By Jeffrey Ford, on August 1st, 2011,
There are two sides to leadership: the constructive side and the destructive side. Both are evident in organizations, but only one seems to get all the attention.
Implicit in contemporary approaches to leadership, particularly the leadership of change, is the assumption that leaders are a constructive force that have a positive impact on organization and employee performance. As a result, the overwhelming emphasis in leadership research and development is on the factors associated with effective, successful, or constructive leadership. The implication in these approaches is that ineffective leadership is simply the absence of the factors associated with effective leadership. But this is an inaccurate and incomplete view of leadership.
Under such terms as “abusive supervisors”, “petty tyrants”, “bad leadership”, “toxic leaders”, “intolerable bosses”, “derailed leaders”, and “brutal bosses“, researchers have investigated the “dark side” of leadership (Conger, 1990) and have found that leaders can and do take actions and engage in behaviors that are destructive to the organization and/or the people who work in them. This research indicates that that destructive leadership includes behaviors that go beyond simply the absence of effective leadership behaviors to include such actions as arbitrariness, belittling of others, lack of consideration, and a forcing style of conflict resolution. Among the impacts of destructive leadership are such negative outcomes as reduced employee commitment and satisfaction, revenge and retaliation, lower performance and work unit cohesiveness, and high frustration, stress, reactance, and helplessness among subordinates.
Interestingly, some researchers propose it is possible for the same leaders to be constructive in one setting or situation and destructive in another (Einarsen, Aasland, & Skogstad, 2007). In my research on the leadership of change, it is apparent that leaders who are typically constructive can, during a change, engage in actions that are destructive to the change, the people implementing the change, and even to themselves. Among the results of such actions are the loss of leader credibility and increased resentment, cynicism, and resistance to change by those implementing the change. Ironically, the resistance to change leaders complain about may well be the product of their own destructive actions.
To fully understand leadership, particularly the leadership of change, requires we consider both sides of leadership and how they impact each other. Idiosyncratic credit theory suggests that typically constructive leaders are likely to be forgiven for “destructive mistakes” that damage trust, particularly if they use closure conversations to acknowledge and apologize for the mistakes. However, there may be a limit to how many destructive actions a constructive leader can take before it begins undermining their leadership.
Some References:
Conger, J. A. 1990. The dark side of leadership. Organizational Dynamics, 19(2): 44-55.
Einarsen, S., Aasland, M. S., & Skogstad, A. 2007. Destructive leadership behaviour: A definition and conceptual model. The Leadership Quarterly, 18: 207-216.
Lombardo, M. M., & McCall, M. W. J. 1984. Coping with an intolerable boss. Greensboro, N.C.: Center for Creative Leadership.
McCall, M. W. J., & Lombardo, M. M. 1983. Off the track: Why and how successful executives get derailed. Greensboro, N.C.: Center for Creative Leadership.
By Jeffrey Ford, on June 27th, 2011,
I recently played golf with someone I didn’t know prior to our playing together. As we walked down the first fairway, he asked, “What do you do?” Asking people what they do is a polite and socially acceptable way of getting to know them. It’s completely normal and completely appropriate. But in the workplace, what you do is not as important as what you deliver.
“Doing” is about action and activity; “deliver” is about what is handed over to someone after the doing is done. Generally the things handed over are products (things like reports, computers, invoices, software), services (like training, consulting, appointments, performance reviews), and communications (requests, promises, authorizations). For example, one of the things I do as a professor is teach classes. What I deliver are lectures, presentations, exams, assignments, reading lists, and grades.
My students interact with the products, services, and communications I deliver to them. If I deliver poorly worded exam questions, they don’t care much about the work that went into writing them, only that they have a hard time trying to figure the questions out. If my lectures are unintelligible and hard to understand, my students don’t care what I had to do to prepare them. Ultimately my performance in the classroom is determined by what I deliver to my students, not all the things I do in preparing the class.
I have learned that what really matters to people is what gets deliver. When what is delivered to people “works” (meets their requirements in terms of form, quality, quantity, and time), they are satisfied and more likely to see the deliverer as a credible and reliable performer. However, when what is delivered doesn’t work, people get upset, complain, and can even retaliate by becoming less cooperative.
By Jeffrey Ford, on June 15th, 2011,
For the past several months, I have been conducting research into the leadership of change to learn more about the role leadership plays in successful change. Frankly, I have been disappointed in what I have found. More accurately, I have been disappointed in what I haven’t found – an access to leadership.
The primary focus of leadership research and writing seems to be dominated by a conception of leadership as associated with someone in a formal position of leadership (i.e., authority) and by a focus on the extrinsic outcomes of the characteristics or behaviors of the leader. Accordingly, attention is given to identifying the characteristics and/or behaviors that differentiate effective leaders from ineffective leaders on the assumption that once identified, we can select or train leaders for these characteristics or behaviors, thereby improving leadership.
What I find troubling about this approach, however, is that it says nothing about the source of the behaviors leaders exhibit or how one might gain access to those behaviors. Knowing what respect is and that effective leaders show respect does not mean that I can show respect when it is needed or that I can show it in an appropriate or acceptable way. There is not a one-to-one correspondence between any personality characteristic, cognitive capability, affective orientation, or situational condition and any leader behavior. What this means is that none of these factors are THE source or cause of leader behaviors and learning them will not make me a leader or necessarily more effective.
No, I think we are missing something and I think it has to do with the idea that the actions we take and the behaviors we engage in are a function of how situations and people occur to us. In their book, The Three Laws of Performance, Zaffron and Logan point out that how people perform is not determined by the objective nature of the situation, but rather is correlated with how the situation occurs to them. If, for example, the actions and behaviors of another occur as resistance to a change agent, the agent is likely to respond much differently than if those same actions and behaviors occur as a contribution to improving the change.
The idea that one’s actions correlate with how situations occur suggests that the access to leader behaviors, in both form and quality, is to be found in how things occur for people. It also suggests that leaders can alter their behaviors, in both form and quality, by learning how to shift the way situations occur. Zaffron and Logan have some ideas on how to do that that may be worth pursuing.
By Jeffrey Ford, on June 6th, 2011,
If you want to increase your personal leadership effectiveness, then you may want to adopt the following policy: It doesn’t exist if it isn’t written down.
Most people are familiar with the cliché “out of sight, out of mind”. One way to interpret this cliché is that if we don’t have some way of remembering things
Continue reading It Doesn’t Exist If It Isn’t Written Down
By Jeffrey Ford, on June 1st, 2011,
I believe a cornerstone of personal leadership effectiveness is operating with integrity. Michael Jensen, the Jesse Isidor Straus Professor of Business Administration, Emeritus, at Harvard Business School contends that without integrity, nothing works. Jensen defines integrity as honoring your word, which means that (1) you keep your word, and (2) just as soon as you
Continue reading Where Do You Keep Your Word after You Give It?
By Jeffrey Ford, on May 9th, 2011,
When it comes to the leadership of change, which is more important, leadership style or following the “right” steps for implementation?
For the past several months, I have been conducting research into the leadership of change. My interest is in finding out what differentiates effective leading of change from ineffective. Although my research is far from
Continue reading Leadership of Change: Do Steps Trump Style?
By Jeffrey Ford, on April 20th, 2011,
MBA students frequently tell me they would be far more effective if only they had authority over certain people. Unfortunately, years of research, such as a forthcoming study in Organization Science, indicates that having authority may actually reduce a manager’s effectiveness, not improve it.
When managers have authority over resources important to subordinates (e.g., hiring and
Continue reading Does Authority Reduce Leader Effectiveness?
By Jeffrey Ford, on April 13th, 2011,
Contemporary approaches to leadership emphasize the actions and behaviors – the “speaking” – of leaders. But what about their “listening”, why don’t we focus on that as well?
In any conversational interaction, such as those between “leader” and “follower”, there is speaking and listening. Someone is talking or engaged in doing things (speaking) and someone is
Continue reading Where Is the Listening?
By Jeffrey Ford, on April 11th, 2011,
One of the more startling statistics in the business world is that approximately 70% of organizational changes fail to produce the results for which they were undertaken. In her book The Last Word on Power, Tracy Goss reports that when interviewed, sixty-two percent (62%) of the managers from companies whose change efforts failed listed resistance
Continue reading Do Leaders Cause Resistance?
By Jeffrey Ford, on April 6th, 2011,
I recently read a study on change leadership in which the authors reported that different types or styles of leadership were effective with different types of organization changes. Although this “situational approach” to leadership is well established in the traditional leadership literature, this is one of the first studies to examine the impact of leader
Continue reading What If You Can’t Match Leader and Situation?
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