Bad Managers Who Turn into Unsuccessful Executives – Part 2
If your boss has you feeling excruciatingly ready for the weekend it must be Friday. If you’re bracing yourself for another stressful work week it must be Monday. If this isn’t your reality — wonderful — if it is, major bummer. As managers, providing great guidance and support for your team and making them feel appreciated and valued allows these work stress extremes to be avoided most of the time. What about the executive leaders and managers who aren’t so great? That’s what we’re exploring in my current Management Secrets blog series — a January 2012 article by Eric Jackson at Forbes: “The Seven Habits of Spectacularly Unsuccessful Executives.” The article covered research conducted in 2004 by Sydney Finkelstein, Steve Roth Professor of Management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College.
Last time around we covered bad habits one and two – leaders who think they dominate their environment, and leaders who cannot delineate boundaries between personal and corporate interests. Read the details in my blog entry immediately below this one. With this blog installment we’ll look at a few more.
Habit #3: They think they have all the answers Here’s the image of executive competence that we’ve seen admired throughout history: a dynamic leader making dozens of quick decisions, dealing with multiple crises, and taking only seconds to size up the situation and provide a solution. Big problem with this picture – it’s a total fake. Crisp and decisive leaders tend to move so quickly they don’t grasp the ramifications of fast decisions. Worse, these leaders often have huge egos which won’t let them learn new answers. These leaders who know it all shut down other points of view and often make a series of bad decisions that take the company down the tubes.
Warning Sign for #3: A leader without followers — the executive or manager who has no team members who are allowed to follow him is hogging the glory and all the decision making – bad formula. Side note – at the management level the person with this habit often refuses to recognize his team’s accomplishments in front of upper management – they hog all the glory and keep their team from having any visibility with leadership. This charade can only last so long before their true lack of skill comes out –or worse – they’re being protected by someone higher up and they hang on for years.
Habit #4: They ruthlessly eliminate anyone who isn’t completely behind themCEOs who think their job is to instill belief in their vision also think it’s their job to get everyone to buy into it. If you don’t rally to the cause you’re considered to be against it. Hesitant managers have a choice: Get with the plan or get out. This approach is unnecessary and destructive. CEOs don’t need to have everyone unanimously endorse their vision, in fact, eliminating contrasting points of view cuts them off from seeing problems and correcting them. Eventually those executives being stifled decide to leave and no one is left to warn the CEO when disaster is in hovering in the wings.
Warning Sign for #4: Executive departures Side note – at the management level, departures can take the form of leaving the company or moving to other departments to get away from destructive leaders — from another perspective, employees who seek other jobs to get away from bad managers are sending the same message. If you’re a manager with this kind of negative track record, stop and think about what you’re doing to your team.
Habit #5: They are consummate spokespersons, obsessed with the company imageYou know these CEOs: high-profile executives, constantly in the public eye. The problem is that amid all the media frenzy these leaders’ management efforts become shallow and ineffective. Instead of actually accomplishing things, they often settle for the appearance of accomplishing things. When CEOs are obsessed with their image, they have little time for operational details. As a final negative twist, when CEOs make the company’s image their top priority, they run the risk of using financial-reporting practices to promote that image. In their eyes, everything that the company does is public relations.
Warning Sign of #5: Blatant attention-seeking Side note – for a manager, the same dangers are apparent; managers constantly seeking attention are simply doing a lousy job being a manager and may be faking results, eventually it bites them in the back end.
When have you worked in an environment where leaders or managers exhibited habits 3, 4, or 5? How did you deal with it? As a manager, have you ever fallen into these negative behavior habits? Or better yet, risen above them? Drop me a line and let me know your experiences, good and bad, with these challenging, potentially stress-packed issues. I’ll see you in a couple of weeks with the final two habits in this blog series. Till then, take care.
