to call him on yet another one of these incidents. He apparently took offense. But instead of dealing with the issue then and there, as we all stood in the hallway, he conducted a behind-closed-doors conference with the man he was just casting aspersion upon and directed him to counsel me for disrespecting his rank. I don't know why; I'm sure his stated reason would be that the other is my first-line leader, while he is one step above. And I could understand it if he were not in my direct chain of command. But as is, it is a pathetic commentary that he feels the urge to flee from the hard duty of correcting someone you think is wrong.
The bottom line is this: If you want the soldiers under your command to respect you, you should start by respecting the soldiers under your command. Anything else is pathetically unprofessional.
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As you probably recall, similar shit occurred repeatedly when I was doing my stint in the government bureaucracy. Dysfunction seems to run in every branch of our system. You have my empathy as usual.
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