Breaking the Cycle of Bad Management

Identifying Common Pitfalls and Building Better Leaders for the Future

Welcome to Coaching Contemplations, a newsletter full of ideas and insights that will help you equip yourself with game-changing strategies in leadership and coaching to succeed at work and achieve your goals.

Before we dive in, here are a few ideas to share with your curious, ambitious friends and colleagues:

+ Before You Step Into The Office, if you’re entering the professional world, this book is a roadmap of practical tips to help you avoid forming bad habits and feeling lost when challenges arise—tilting the odds in your favour for career success.

+ RYse Journal, a self-coaching journal for mastering the behaviours to motivate yourself and succeed at work.

🥇 - Poor Managers

"Working for an inconsistent boss is like trying to do good work while running through a minefield."

Elena Botelho and Kim Powell (The CEO Next Door)

Dr Robert Hogan and his team at Hogan Assessment Systems first presented that a good leader should be defined based on their ability to build and maintain a high-performing team in the mid-1980s. They researched the fundamental question, "Who should rule?" and in doing so they made three points:

1. Leadership matters - it is hugely consequential for the success of organisations.

2. When conceptualised in the context of human origins, it is clear that leadership is an adaptive tool for individual and group survival.

3. The personality of a leader affects the performance of a team. Who we are determines how we lead.

They claimed the strongest driver of employee performance is their direct line manager!

Figure: How Leader Personality Affects Organisational Performance

Yet, the research is clear: Most first-time managers enter positions without appropriate training. We can also add the flawed assumption that people management is learned on the job through the 70-20-10 mentorship framework to compound the error of not being trained.

The Cost of Ineffective Leadership

Unsurprisingly, we often end up with people in senior leadership positions who are poor managers and terrible leaders. Benson (not their real name) is perhaps the best, worst personal example I can share. Benson was a senior managing director who managed through fear, intimidation and belligerence. While his bosses valued him for being someone to solve the problems they didn't want to spend time on, most sensible people did their best to avoid any interaction unless they couldn't avoid having to kiss the ring. Benson liked being the centre of attention. He established a gladiatorial-style war room to mobilise people from different time zones and offices to mitigate control issues and operational weaknesses. Unfortunately, what was supposed to be used on an exceptional basis for only the most pressing problems became a routine way of his to emphasise the imbalance in the power dynamic. Benson was protected from above by his disconnected boss and could be belligerent with the global resources he viewed as his to direct from his throne. His extreme command and control approach caused undue stress and anxiety, leading to many sleepless nights from worrying about the next day's performance. And that's what it was: a performance to emphasise the imbalance in the power dynamic in Benson's favour.

It may seem evident that fear and worry pervade financial and professional services workspaces, and these unpleasant feelings are counterproductive. Some old-school risk managers, sales leaders, and legal and consulting partners will be sceptical of the argument. After all, pressure is a good thing. But as the authors of The Knowing-Doing Gap write:

• Fear inhibits the ability to turn knowledge into action because people do everything they can to avoid being the ones who deliver the bad news.

• Fear causes a focus on the short term, often creating problems in the long run.

• Fear creates a focus on the individual rather than the collective.

Motivating through fear leads to distrust. Trust, or rather a lack of it, is a common thread among the many different types of bad managers. According to Zenger Folkman, trust is the cornerstone that enhances almost all other leadership behaviours.

"Trust changes the way people respond to a leader. It identifies and validates the leader's motivation. Trust assures others about whether the leader is acting out of self-interest or the interests of the organisation. It convinces colleagues that they are not being hoodwinked or taken advantage of."

Trust amplifies the effectiveness of behaviours, both good and bad.

In an organisational setting, almost all work is conducted through relationships with team members, peers, superiors, or clients. A lack of trust will disrupt the delicate balance, making even the most straightforward communications fraught with suspicion. It can be like walking through a minefield. People always look for hidden meanings and personal agendas, even if the communication is clear and explicit. A lack of trust is a sign of poor relationships and dysfunctional teams. In The 8th Habit, Stephen Covey refers to low trust as "the great hidden tax," leading to delayed projects and inflated costs. It's essentially playing life on hard mode - with no benefits.

Conversely, communication within a team with high trust can be intuitive and requires little effort compared to low-trust settings. Conflict is either absent, reduced, or more easily resolved through respectful negotiation in a high-trust environment. Over the longer term, a team of average members with high trust can even outperform a team of superstars with poor positioning because they lack trust.

Common Pitfalls

There is a cliche with a lot of truth behind it: People don't leave bad companies. They leave bad managers. The reality is that there is significant variability in management quality. Consequently, there are many different categories of bad managers, not just the bully that Benson was, that you may experience in your career:

• Micromanagers: These managers have difficulty delegating tasks and giving their employees the freedom to execute their jobs. They often want to control every little detail, which can stifle creativity and contribute to a toxic work environment.

• Absentee Managers: The opposite of micromanagers, absentee managers are rarely available for guidance, support, or decision-making. As a result, employees may feel neglected, and teams can become directionless.

• Inconsistent Managers: Inconsistency can be unsettling in a manager. This behaviour can undermine trust and create an uncertain work environment, whether it's inconsistent communication, performance reviews, or decision-making.

• Poor Communicators: A lack of clear, transparent communication can lead to misunderstandings, low morale, and reduced productivity. Poor communicators often fail to provide necessary context or guidance, leaving employees confused or unsupported.

• Non-Inclusive Managers: These managers create an environment where only specific individuals or ideas are valued, usually based on personal biases. This stifles diversity of thought and can significantly harm team morale and individual self-esteem.

• Unethical Managers: Managers who engage in unethical or dishonest practices erode the trust within their team and can have long-term negative impacts on the company culture.

• Autocratic Managers: These managers dictate all the activities within their purview without consultation or feedback from their teams. This lack of autonomy can make employees feel disrespected and demotivated.

• Seagull Managers: Detached Managers. They are rarely around, but they fly in occasionally and unexpectedly to make their presence known before flying off again, leaving everyone to clean up the mess they created.

In my experience, all of these examples of poor managers fail to realise that the safest way to get what you want is to try to deserve what you want. It's a simple idea. No doubt that's why the people who fall into these poor manager categories don't think of it. Often, successful people assume complexity is good, whereas simple ideas will more often lead to better outcomes. Charlie Munger in Poor Charlie's Almanack explains it as follows:

"You want to deliver to the world what you would buy if you were on the other end. There is no ethos, in my opinion, that is better for any person to have. By and large, the people who have had this ethos win in life, and they don't just win money and honours. They win the respect and the deserved trust of the people they deal with."

I advise being the type of boss you want to be managed by, which is easier said than done.

📫 - A quote that I am currently pondering

"The intuitive mind is a sacred gift, and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honours the servant and has forgotten the gift."

Albert Einstein

🧾 - An absorbing and insightful (short) read

Pretty much everything SemiAnalysis writes about AI and Automation.

🤔 - If you did have the answer to this question, what would it be?

What does someone in your team think they are great at, but they are not?

(Why haven't you given them that feedback yet?)