Immature and insecure leaders are NOT a natural occurrence, but an organizational creation

Jerry worked at a production unit of Kaidun Precision Systems that made gears for automotive engines. Smart, perseverant and driven to succeed, he rose through the ranks and was soon promoted to lead his entire unit.

To set Jerry up for success in this new challenging role, Kaidun sent him to an executive leadership course at the local business school and organized for a few top leadership books and videos. After a three-month grounding in leadership principles, Jerry looked all set.

Six months later, a 360-survey revealed that Jerry’s team was frustrated with his poor leadership skills. 

The above story is THE most common leadership challenge in the corporate world – executives who did well as individual contributors, failing in their people management role - terrorizing their underlings in the process.

Why do such episodes happen?

Promotion for new people managers – whether driven by organization needs or personal drive - translates to being kicked up to the role of managing people for being successful individual contributors. This isn’t as logical as it sounds - it is the equivalent a soccer player whose “on-the-field” success leads to a promotion to a soccer coach. It is obvious that successful players dont always turn out to be successful coaches and vice-versa. Despite this reality, this is what happens in the corporate world every day – executives who are good at something being rewarded by being taken away from those tasks and asked to do something else. The upshot? Confused leaders who become the proverbial foxes that accidentally don the tigers’ stripes after jumping into the corporate well, leading to actions that appear insecure or immature.

1.      The insecure boss – Uncertainty about the demands of the new role and a lack of clarity of the requisite skills leads new managers to develop insecurity. Worried that their (lack of) skills will be caught, insecure managers sub-consciously resort to cover-up actions that make them look inauthentic:

a.      The Secluded boss – Maintain a distance from team members, don’t open their mouth to eliminate the chance of being detected as foxes donning tiger’s garb.

b.      The He-man boss –Treat self like a “He-man” while treating juniors like minions, raise voice, seek all the attention, grab all the airtime – in short, want to be the center of attention all the time even if that destroys self-confidence of staff.

c.      The “Jack-Welch” boss - Wanting to appear like Jack Welch but not knowing how to, such bosses feel the best way to emulate someone’s success is to start acting like one. Such bosses take “fake-it-till-you-make-it” so far that they appear as total fakes. 

d.      The Impress-at-all-costs boss – Shorn of 360 thinking and assured that the only way to succeed in their new role is to impress stakeholders at all costs, such bosses bypass processes, systems, and culture to pander to the needs of juniors, business stakeholders, customers and of course, their boss – bagging the moniker "ass-lickers" in the process.

2.      Immature boss - The sudden taste of freedom and power of the new position without guard-rails on their use/abuse drives a few bosses to unwittingly behave in ways that makes them appear - for want of a better word - immature.

a.      I-know-it-all-boss - Super-confident of the skills that led to their promotion, such bosses fail to realize that the new role is to get the job done – not to do it themselves. Possessive about their previous role, they do everything themselves and treat juniors as their competitors, always out to prove they are better skilled than them– disempowering everyone around.

b.      The throw-his-weight-around boss - Success goes into the head as power corrupts these types of bosses. Such individuals consider themselves as Napoleans throwing their weight around and treating juniors as slaves – they interfere in every decision, micro-manage, want every decision routed through them and destroy everyone’s confidence - in the process of building their own.

c.      The book-and-video boss – Such bosses try to find solutions to every problem in books, articles and videos. Using quotes, axioms or text from a combination of management books, Simon Sinek and Tedx videos without understanding the true context of the message, such bosses, aside of devaluing Sinek, often get perceived as jokers - drawing guffaws from their staff.

d.      The data-boss - This is the 21-century addition to this list. Excited about data and analytics, such bosses fail to understand that while Artificial Intelligence is driven by data, natural human beings are driven by emotions. Such bosses demand “emotion-free” data and proof-points for everything, but fail to provide data on why they shouldn’t be demoted. 

Understanding the real problem

The first step in solving the challenge of new leadership transition is the most difficult of all – acknowledging that except for a minority, most insecure and immature leaders are a CREATION of organization actions, rarely are they a natural occurrence. Organizations find it difficult to fathom the failure rate of new bosses despite all trainings.

Once acknowledged, the second part is to understand the real challenge. The vast majority of new bosses want to earn respect, be ethical and succeed in their new roles but find the preparatory material - books, videos, online tutorials and short academic programs - insufficient. Learning leadership from books, online and B-school courses is the equivalent of learning to drive a Mercedes car by visiting its R&D school to learn the features – and then expecting to skillfully drive the car in a new part of the world. Without denying the importance of car features, whats really valuable to drivers is a thorough understanding of road conditions and a deep understanding of when, to what degree and how to adapt the features to specific ground realities. It is this rubber-meets-the-road point that is the global leadership failure point.

In short, most bosses don’t need MORE knowledge, they need an on-the-job situational help in using the existing knowledge – the absence of which leads to insecurity, immaturity and inauthenticity.

Why is it so important

In most cases, immaturity and inauthenticity of new managers – while frustrating reports – remains localized and doesn’t get highlighted as a major challenge to senior executives. This leads to managers getting away with such behavior. Overtime, what starts as a cover for lack of skills in the face of pressure to succeed becomes so secondary to managers that acting in-authentically becomes a habit – managers can hardly recognize when they are not being true to themselves. As such leaders grow in their career and reach CXO levels, the contagion spreads deeper and wider leading to an epidemic of inauthentic leaders. Critically, making changes at later stages is costly, difficult and results are often cosmetic.

In other words, the seeds of leadership challenge at senior levels are sown years (even decades) earlier and grow if left unchecked. That’s why organizations need to treat new managers promotions as the most important leadership transition.

Solving the challenge

Over years of having faced such challenges, I have found 4 steps that work for new leaders -

1.      Shadowing predecessor- A successful predecessor can provide perhaps the best possible on-the-ground perspective to a successor. Such support - common in CXO transitions - is absent at junior levels, especially when individual contributors transition to leadership roles. Without this approach, fresh-minted managers develop a warped idea of leadership that is hard to change at later stages.

2.      Coaching and Mentorship – The real test of leaders is the point when the steering control transfers to them. At this juncture, leaders should necessarily be paired with an executive coach or a trusted mentor. This on-the-job guidance provided by such coaches leads to a development of a strong leadership foundation.

3.      360-feedback – Periodic 360 feedback during the first few years is a vital tool that coaches need to employ to put a mirror in front of bosses in throes of leadership transitions. Assuming feedback is given constructively by a trained coach/mentor with corrective steps, this tool serves as a leader’s dashboard and course-correction source. 

4.      Peer-network – I encourage every leader –especially fresh minted ones -to cultivate a peer-network of professionals from diverse industries. Such a “personal board of directors” provides a threat-free forum to release emotions, stay authentic and rejuvenate. This group is ideally positioned to wipe “fake” stripes and tell new leaders what they don’t want to, but should hear. The true value of such a network shows up when leaders rise to the top – this group prevent leaders from feeling lonely at the top and acting self-destructively.

Despite all advances in technology, the wisdom of this quote holds true

If you take care of the seed, the plant will take care of itself. 

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Raja Jamalamadaka is a TEDx and corporate speaker, entrepreneur, mentor to startup founders, "Marshall Goldsmith award for coaching excellence" award winning top 100 coach to senior industry executives and a board director. He also serves on several CEO search panels. His primary area of research is neurosciences - functioning of the brain and its links to leadership attributes like productivity, confidence, positivity, decision making and organization culture. If you liked this article, you might like some of his earlier articles here:

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