How to do management while killing leadership
How managers squash leadership and creativity in organisations
When people first enter management rarely are they offered effective management development, instead they are left to get on with it as best they can. Many of the behaviours they call upon have the unintended side effect of stifling creativity and of killing off nascent leadership qualities in their staff. This creates staff retention, talent development and succession problems for the organization as well as causing problems for the individuals.
Some of the things they do are:
· Kill enthusiasm through micromanagement, coercion and disrespect.
· Kill excellence by focusing on weaknesses
· Kill initiative by having all the answers
· Kill good cheer through aggressiveness, lack of emotional intelligence, lack of empathy
· Kill understanding by using partial, inconsistent communication
· Kill commitment by setting individuals’ goals for them
· Kill creativity by punishing all and any mistakes
· Kill hope by offering no vision of a better future
· Kill optimism by problem focused appraisals
· Kill engagement by setting individual objectives that don’t align with group goals
· Kill performance by rewarding the wrong things and offering the wrong rewards
· Kill trust through unfair recruitment or reward decisions
· Kill growth in capacity and capability by working with the role definitions not the people here present
· Kill generative communication by using only the written word
· Kill working relationships by addressing relationship issues with only one individual
· Kill willingness by blaming their staff for difficulties and problems
· Kill leadership by desiring and rewarding only unquestioning compliance
Managers unintentionally cause problems amongst their staff because they don’t understand how their behaviour contributes to their staff’s poor performance. This supported by Steven Sonsino’s research into the failings of leadership.
Many managers believe that always knowing the answer is the expected justification for their salary. They don’t understand the many unhelpful consequences that follow from this:
· stress for themselves;
· a fear of being found out as a fraud;
· staff who stop thinking (why should I try to solve the problem if you are going to do it your way anyway);
· ineffective problem solving (the person who does the job is likely to have a very good idea about the answer);
· a loss of creativity, and the replacement of commitment from staff to actively engage with making things better with a passive compliance of ‘doing what the boss says (even though I know it won’t work).’
Similarly managers often believe that the way to improve the performance of themselves and others is to concentrate on their ‘weak areas’. Inadvertently all feedback becomes about people’s ‘weak areas’. The unintentional effects of this are many.
· Firstly we need to recognize that there is a limited amount we can do about weaknesses by the time we are 25+.
· The investment of a lot of effort and energy can result in remarkable little visible effect.
· It is demoralizing, confidence sapping and unpleasant to be constantly focusing on what you can’t do.
· People come to feel that they are under constant criticism, unappreciated, unvalued and unsure of themselves,
and all because their manager is trying hard to help them. In this situation people shrink into themselves and try not to get noticed, they stop volunteering to try new things. Sometimes they leave, and it is too late at that point to try to convince them that they are a valued member of the team.
References
Stephen Sonsino and Jacqueline Moore ‘The Seven Failings of Really Useless leaders. February 2007 MSL publishing