Leaders represent more than leadership. Being a leader is an extremely difficult task. It carries a great deal of responsibility and accountability. You all know the characteristics of a good (not even great) leader. Team-driven, inspiring, supportive, and visionary come to everyone’s mind. The list is easy to put together.
With ineffective leadership, it is a little tougher to put a “flaw list” on paper. Sometimes you just scratch your head and go around the boss to get things done. It saves a lot of time. Candid feedback only gets you on the boss’s radar. Negative leadership behavior is indeed a problem in many organizations.
Some behaviors create a unique manager who masquerades as leader.
- Control Central: Big words at every meeting; big talk in every quarterly session when every single employee is assembled for the rah-rah and the dog and pony. This flawed leader type is always right with absolutely nothing left that is even close to being correct. If you are checking for results, they are not there. Operating through confusion is at the heart of control central.
- Nice Guy: This flawed manager type is your buddy. They take you to lunch. Want tickets to a great game? That is never a problem. It is when you are gone and out of sight that the backstabbing begins.
- The “Steroids” Boss: You like being intimidated? These flawed leaders enjoy it. They create problems and challenges on purpose. It is macho strategy that creates stress rather than healthy competition, just like on a school playground. This makes for an unpleasant and non-supportive environment.
- The “Do It”: These flawed leaders make impossible deadlines and overloaded responsibility a piece of cake by telling you to just “do it”. With no explanation, help, or guidance, they give you that blank stare and get back on the phone. You have been dismissed.
Within Dale Carnegie Leadership Training, you learn very quickly what good leaders do every day. “Leadership is creating environments that influence others to achieve group goals.”
Doing it through communication and collective accountability just makes sense. Carnegie keeps you off the flawed list.
This post is shared with you by the good folks at Dale Carnegie Training of Central & Southern New Jersey. We would love to connect with you on Facebook.