The Lousy Leader Dance: Five Signs You’re Stifling Your Team
Leadership, like water, is neither inherently good nor bad, but it is essential. Your desire for water changes depending on the conditions. Those parched in a desert dream of even a sip, while those battling floods pray for torrential rains to stop. Some people fear swimming or getting wet, and others frolic in the waves for hours. You can sweeten or poison water; it can be frozen, inaccessible, or scalding hot. It can be as ephemeral as fog, used to torture or nourish. How you view water and how you view leadership can widely vary.
Knowing which leadership style is most useful in a given situation is valuable. Far too many people do not recognize differences, and a more significant number disempower themselves by not challenging corrosive leadership early on. They sip the water, thinking it tastes funny, but they shrug and assume everything is fine. That in itself is lousy leadership. Even a content individual contributor should feel compelled to rise and challenge notions that interfere with core values and common purpose. Poor leadership practices are not reserved for politicians. They are present in boardrooms, showrooms, shop floors, and kitchen tables around the globe. It’s our collective responsibility to address this issue.
Those frightened by their perceived threat of “outside forces” tend to like strong authority figures. It is a proxy for their comfort from a big blanket wrapped around them, a deadbolt on the door, or a gun in the nightstand drawer. When people do not know what to do, they want to be told what to do. This is where the authoritarian enters, under the guise of keeping followers safe from “them,” the outside forces. In business, you may convince yourself that the enemy forces are your competition or government regulations. At home, it could be the neighbors across the street who have a different complexion or cook food that smells unfamiliar to you.
Businesses do not have to be democracies, and many are not. When the stakes are high, weaker leaders and managers can become dictatorial. A few reassuring nods of agreement from the leader’s close staff is all it takes for the authoritarian style to begin.
Are you practicing the steps of an authoritarian dance with your workplace behavior? Let’s find out.
Step one:
Do you believe all outside information sources are suspect, that everyone has self-serving agendas, and only you can educate your followers, employees, clients, and investors? Do you tell them they should only accept the information you share as true because you have the greatest knowledge and are the only one who can keep them safe from harm, like unemployment, layoffs, or poor investments? Do you implore that they never trust the grapevine filled with rumor and innuendo? This also presents itself as ‘blame the media.’
Step two:
Have you ever uttered, “You’re either with us, or you’re against us,” to your team? Do you consider exploratory interviews that your staff members may have had with the competition to be acts of disloyalty? Have you expressed that any opposition to your ideas makes others traitorous in your eyes? Do you publicly or privately smear and punish others by questioning their loyalty to the team or company and accuse them of letting outside threats into the organization? Have you called anyone who has reservations about your ideas and actions traitors?
Step three:
Do you oppose ideas and notions that others bring from outside sources? Do you try to convince those who disagree with you that their judgment is clouded and they do not think straight? Have you said their ideas were dangerous and could quickly multiply and spread “like cancer?” You could use other metaphors like a virus, bacteria, or pollen, but nothing elicits fear, disgust, and a lack of agency like cancer, so you like that description best.
Step four:
To persuade holdouts, have you hastily organized mandatory morale-boosting meetings and then cited these gatherings, with participants awash in a sea of company colors, pride, and forced enthusiasm, as ‘social proof’ of your success?
Step five:
You and your lieutenants may have laughed off and diminished your critics. Your followers, who once felt fearful, are now buoyed and encouraged by an apparent safety in numbers. Your hubris strikes hard, and the smartest people in the room have gone dumb because they have disconnected themselves from alternative points of view and brutal facts. In this stage, you’ve found ways to change well-established rules, policies, mores, and practices to benefit you better personally. You demonstrate your perceived power with acts of whim to keep people guessing. In governing bodies, personal freedoms in the name of security are reduced faster and faster. By this stage, the evidence confirms that your primary concern as a leader is not in those you serve but in your individual interests first and foremost.
The dance is over. Leadership styles valuing democratic virtues are left weakened and breathless.
Yes, authoritarian-like leadership can be helpful in a dramatic, short-lived crisis without time to debate or consider alternatives. However, it must never be a way of life nor a way to run a business, family, or country. A strong leader at any level can take criticism and will often invite it so that they can make well-informed, considered decisions. Despite the bravado and usually ruthless appearance, authoritarian leaders are inhabited by weak, frightened, and deeply insecure people. The potential for harm and dysfunction under such leadership is significant, and it’s crucial to be aware of this.
To be an effective leader, always avoid the temptation of using positional authority as your go-to tool. Doing so deadens your empathy and hastens the demise of the organization, the people who support you, and the people who support them. The tentacles of authoritarian chaos and dysfunction tragically reach deep. Be better, and do not allow that to happen.
Part of the vision of Karl Bimshas Consulting, the leadership development and accountability firm dedicated to promoting democratic leadership and reducing the negative influence of lousy leaders, is to create environments where great leaders outnumber lousy leaders, and effective leadership is the norm, not the exception. If you’re ready to challenge, disrupt, and reduce the negative influence of lousy leaders in your organization, I’d love to help.
