“You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing you think you cannot do.” Eleanor Roosevelt
Once upon a time there was a big bad boss who thought people could not be trusted and that to get results he needed to yell, scream, and micro-manage. He was in charge of three other leaders who each had the advantage of all the leadership development training the organization provided, but each built their leadership houses on different qualities…
Recently, I had participated in a discussion on an article some one had read that stipulated that authoratative leaders get higher productivity from their workers. While I did not have direct access to the original article, I could not respond to the specific points attempt to factual validate this claim. However, it reminded me of a personal experience of my own when in the military of an authoritative leader.
First, I must differentiate that this “big bad boss” was not an evil leader, but was one who had been taught that this style was necessary for productivity. In a blog post from Riggio (2009), there is a good overview of different types of bad leaders, and the authoritative style used by this boss was becoming toxic over the long haul.
Second, the “big bad boss” did obtain results but at what costs. This can be true for evil leaders also. Otherwise we would of never had an Adolph Hitler or a Saddam Hussein. However, certain outcomes eventually follow this type of leadership. Performance in this situation was initially high but was deteriorating rapidly, and long hours had become the mainstay just to meet basic requirements.
Of the above experience with the “big bad boss,” each leader handled the situation differently with entirely different results. I found this experience useful because it was in an environment where you can not just quit the job (e.g. the nature of your committment to the military for a contractual length of time) and had to deal with the situation. One leader handled the situation primarily through anger, another handled it primarily from fear, and the other from the old “Godfather” movie quote, “…its not personal its business.”
The anger-based leader, while first having the support of his followers, eventually crashed and burned. His behaviors not only caused problems for him, but had the by-product effect of being an example to his followers which then treated him with the same disrespect. He eventually decided to not renew his enlistment and left with his anger.
The fear-based leader never had the respect of the “big bad boss” or his followers. Both considered him weak, and his behaviors eventually led to high absenteism from illness. Each time he would return to work, he would state that it would be different, but he never changed the behaviors necessary to fulfill that committment. He eventually agreed to take a position with a smaller team of a support shop that had a different boss.
As stated, the final leader did not take the “big bad boss’s” leadership style as personal but chose to remain authentic to who he was and how he could fulfill his responsibilities and the mission. Without the loss of energy from the emotional investment in how the “big bad boss” was, he focused on the following:
- Honesty and integrity — with both his followers and the boss he would state his intentions, vision, opinions, and total acceptance of his responsibilities. This led to developing trust with both his followers, and even a stated respect from the “big bad boss.” In fact, the boss stated that he was not used to someone taking ownership and was part of the reason he was harsh was he anticipated people would lie to him.
- Developing his people’s strengths — this led to the people becoming more invested, and a higher respect within the team of each person’s capabilities.
- Developed positive working relationships with all supportive workcenters/agencies.
- Maintaining emotional maturity/competence regardless of the situation.
As far as performance results from an authoritative leader, I believe McColl-Kennedy and Anderson (2002) summed it up best with their explanation of the following two types of relationships:
- Optimism-performance relationship – “…leaders [that] “instill optimism, confidence and faith in their followers by suggesting that although their challenges appear formidable, they can be successful by working together to create a better future.”
- Frustration–performance relationship –”…workers who have attempted to succeed in the past but have been unsuccessful or who do not possess an optimistic outlook will become frustrated and come to the view that any extra work is only wasted effort. They rationalize this behavior by explaining failures according to attribution theory that is based on the dimensions of stability (stable/unstable), specificity (global/specific), and focus (internal/external)…”
The above was evident from the end results of of the above case. both the leaders that the third leader chose took the vacated positions of the two that were gone. The productivity not only increased to first time highs, but long hours became a thing of the past. Additionally, the “big bad boss” became a kinder gentler boss as productivity goals were achieved and awards and recognition were given for outstanding performances.
McColl-Kennedy, J., & Anderson, R. (2002). Impact of leadership style and emotions on subordinate performance. Leadership Quarterly, 13(5), 545.
Riggio, R.E. (2009, April). Blogs Psychology Today: Cutting Edge Leadership: “Bosses From Hell: A Typology of Bad Leaders.” Retrieved on 11 Jan. 2009 from http://ow.ly/VLvS .
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