Toxic Leader

By Patricia Wallington

Working for some leaders is as painful as taking a full dose of poison. Their behavior is so bad it is toxic to their organizations. You know the type: More of a despot than a leader, he pits employees against each other and paralyzes the organization with fear.

Sometime during your career you may have encountered such a toxic leader, or maybe you see signs now of one emerging in your company (hopefully you aren’t one yourself). Here’s how to spot one, how to protect yourself and your team from his venom, and how to nip an emerging toxic leader in the bud.

The Markings of a Toxic Boss
Toxic leaders share some common traits. They often have a rigid commitment to an idealized goal. They view challenges to their vision as akin to treason. Either you’re with such a leader, unquestioningly, 100 percent, or you’re the enemy.

The poisonous leader is arrogant; in her mind, she is always right, and she takes input only from a limited group of yes-men and -women. Her chosen few get information, but no one else does, and so there is no discussion about the work being done.

Retribution from such a leader is swift for those not aggressively supportive of his decisions. He treats employees coldly, even cruelly. He assigns blame without regard to responsibility, and takes all the credit for himself. I once had such a boss, and he gave me a new definition of shared risk: If something I did was successful, he took the credit. If it wasn’t, I got the blame. Painful as this was, I learned a lot during his short tenure. He was my first negative role model. Fortunately, I was able to move on, and he left the company.

Why leaders behave this way is the subject of much speculation. Some people attribute it to greed, not just for money but for power or recognition. Incompetence can also drive the toxic leader’s behavior, as his fear of being “found out” influences his interactions with others.

The Toll of Venomous Leadership
Poisonous leaders sap the strength of their organizations. Their demand for loyalty causes employees to fear whether they are doing something the leader will deem to be wrong. In this demoralizing and dehumanizing atmosphere, the toxic leader may drive the organization into paralysis.

Employees will stop thinking creatively; their productivity will decline, and they will miss their goals. In extreme cases, employees desperate to please their leader and keep their jobs will slide into unethical behavior or outright corruption.

One might question why such behavior is tolerated. First, it is not uncommon for toxic traits to be hidden behind a mask of charisma. Toxic leaders are actors, playing a role to achieve their self-styled goal. Second, in many companies business success tends to overshadow personal weaknesses.In one organization where I worked, a senior executive consistently bullied his employees, yet he was charming to those above him. Even after his superiors witnessed the behavior, nothing was done about it because he always delivered his profit goals. Only after his staff turned over significantly and he missed his goals did he face any consequences. He wasn’t fired. Instead, he worked with a coach and changed his leadership approach dramatically. This outcome suggests that an organization risks encouraging toxic leadership by rewarding results and ignoring how they were achieved.

A Survival Guide
If you’re faced with a toxic leader (whether or not he’s your boss), you can survive. But you will need a strategy to do so.

First, you have to decide whether to stay or leave. Your personal circumstances may require you to stay. If leaders are rotated frequently in your company, you could wait out the poison leader’s tenure. Or your own skills and reputation may be strong enough so that you’re not damaged by the abuse you get.

Once you decide to stay, you will need to decide whether to confront the behavior or lay low. Trying to counsel the boss is likely to work only if you’re already in the inner circle, and only if he decides to listen to you instead of cutting you off from the group. Joining with others to confront him carries similar risks. Only you can decide how far to go. If you decide to take on the leader, make sure you have all the relevant facts, pick an appropriate time and place for the confrontation, and have a plan for bringing the issues forward.

Meanwhile, you can find support from other executives in the organization by strengthening those relationships. Take steps to establish your independence. Never defend the ruthless behaviors. Outside of work, find uplifting activities to nurture your self-esteem.

Whatever you do, buffer your people from the toxic leader. Defend them against any hits that come from above. I once saw a manager sit quietly and allow a member of his staff to be pummeled by abusive questioning during a presentation. How cowardly was this manager that he couldn’t step in and deflect the criticism? Fear of retribution may tempt you to duck this responsibility, but good leaders do not abandon their people. Let integrity and courage lead you to the honorable thing.

Detoxifying the Next Generation
Toxic leaders aren’t born, they’re shaped by their experiences. If you have one emerging in your organization, you can turn him on a different path. You can recognize an emerging toxic leader by these signs:

Self-centeredness. An employee is willing to harm others in order to come out on top.

Messianic visions. The employee’s vision seems impossible to achieve, or she positions misguided actions as attempts to achieve a noble cause, and she won’t take advice.

Arrogance. He displays disdain for others.

Blame-shifting. I saw one executive order a “take no prisoners” approach to setting and enforcing a technology standard, then disavow the “noncollegial” style of his employee, leaving her to repair her reputation alone.

Redirect these rising leaders by making your expectations for behavior clear to everyone in your organization. Investigate low morale, and attack its causes. Ensure that performance reviews document toxic behavior, and make sure offenders know that mistreating others is going to short-circuit their careers. Promote and recognize those leaders who demonstrate nontoxic behaviors.

Finally, set an example. Most leaders are neither good nor bad always, in all things. Recognize your weaknesses and work on eliminating them. Be someone who is able to take advice. Demonstrate integrity. Work unfailingly for the benefit of your team. Toxic leaders’ victories are often short-lived. Avoiding and defending against toxic behaviors should lead you, and those who follow you, down the path to sustained success.

Source: CIO

Surviving Toxic Leaders: How to Work for Flawed People in Churches, Schools, and Christian Organizations

The Allure of Toxic Leaders: Why We Follow Destructive Bosses and Corrupt Politicians--and How We Can Survive Them

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It's Not Who Your Customers Are, It's How They Behave

By: Peter Merholz

Wow. I'm humbled by the commentary from my first post. I hope I can maintain such passionate interest!)

Businesses cannot exist without customers, so it's sadly ironic that many, if not most, businesses, actually understand so little about them. As a company grows, a smaller and smaller percentage of the staff interacts with the customers. In fact, those folks on the "front line" (think call centers, service counters, retail stores) are typically among the lowest-paid and have the least authority.

Meanwhile, back at headquarters fundamental decisions are made with extremely limited information about customers. There, understanding the customer is often considered someone else's responsibility, because, "we have a department for that." No department has a complete view of the customer, however, and so in place of true understanding are models and frameworks that attempt to describe the customer. Many companies don't go beyond demographics and market segmentation. While it's helpful to know how they break down by age, sex, income, region, and other easily measurable characteristics, there's actually very little you can actually do with that information. In order to become customer experience-driven, you need to go beyond who your customers are, and understand what they do.

When companies think of how their customers behave, it's typically in one of these four ways. See if any of these resonate with you:

1. "A gullet whose only purpose in life is to gulp products and crap cash"
That quote comes from The Cluetrain Manifesto, still one of the best books on how companies should embrace a new way of communicating with their customers. Very few companies would admit it, but you know that some still see their audience this way (I'm looking at you, broadcast media.)

2. Sheep
This view holds that with the right "messaging", you can guide people to behave in certain ways, because they're docile and gullible and respond only to emotional tugs. And while this might be fine in the world of packaged consumer goods, where there's not a lot of complexity in using (i.e., literally consuming) the product, it breaks down when your offering is more complex. During the first Web boom, I remember companies spending tens of millions of dollars on advertising, and a tenth (or even a hundredth) of that on the site experience. You can no longer simply hound people into buying your product.

3. Homo Economicus
If Sheep are one side of the behavioral coin, this is the other. This view argues that customers are highly rational beings who want to maximize the utility of their purchases. This leads to an assumption that what matters most is "bang for the buck," which in turn gives us products with bloated feature lists, because who wouldn't want to buy the item with 14 bullet points on the packaging over the item with just 10? Sadly, there's research that suggests that many customers do make just this purchase decision; however, there's also research that up to 50% of product returns are for items in perfectly good working order -- they're just too confounding to use.

4. Type A Personality
Perhaps the most sophisticated common view of customer behavior is the one that understands customers are completing tasks in the process of accomplishing a larger goal. This view comes out of the world of software and Web design, where the functionality can get quite complex. This perspective becomes problematic when taken to the extreme -- that people are some kind of flesh robot seeking to maximize productivity. This leads to offerings that work, but can be joyless and dull. Perhaps you've used some of Microsoft's products?

Now, these perspectives aren't wholly wrong (well, maybe the gullet), but clearly they're not quite right. In order for a company to deliver truly outstanding products and services, it must embrace the messy complexity of human life, and endeavor to understand its customers as people. In other words, understand your customer as you understand yourself.

This means going deeper than tasks and goals to appreciate behaviors and motivations. A few years ago, I worked with a large national bank to help them better understand how customers decide to purchase the bank's products and services. The bank had a sophisticated demographic model, but didn't understand what cinched the deal.

Our initial efforts focused on the "goal" of buying a product, and we were able to outline the steps that people took to achieve that goal. They researched banks online, then compared products within banks as well as across banks. They visited nearby branches, and spoke with representatives in person or on the phone. And once they amassed enough information, they committed.

In our analysis, we realized this was only part of the story. We asked the research participants to retrace their steps, focusing on the Web site, to walk us through their experience. And in doing so, we saw that while there was a set of discrete tasks that lead to achieving a larger goal. More importantly there was an underlying motivational layer of emotion that actually guided their decisions. Buying financial products is challenging, because unlike physical goods, it's hard to define what you want ahead of time. At Best Buy, you can point to a 52? television and say, "something like that." You can't do that with a loan or a line of credit.

So what happened was that while people appeared to engage in the appropriate steps to make a purchase decision, because they couldn't articulate an end state, they were simply going through the motions and would never commit. We realized that customers must satisfy three sets of requirements -- functional (does the product meet my basic needs); intellectual (through comparison, am I confident I'm getting the best deal); and, crucially, emotional (could I have a relationship with this bank?). The bank wanted to drive all applications for new products online, but the customer research analysis made clear the importance of maintaining a quality cross-channel experience. Potential customers often wanted to meet representatives, either in person or on the phone, before committing to an application, even if they've done all their research online.

In my following post, I'll discuss our approach for better understanding customers, and sharing that insight throughout your organization. In the meantime- does your company "have a department" for customer engagement? Or is customer understanding something that's infused across your organization?

Source: Havard Business Blog

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Crisis Management

by Donald E. Wetmore, Ph.D.
He is a speaker and productivity consultant (www.balancetime.com).

Crisis management, for the most part, is when a deadline has sneaked up behind you and robbed you of all choice. And crisis management commonly is poor time management. Why? You’re under pressure, maybe cutting corners. Things can slip through the cracks. Your stress level is increased. The quality of your performance may not be what it ought to be.

I have been amazed through the years when my college students would hand in term papers and inform me that they didn’t have enough time to do a good job. I would reply, “When in the future will you get more time to redo it because if it’s as bad as you suggest, I’m going to give it back to you to redo.” You don’t have the time to do it right; where will the time come from to fix it?

I would suggest that if you find yourself in crisis management a lot, it probably has less to do with your day-to-day responsibilities and more to do with a lack of anticipation, because most of the things that put you into crisis management are things that are capable of being anticipated.

Use a Crisis Management Log
A problem well defined is 95% solved. If you have an accurate accounting of your time crunching crises, you’ve gone a long way to reducing them in the future.

Here is a good exercise to help reduce crisis management. For the next two weeks, run a crisis management log. Nothing fancy about it at all. Simply take a pad of paper and entitle it "Crisis Management Log" and for the next two weeks when you encounter a crisis, log it in. Put down the date and time it occurs and a little detail, so that two weeks later when you go back to review, you will remember the particulars. After two weeks of accumulating these data, go back and review every crisis you encountered and ask yourself, "Which of these could have been avoided?"

Most people discover that about 20% of the crises they suffered through were unavoidable. “Stuff Happens”. We cannot eliminate all crises.

Usually, 80% of the crises could have been avoided with better anticipation and planning. After running your crisis management log, start taking corrective steps to reduce the frequency of crisis management events by, for example, starting items sooner or requesting needed information sooner rather than waiting until the last minute to receive it.

Source:Winston J. Brill & Associates

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