Leadership Behaviour? I don’t think so!!

by Mark Evenden at Developing People

A recent experience made me reflect on the impact that a leader’s behaviour can have on others. Like millions of others in the past week, I found myself stranded in a foreign country trying to get home, but unable to because all flights had been cancelled due to the volcanic explosion in Iceland.

I arrived at the airport to be informed that all flights to the UK had been cancelled, and I should report to the airline’s ticketing office for further information. I joined a queue of dejected travellers waiting to hear our fate.

We were clearly all very frustrated with the situation, as there seemed little hope that alternative arrangements could be quickly made. However, the gentleman in front of me decided to vent his own frustrations on the poor airline customer service representative. He clearly wanted her to know that he was a very “senior manager” with XYZ organisation, and should be treated as such. He was very curt and aggressive towards the airline representative, who to her credit remained calm throughout his tirade.

I wondered to myself if this “senior manager” really knew anything about leadership, whether he behaved in this way towards his staff, and whether he understood the impact that his behaviour might have on others?

While we all have a right to be angry, it should be directed at the right person for the right reason, at the right time and not simply as a vehicle for releasing our own pressures and frustrations. Consider a situation when this “senior manager” behaved in a similar way to a member of his staff. How would they react? What level of commitment would they give when a problem arose but it was “clocking off” time? How motivated would they be in the future to go the “extra mile”? How engaged will they be in delivering the organisations vision?

At the end of the day, people work for people, not for organisations, and the level of motivation, commitment and engagement that anyone gets from their staff is directly related to how they behave towards them. So before you “have a go” at a member of staff, are you angry with the right person for the right reason, or simply doing it to vent your own frustrations?

The key to successful leadership is within us

Developing People’s Managing Director Dave Marchant has a straight forward and pragmatic approach to leadership development. Dave explains: “It is all very well for someone to read the latest leadership theory and think that is how they need to think and act when they don’t fully understand their current behaviour and approach, and how they might be currently de-motivating their staff big time! In reality it is much more straight forward to do something about your current behaviour, rather than learning a totally new, radical or even “proven” approach. Indeed in our experience, many managers de-motivate their employees because they fail to understand even the fundamentals of human motivation”.

Dave’s approach is to help managers understand the behaviours that can quash people’s motivation and to help them change them. His ‘Top Ten’ management failings are:

1) Taking away person responsibility by over controlling peoples work.

2) Being too pushy, aggressive and task-orientated.

3) Disregarding employees’ right to a sensible work-life balance.

4) Making unfair decisions about work routines, pay and reward.

5) Failing to engage people creatively by asking them to do meaningless work.

6) Being incomplete or inconsistent in communications.

7) Applying work rules and policies in a rigid manner without the concern for individual needs.

8) Failing to get the involvement of staff over decisions that affect them.

9) Rewarding and/or promoting behaviours that are contrary to the direction/culture of the organisation.

10) Acting without integrity.

"If an organisation truly wishes to improve the performance of their leaders, they need to provide constructive feedback to them, and make room for a mix of formal leadership development supported by external coaching and possibly mentoring to help leaders change their behaviour," recommends Dave.