Insecure Leaders poison the culture & ultimately drive the organization to the ground

Insecure leader (am not sure if the term “insecure” can ever be followed by the term “leader” ever, but would continue with that for the sake of simplicity) is one who is perennially paranoid about holding onto his/ her position. While the genesis of this insecurity can arise for multiple reasons but the manifestation is usually quite similar across such leaders. 

Insecure leaders have an uncanny capacity to poison the culture of the organization where they thrive in because a healthy culture does not allow breeding of insecure leaders. Hence in order for the insecure leader to thrive, it is necessary for him/ her to poison the culture. The poisoning of the culture usually happens by creating a blame game and pointing fingers for whatever goes wrong instead of trying to fix the problem. The other way in which these insecure leaders poison the culture is by playing a divide – and- rule politics which helps them thrive in an atmosphere of mistrust and uncertainty which that creates.

I have once seen such a leader from close quarters and the impact that it had on the organization, not just from a culture perspective, but had far reaching consequences on the business results of the organization itself. The malaise of an insecure leader spreads like cancer in the organization and the more senior the person is in the organizational hierarchy, the more devastating is the impact. The only way out is to remove the cancerous leader from the organization, though sometimes it is too late to save the organization from going under. However, in several cases, it just takes too long to remove the insecure leader in time to save the organization from complete devastation, especially if this individual hold a position of high authority.

If you find some of these symptoms mentioned below in a leader you are dealing with, in any capacity, the chances are that you are looking squarely into the eyes of an insecure leader. 

The first and the most universal symptom of an insecure leader is to continually compete with one’s direct reports in an effort to show how much better he or she is when compared to his or her own direct reports. Such insecure leaders make it the mission of their lives to continually find faults with what their direct reports do and do not miss a single opportunity to highlight the same, more often than not, in public. Such leaders would always find the glass half full and would almost never acknowledge a work well done or show appreciation. It is a way of assuring oneself that after all no one in the team is good enough to do his / her own job, let alone pose a threat to this insecure leader’s position. It is perhaps his or her way of ensuring a peaceful night’s sleep as it were. The impact – the morale of the team which this insecure leader leads, falls continuously over time until it has been driven to the ground.

Second symptom of an insecure leader would be to surround himself/ herself with people who would never question. Any kind of questions, let alone a push-back, is seen as a direct threat to his/ her position and such leaders would use their full might to nip them in the bud. Ultimately, such leaders are left with people who never question anything that comes from this leader. Not surprisingly, such people rarely fall in the category of best-in-class talent in their domains and, more often than not, are barely mediocre if not unambiguously much below average. These people owe their existence to the insecure leader and hence would never dare to question. The impact – mediocrity at best and downright below par talent driving the performance of the organization down.

Third symptom, which is somewhat related to the second one, is sycophancy is actively encouraged all around such insecure leaders. Since meritocracy becomes a rare commodity in such team, the only way to get appreciation and accolades is by displaying sycophancy to the insecure leader in abundance. It serves as a positive reinforcement for such an insecure leader as he/ she is always unsure of himself/ herself. The impact – group think and therefore poor quality of decision making becomes rampant; everyone in the team is competing with others to shower praises for the leader and no one is really there to present any other point of view.

Fourth symptom, is aversion to getting people from outside into the team. The insecure leader wants to be certain of the allegiance of each and every member of the team and therefore anyone from outside is seen as a direct “threat” to the authority and existence of such leaders. Outside-in views are refuted as being irrelevant or inconsequential as anything new is a potential threat to status quo and therefore the power-base of the insecure leader. The impact: neither new talent nor new ideas ever find their way inside the team of an insecure leader and even if they do by any chance, they get ejected like as if it were an organ rejection.

Fifth, and perhaps the last symptom of insecure leaders is that they breed more insecure leaders below them. Just like secure leaders create more secure leaders under them, the converse is equally true, if not more. The insecurity that the leader emanates from his/ her daily behavior has an impact on those who he/ she leads and they become insecure because their confidence is damaged, sometimes beyond repair. And this has a cascading effect. Consequently, the culture down the line becomes that of insecurity, sycophancy and all the above which goes as a package deal with an insecure leader. It becomes a vicious cycle and it takes a supremely confident leader down the chain to break this vicious cycle and unfortunately those are rare species in such organizations.

In the ultimate analysis, the impact of the above symptoms of an insecure leader is that team falters and nose dives into the ground sooner than later. The higher this insecure leader is on the organizational hierarchy, the more widespread and deeper is the impact, not to mention the intensity of the impact. Finally, if insecurity becomes rampant in the organization, the success of that organization in the long run does become bleak, if not outright impossible. The challenge is that insecurity is contagious and it does not take long for insecurity to spread itself like a plague which ultimately kills the very organization which allowed it to be bred at the first place.

To conclude, as an organization, it is important to identify leaders who are insecure and nip them in the bud; do not allow them to climb the echelons of hierarchy as the higher they go, the more dangerous is the impact on the organization. As an individual, if you find yourself working under an insecure leader, it is important that you move out of that team at the earliest because the casualty would be your self- confidence besides the collateral damage of not enhancing your competence and professional growth if you continue to work under an insecure leader for long.