We have all been exposed to a “leader” who was bound to fail at least once in our lives, and according to lesson 5 part 1, “Some research suggests that as many as 30-50% of managers and leaders fail (Hogan, Curphy, & Hogan, 1994)”(PSU WC, L.5, 2016). They could be the friendliest or most intelligent person you have ever met, but if they partake in self-defeating behaviors they are bound to fail…
According to (Hughes, Ginnett, & Curphy, 2012), Five reasons why leaders fail in the U.S. and Europe are:
- Inability to build relationships: These leaders are insensitive to the needs of their followers and are overly competitive and demanding. They are very arrogant and embrace the “my way or the highway” school of management.
- Failure to meet business objectives: These leaders handle setbacks ineffectively. They engage in finger-pointing and blame others for the downturn. They are untrustworthy, tend to get distracted and lose focus.
- Inability to lead and build a team: These leaders do not build strong teams. They either hire members that are just like themselves, or hire staff less capable than they are. Others micromanage their staffs, even when not expert themselves in the tasks.
- Inability to adapt: These leaders cannot adapt to new bosses, businesses, stylecultures, or structures. Some leaders cannot adjust their styles to changing followers and situations. When solving problems, they often implement past solutions that are no longer viable.
- Inadequate preparation for promotion: These leaders have narrow technical backgrounds and lack the leadership breadth and depth necessary for their new positions.
I personally have seen great potential leaders fall hard because they could not kick one or more of these bad behaviors. I worked for an individual in the past who, because of her lifestyle was not able to comprehend how build relationships and teams – everything was all about her 24/7. To be fair this was a completely different kind of job that I had ever had before and I was probably “asking” for some of these issues when I met the family and decided to take on the job. I was living in NYC from 2013-2015 and I had taken on a role as a personal assistant/nanny for an extremely wealthy family. What I didn’t know before I took the job was that they had 4 or 5 people who had come and gone in the last 3 years – I would soon learn why. This woman was incapable of building any type of relationship and it seemed even the ones that she had were all completely fake. She wanted things done her way immediately no matter what time or how long it was going to take – think The Devil Wears Prada/The mother from nanny diaries. Whenever anything went wrong she would tend to point her finger at someone constantly, nothing was ever her fault –including her children’s extremely poor behavior. One of her children’s teachers called one day about 5 year old “Johnny” biting and hitting another student at school and she immediately blamed the staff, the other child and their parents (this is just one of MANY examples). She was unable to adapt to anything new, as she was set in her ways and didn’t feel the need to change anything – even if it was for the benefit of her children. I could go on and on and into the gossipy details, but I won’t (and believe me I have some pretty good stories). The moral of the story is that this woman could not be a leader in her home with her children or a leader when it came to the employee’s that were pre-paid for her thanks to dad.
Green, C. (2015, March 20). Bad Habits Good Leaders Should Avoid. Retrieved February 9, 2016, from http://wherewelive.cairinegreen.ca/2015/03/bad-habits-good-leaders-should-avoid/
Hughes, R. L., Ginnett, R. C., & Curphy, G. J. (2012). Leadership: Enhancing the lessons of experience. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Companies.
Murray, D. (2015, September 14). On Leadership Communication: Bad leaders are good teachers of hard lessons – IABC. Retrieved February 09, 2016, from https://www.iabc.com/on-leadership-communication-bad-leaders-are-good-teachers-of-hard-lessons/
Northouse, P. G. (2015). Leadership: Theory and practice (7th ed.).Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
dsp19 says
Learning empathy
Self-defeating behaviors, including the inability to build relationships, can lead to organizational failure. Although goal attainment may be the primary focus of a leader, without followers to help, it’s possible those goals will not be reached. It is in a leader’s best interest, and that of his organization, to at least moderately learn to empathize with his followers.
Leaders who can’t build relationships “are insensitive to the needs of their followers and are overly competitive and demanding. They are very arrogant and embrace the ‘my way or the highway’ school of management” (Self-Defeating Behaviors, n.d.). What’s worse, they probably don’t even know they are doing it.
The problem is deep. The self-defeating behaviors are somewhat reflected in the dark-side personality traits of insensitivity, narcissism in the form of ambition, and perfectionism in the form of inflexibility (The Dark Side of Personality, n.d.)
But there is hope. As with any personality problem, admitting it is the first step. Several years ago, a co-worker was distraught over her father’s illness, and the day she got the call, at work, that he would die soon, she went to the manager and explained she had to leave to go to Florida. We were all there in one big room observing the exchange. The managing editor listened briefly, scowled, turned in his chair to look at the work schedule and loudly exclaimed, “We can’t do that!” We were collectively aghast at his insensitivity. My co-worker did go to her father’s death bed, but we were left with this tactless lout as our manager. As a staff (there were about eight of us), we wrote a letter about the incident and suggested he get counseling. He was appropriately embarrassed, got counseling and, while he was still rather insensitive, he did learn some people skills as a result of our letter.
The empathy he finally learned is necessary in successful leadership. In the Three Skills Model, human skills are emphasized: “the ability to work with people … in everyday language” (Skill Approach Models, n.d.). Once an insensitive manager sees his weakness, he needs to practice recognizing when and why his followers are stressed and help them through it by taking the time to explain a goal more carefully, educating the team on the method to reach the goal and giving them the resources they need to attain the goal. Skill approaches also include an emphasis on a leader taking perspective of a situation, learning how to recognize cues form people and groups, changing the solutions to match the circumstances, and learning how to persuade followers to get on board (Skills Approach Models – Three Skills Model, n.d.).
Leaders also can learn social intelligence, how to have empathy and act on that empathy to change the situation (Emotional and Social Intelligence, n.d.) or practice transactional analysis, learning how to speak from their parent ego in a more nurturing, less critical way (Transactional Analysis, n.d.)
As a leader, you don’t always have to agree with followers. Start by just try to acknowledge what they are saying and feeling. If you don’t know how to respond, be neutral. And, most importantly, take the time to pay attention. Eliminate distractions and make enough time for a meaningful exchange.
References:
The Dark Side of Personality, n.d. Leadership in Work Settings — PSYCH 485. Online course lesson, Penn State World Campus, The Pennsylvania State University. Retrieved Feb. 10, 2016, from
https://courses.worldcampus.psu.edu/sp16/psych485/001/content/02_lesson/06_page.html
Emotional and Social Intelligence, n.d. Leadership in Work Settings — PSYCH 485. Online course lesson, Penn State World Campus, The Pennsylvania State University. Retrieved Feb. 10, 2016, from https://courses.worldcampus.psu.edu/sp16/psych485/001/content/02_lesson/11_page.html
Self-Defeating Behaviors, n.d. Leadership in Work Settings — PSYCH 485. Online course lesson, Penn State World Campus, The Pennsylvania State University. Retrieved Feb. 10, 2016, from https://courses.worldcampus.psu.edu/sp16/psych485/001/content/05_lesson/03_topic/07_page.html
Skill Approach Models, n.d. Leadership in Work Settings — PSYCH 485. Online course lesson, Penn State World Campus, The Pennsylvania State University. Retrieved Feb. 10, 2016, from https://courses.worldcampus.psu.edu/sp16/psych485/001/content/04_lesson/05_page.html
Skills Approach Models – Three Skills Model, n.d.
https://courses.worldcampus.psu.edu/sp16/psych485/001/content/04_lesson/04_page.html
Transactional Analysis, n.d. Leadership in Work Settings — PSYCH 485. Online course lesson, Penn State World Campus, The Pennsylvania State University. Retrieved Feb. 10, 2016, from https://courses.worldcampus.psu.edu/sp16/psych485/001/content/03_lesson/09_page.html