The Power of Bad Leadership

We will all meet, work for, or have people work for us, who we will assess to be either good or bad leaders. Of course, this is our personal assessment, and who says that we are best qualified to decide what makes a good or bad leader? First and foremost, it must be based on your gut instinct; it’s subjective right? We all inherently know what makes a good or bad leader; or do we? I would assert that clearly, we don't, because if we did, why would there be so many bad leaders out there? Surely all of us would be good leaders, and part of the problem is that most of us think that we are good leaders.

From our collective personal perspective, we all come across people who we feel are terrible leaders, so how are we assessing this? Well, there's plenty of stuff out there that you can read which will list the qualities of a good or bad leader, and often these are placed into a table of comparisons between the two. You should do your research and you should be reading this sort of stuff, but the reality is that things are never that simple; leadership is nuanced, and simply following a list of tropes or things to do that will define you as a good leader, quite simply, doesn't work. It helps, but you need more.

Leadership is about experience; experience of life, experience of work, experience of other people, and how they interact with us and others around us. And every problem or issue that we encounter, including failure, will make us stronger, if you learn from it! All these experiences add to our databanks of information about how to deal with specific situations, and all of them help us to make the best decisions if we happen to be in the privileged position of leading people. And as a leader, sometimes you are going to get it wrong! It comes down to how we learn from getting it wrong. Do you just choose to ignore it, and carry on regardless? Or are you going to show humility, acknowledge your mistake, admit it to yourself and your team, and then get it right next time? It can take courage to do this, but demonstrating your humility to your team, can be a very powerful leadership tool too. What I don't mean is that you should deliberately get things wrong just so you can demonstrate your humility to your team. Strive for excellence every time but recognise when you get it wrong and hold your hand up.

From my background in Special Forces, I always recall the post-operational debriefs that we had; they were harsh! They were [are] a vital part of the strength of Special Forces across the board because they provided a level playing field for everyone in the team, from the Team Leader down. It was essential to review how things went, all part of the unrelenting pursuit of excellence (one of the SAS Founder, Sir David Stirling’s, key pillars), and most importantly, to hold up your hand if you thought that you had done something wrong. What you didn't want to happen, especially as the boss, was for someone else to say, 'what the hell did you think you were doing when you……?!'

I recall one of my first covert surveillance serials in Northern Ireland in the late 1990s. We were following a Dissident Republican terrorist. I had control of the target coming up to a busy junction on the Falls Road, with two approach lanes, one to turn left, one to turn right. As the lights changed to green, the target changed lane, a possible counter-surveillance move, and despite being two or three cars behind him, I decided to change lane too, otherwise I would have been filtered in the wrong direction to the target and would potentially have lost him. My error was to do this near the target, who may have been looking for suspicious activity in his rear-view mirror, or because he may have had a counter-surveillance team behind him looking for idiots like me following their colleague. What I should have done, after reporting the target changing lane, was to let him run and carry on in the direction that I was committed to, for the sake of covertness, and rely on the remainder of the team, especially my backing car, to pick up the follow. Stupidly, in my eagerness, I had failed to register whether my backing car would be able to pick up the reins, and rather than checking this on the radio, I unnecessarily risked my exposure, and possibly the entire team, to the terrorist, and failed to trust the team.

When we returned to base, it was straight into the Ops Room to debrief, and I am so glad that I did hold my hand up to my error; I was the newly appointed Boss so it set me in good standing from the off, although I still got a stern talking to, but because one of my other new colleagues didn’t own up to a mistake, and because it was spotted by one of the older and bolder team members, he got verbally taken apart by that Operator and our Ops Officer. Honesty, integrity, and humility, not to mention potentially putting the rest of the team at risk through us being oblivious to an error that could have compromised the whole operation, are paramount characteristics of a leader and great team member. As the leader, demonstrating that you’re not infallible, and that you’re prepared to announce any error for the benefit of the team, are all signs of good leadership, and I would argue, are entirely relevant to the business world today; the problem here is that I just don't believe that anyone really does this. In my experience people are too caught up in being seen to be big achievers, and too busy advertising ourselves; it seems that the 'celebrity culture' that we see today across social media and the news, confuses celebrity with competence and leadership. I often see CVs or Resumes that have more CV than substance! In simple terms, another one of Sir David Stirling's key pillars for the Special Air Service was 'humility'. It applies in business, it applies in the military, as does holding regular post-event debriefs. We should always be seeking ways to improve what we did, no matter how well things went, because inevitably there will be a way of doing something better.

In my experience, forged in the UK Special Forces, British Army and in Senior Leadership positions in the commercial world, we find out whether we are a good or bad leader from our teams, irrespective of your opinion. Our teams are the ones who will decide how good we are, not us. ?And if you think that you know whether you are any good at leading people, think again, because I guarantee that you will be wrong. You might have an inkling, but there will be something you are missing, and your team might just teach you a thing or two. You must do your utmost to apply everything you know about good and bad leadership, think about those inspiring men and women that led or are leading you, and even more importantly, remember those who didn’t have a clue how to lead, and enjoy the power that their bad leadership gives you, because arguably you will learn more from the bad leaders out there, than the good ones!