Tag: bad leadership
Leaders and Workers
In large workplaces there are leaders and workers, obviously. There must be people at the top setting strategic direction, delegating, and making decisions about where to invest. And there must be people to get the work done.
Yet in some corporations and the military, if you don’t continue to rise through the ranks, you are eventually pushed out. In one performance review system that I was familiar with, if an employee was considered unlikely to be promoted, they were docked in their review score and received fewer financial rewards. This was true even if they performed above expectations.
The belief was that the best employees would grow into higher-leveled positions and everyone else would eventually leave the company.
It seems short-sighted, doesn’t it? It’s a pyramid, with far more roles for workers at the base than roles for leaders at the top. Companies need many reliable workers at those lower levels to function, let alone thrive.
Not everyone has the qualities to be leader or wants to be a leader. Valuing the people who keep the business running is wise, especially in today’s environment, when employees who aren’t treated well are finding new places to work.
Struggling at work
If you’re struggling to succeed at work and are constantly getting feedback about the ways that you are underperforming, it doesn’t mean that you’re incompetent. It could mean:
- Your workload or deadlines are unrealistic
- Your manager has different priorities or expectations for the job than you do
- There is a gap between your skills and the job requirements
These issues are solvable. Workloads and deadlines are negotiable. Priorities can be discussed and agreed upon. Training or mentoring can be provided to raise skill levels.
If your manager is unwilling to discuss and implement changes that would improve your performance, then the job is a bad fit. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad worker if you don’t have the characteristics needed for a particular job. It just means that it isn’t the right job for you.
The unideal workplace
When I finally lost my idealism about work, I was embarrassed that it took so long.
In the early years of my career, I believed that the workplace would be a fair and rationale environment. When situations occasionally arose that led me to think, “that’s a waste of company money” or “it is unethical to treat people like that,” I was indignant.
It just seemed…wrong. And shocking, because it was the opposite of my worldview that people are mostly honest, hard-working and strive to do the right thing.
Over time, I realized that I had been extremely naïve. When I began noticing all the ways that workplaces enable bad behavior, I grew jaded.
It was many years later before I changed my beliefs again. My more pragmatic outlook these days is that while people don’t always act ethically, most organizations aren’t riddled with corruption.
I realize that it is human nature to prioritize self-interest. Sometimes the pressure of meeting deadlines or budgets or unrealistic expectations leads people to make choices that they wouldn’t have made if they felt like they had better options.
Even people at the highest levels of organizations who sometimes seem truly rotten can at least be understood, if not sympathized with. They may be driven to succeed at all costs because of insecurity or by a lack of empathy. They may be pressured by their stakeholders. Or maybe they just don’t have the capacity as a human being to treat other people with respect – and that’s sad.
It’s much less surprising or disappointing to me now when I see bad behavior. Instead of focusing on the wrongness of it, I try to widen my perspective to include the possibility that the people involved are doing the best they can with the circumstances they’re in. It’s not ideal, but it’s real.
Be Wary of Charismatic Leaders at Work
Throughout my career, there have been business leaders that inspired me to do my work with a deeper sense of purpose. I looked forward to their presentations at employee conferences and meetings because their speeches moved me. They clearly described their vision and how important it was for the team to achieve it. I left these events with fresh ideas for my projects and re-energized to complete them.
Time and time again, I was amazed at how smart and articulate they sounded. They described our mission in simple, easy to remember points, and gave us compelling reasons why we should care. They didn’t just make me think – they made me feel.
I give them credit for improving my strategies and plans because they made it easy for me to connect my work to the bigger goals of the organization. They strengthened my ability to get buy-in from other teams and leaders because I could show how my idea supported the top-down direction we were all supposed to follow.
So…great, right?
Not exactly.
Time and time again, these charismatic leaders disappointed me.
One leader dazzled me with his ability to get a room full of hundreds of people to enthusiastically commit to his vision. He got us to volunteer for additional work, and the vivid image of success that he described kept us focused for months. So it was confusing when after we delivered what he’d asked us to do, that nothing came of it. He didn’t take our front-line work and use his executive position to implement the goal we worked for.
I don’t know if his priorities had changed, if he lost interest in the goal, or if he simply lacked the ability to execute his vision. Plenty of people are very good at convincing others to support their ideas but lack the ability to push their projects to completion. Some of them have poor organization skills or get stuck when there are details to manage.
Unfortunately, this man was such a talented communicator that he got everyone excited about other things and moved on. The wasted time and potential was forgotten about.
Other charismatic leaders that failed me were more like empty vessels – appealing on the surface but not much inside. They think their only role is to imagine an outcome and inspire their followers to agree with them. Then they expect other people to figure everything else out because that kind of work is beneath them.
You can recognize this type of leader by their charming, magnetic personalities and the crowd of admirers that surround them. They will mesmerize employees with their strategic vision and big picture ideas but you won’t find them connected to the tactics, execution, or implementation.
The danger of this type of leader is that when people rally around an outcome without understanding the plan to achieve it, bad things can happen. Loyalty to the leader and an emotional attachment to the end-goal can cause workers to take unethical or even illegal actions. They might think the ends justify the means. Or, their fierce loyalty may convince them that they aren’t doing anything wrong.
Charismatic leadership isn’t at fault for every corporate scandal. Volkswagen’s emission-cheating has been blamed on a fearful, authoritarian climate led by ex-CEO Martin Winterkorn – but that is a negative leadership style for a different blog post.
There are, however, charismatic leaders at all levels of organizations and it isn’t necessarily the CEO that employees blindly follow. Imagine a beloved executive getting staff excited to break a sales record without having a specific plan for achieving the goal. This happens all the time! Lower level managers might be tempted to cut corners, and what starts out as a gray area can turn into misuse of funds, which then becomes fraud. An entire department can be swept along in unethical or illegal activity.
This isn’t to say that every charismatic leader is bad. The website Make A Dent Leadership has an interesting article by Shelley Holmes about positive and negative aspects of charismatic leadership.
As for me, I can only think of one such leader that I would happily work for again. And…I can’t help but wonder…if someday this person will disappoint me, too.
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