If we truly want to disrupt a disengaged culture, we must identify one of its most potent accelerants: bad leadership.
Apathy isn’t just a personal failure—it’s almost always a response to something. To being dismissed. To not being heard. To realizing that effort doesn’t matter here—that competence isn’t rewarded, truth isn’t welcomed, and courage gets you crushed.
When people stop caring, it’s usually because they cared for a long time and no one noticed. Or worse—they got punished for it. And if you trace that back far enough, you’ll almost always find someone at the top who made disengagement feel safer than participation.
Because apathy doesn’t begin at the bottom. It begins at the top. The surest way to disengage a team is to put the wrong person in charge. You want to see morale collapse? Watch what happens when a bad leader gets promoted. When the person with the loudest voice but the weakest backbone is given authority. When ego replaces accountability, and perception is valued over performance.
I was chatting on the phone with my friend, Sylvia, and we were dishing about how unbelievable it is that certain leaders rise in rank without competency. They strut with faux bravado but no substance. Sylvia called them “Hollow Bunnies,” and the metaphor nailed it.
Like those shiny, foil-wrapped chocolate bunnies that look solid on the outside, once you bite in, you realize: it’s all empty. No substance. No weight. Just a fragile shell of polish and posturing.
They show up with the title and the talking points, but underneath it all, they’re hollow. They can’t take responsibility. They can’t hold tension. And when things go wrong, they scramble to protect themselves instead of stepping up for their people.
A Hollow Bunny in Action
I once worked for a boss like this on a federal project. At first, she seemed charming. But the shine wore off quickly. She talked down to people the moment she felt challenged, clung to her title as if it were the only thing keeping her afloat, and distorted reality just enough to make us doubt our own. Classic gaslighting.
The absurdities piled up:
- She scolded us for entering a federal building before her because “senior leadership should go first.”
- She stormed out after a harmless joke, sulking like a child.
- She accused teammates of whispering behind her back when they weren’t.
And when she couldn’t find a slight, she invented one.
Eventually, she claimed our lack of deference was rooted in sexism, demanding respect not for her actions but for her title. Leadership acknowledged the dysfunction but refused to confront it. Everyone was too afraid of her threats and tantrums. So the toxicity festered.
That project could have been extraordinary. Instead, we spent more energy dodging landmines than solving problems. That’s the cost of one hollow bunny.
The Illusion of Competence
Hollow Bunny Leaders often think they’re winning. They confuse fear with respect and control with competence. They coast on borrowed success until the cracks show.
Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach said it best: “Since its famous victory over the hare, the tortoise thinks it’s a sprinter.” One lucky break, and suddenly the illusion of greatness sets in. Belief, untested, becomes arrogance. Confidence without reflection becomes carelessness. And in leadership, carelessness doesn’t just affect the leader—it affects everyone they’re supposed to serve.
Do It Scared
This is why I tell people: do it scared.
When you’re in a culture led by fear, it takes courage to do the right thing anyway. You’ll wonder if it’s even worth it. But it is. Especially when the system doesn’t reward it.
Disruption isn’t about waiting for safety—it’s about choosing integrity in the face of risk. Do it scared, because that’s where real leadership begins.
When good people go quiet, cultures rot from the inside.
What Real Leaders Do
When the pressure builds, you see what a leader is really made of. Hollow Bunny Leaders vanish or lash out. They redirect blame instead of taking it. They destabilize instead of steadying. They perform instead of lead—sending memos, holding press conferences, posting about accountability while dodging it in practice.
And the fallout always lands on the team. The people holding things together while their so-called leader protects their own image.
That’s when apathy spreads. Not because people stopped caring, but because they got tired of caring alone.
I’ve heard this from cops, teachers, nurses, corporate managers: “I don’t mind hard work. I don’t even mind chaos. I just can’t take the dysfunction from leadership anymore.”
It’s not the workload that burns people out. It’s working for someone who sucks the oxygen out of the room and then blames you for suffocating.
If you’re working under a hollow bunny leader, you have two jobs: survive the system, and don’t become it.
That means protecting your integrity, doing excellent work even when no one’s watching, documenting everything, and most of all, staying anchored in why you do what you do. Because if you don’t, the erosion will get you. You’ll start to shrink. Or worst of all—you’ll stop caring altogether.
If this resonated…
Forward it to someone — Help me grow our tribe of disrupters!
🖤 Onward and upward,
Kristen
