Qualities of a Bad Leader

We started down this path by looking at some of the Essential Qualities of Leadership then we took a hard look at the importance of Leadership in Management . Since we have the foundation in mind, let’s dig into a few of the qualities of a bad leader so we have just as clear a picture of what we don’t want…

Let’s be honest, we can learn from every single person we interact with! Sometimes we’re provided with amazing lessons of how we can develop ourselves in order to make a lasting positive impact on everyone around. But we have just as many, if not more, examples we should avoid duplicating at all cost…

Just about a decade ago, a few situations were brought to my attention where someone in a role with a moderate amount of positional authority had used their title to put a few folks in a very inappropriate spot. Because I believed those actions were completely unacceptable, I took the details I had about these scenarios to the closest point of contact I had access to who could assist in resolving the issue and preventing anything similar from happening again. That particular person was far more interested in saving face and brushing it all under the closest possible rug than helping the people who had been impacted. I’ve never been one to roll over when principles are involved so I proceeded to take the issue to the person who had some authority over the entire mess and could have easily resolved the entire matter. Rather than addressing the actual issue, the two of them chose to cover for one another as well as the individual responsible for the extremely inappropriate behavior, and did everything in their control to push me aside for calling attention to the inappropriate behavior in the first place.

Before I go on, I’ll share that all of this occurred just before I took several courses on employment law. Had it happened a year or two later, those folks would have had an entirely different fight on their hands…

The main thing that situation taught me was that my actions, and even a decision to avoid taking action, could have a significant impact on everyone around me. By standing up and addressing the issue, even some of the closest people to me had to deal with some tough consequences. But each of those folks who knew what was going on stood behind and respected me for how I attempted to deal with it. The ones on the other side of the proverbial fence seemed to go on with their lives as if nothing had ever happened…

Notice that I said seemed to!

When we carry leadership responsibility, a little bit or a lot, our decisions ALWAYS impact the people we’re responsible for leading - whether they’re aware of our decisions at the time or not. And sometimes the most difficult situations we’re faced with provide us with amazing examples of the bad leadership qualities we need to avoid!

The way that situation unfolded created a pretty rough road for me and Cindy to navigate for the next year or two but it ultimately led to some of the most amazing opportunities we’ve ever had. And while it looked like the folks who were responsible for the inappropriate situation got off scott-free at the time, we continue to watch the law of sowing and reaping play out…

Moving forward here, we’ll take a look at a few more qualities of a bad leader that can be alert to and work to avoid!

Do as I Say, Not as I Do...

When I posted something similar to that last story to our blog , I had to force myself not to use a fairly recent mugshot of one of the folks I referenced. I opted for an image that reminded me a bit of the Lord Farquaad character in Shrek… With the picture of that vertically challenged villain now in your head, let’s move on to another example of qualities of a bad leader…

I remember sitting in a business unit action planning session while I still worked in manufacturing. Most of us had been responsible enough to show up on time and get the meeting started. We had just discussed the staffing needs of that department and started on the next agenda item when the engineering manager, who was actually supposed to be running the meeting, decided to grace us with his presence. His stature resembled the little fellow from the 1980’s show Fantasy Island and his demeanor was 100% Lord Farquaad, which was actually a really interesting blend! A few minutes after he made his entrance, the topic being addressed tied back to staffing. Rather than stopping the entire meeting, I leaned over to the department supervisor sitting next to me and asked my quick question. Lord Farquaad proceeded to berate the two of us for having an offline conversation. It was clear that he expected everyone else to toe the line whether he did or not…

Interestingly enough, his Do as I Say, Not as I Do approach applied to far more than just meetings. In his role as engineering manager, the entire engineering staff as well as all of the maintenance team reported to him; some directly and some indirectly. Lord Farquaad was known for his intense scrutiny of attendance and punctuality. Unplanned time off was not acceptable! And during severe weather, calling out or showing up late was still not tolerated.

For what it’s worth, I actually agreed with him on that since the team he managed (notice I didn’t say LED) played a critical role in keeping all the equipment throughout the facility running… The challenge was that he rarely made it to the building by 8am more than three days in the same week. And if there was more than just a light rain, he may not make it until after lunch! The rules he held his team so accountable to clearly didn’t apply to him…

I could give at least half a dozen other examples of how he expected others to take steps he had absolutely no intention of taking action on himself, but I think you get the point. That Do as I Say, Not as I Do approach is a quality of a bad leader that far too many of us have had to deal with at some time or another. And I believe it provides us with a great example of what NOT TO DO to the teams we’re responsible for leading!

If we want to earn authentic influence with the people we hope to lead, being the example of what we would like them to replicate is key. While the tasks we need to accomplish on any given day are probably quite a bit different than what each of our team members need to do, our approach to those tasks can set the standard. We have to be willing to have expectations of ourselves that are at least as high as the ones we have for our team.

It’s Not MY Problem!?

That last quality of a bad leader we looked at, the idea of Do as I Say, Not as I Do, is really tough to swallow when it’s someone we report to. They may have some level of authority but they’re certainly not leading. And that ties right in with the next quality of a bad leader: not accepting responsibility…

I still do a fair amount of interviews and one of the most frequent things I hear when asking candidates why they’re considering a change is that the person they report to routinely takes credit for their successes but is quick to place all them when something goes wrong. I can’t speak for you, but I’d have a hard time following someone who does that. Fortunately, I’ve been blessed to work for several folks who did the opposite; passing along tons of credit and accepting all the blame for anything less than positive.

Interestingly enough, there seems to be a degree of popularity in society currently with not accepting responsibility. While there’s far more that I could point to than I could ever squeeze in here, I’ll just stick with a quote I’ve heard referenced a few times lately…

“I’m responsible for what I say but I’m not responsible for what you hear” was in a post I saw on social media recently. I received a similar comment in a response to an email I shared a while back in this series referencing The Platinum Rule. If I had just a bit more time when I saw the post on social media, my reply would have read “said no leader ever…” Since I knew that would have started a fight that I didn’t have time for, I left it alone.

Consider just how negatively that approach could impact the team around, especially if you really do have responsibility for leading them! I can’t point to a single example where it would be OK for anyone in a supervisory or management role to say “I read the instructions to you so it’s not my problem if you didn’t follow them.” The individuals on our team should certainly be held accountable, but we’re not supervising, managing, or leading if we’re not willing to provide them with all the tools they need in order to perform their jobs successfully.

When we are willing to invest the time and energy into making sure the message our team hears is indeed the message we intended to deliver, we show them that we are truly willing to accept responsibility and that we value their contribution in the process! Expecting them to achieve the desired results without being willing to do what’s required of us leads us to the next quality of a bad leader.

How High Are You Setting the Bar?

Any time Cindy and I provide teams with tools to build more effective communication into their organizational culture, I emphasize how the most Outgoing and Task-Oriented folks often come across as being very DEMANDING but they almost always expect far more from themselves than they expect of anyone on their team. As we build on the qualities of a bad leader that we looked at with the ideas of Do as I Say, Not as I Do and It’s Not My Problem, let’s up the ante a little bit…

Skirting a few of the rules is bad enough, especially when we hold the people around us accountable to comply with the letter of the law. And failing to accept responsibility for the things that absolutely depend on whether or not we perform effectively is a quick way of forfeiting any positional influence we may have based on our title. But if we demand an extreme level of performance from our team on a daily basis and we’re not delivering anything even close to that, we may soon be facing a mutiny!

I’m sure you’ve seen just as many examples of this as I have so I won’t even bother sharing another Lord Farquaad or Donkey story here. I will, however, take this opportunity to brag on two great examples I’ve seen recently where leaders held their teams accountable to contribute more than normal AND set a great example by setting the bar even higher for themselves! One is in a supervisory role and the other two own their own company, but all three were willing to show their team that they’re willing to carry more than their share of the load! And that’s why I referred to them as leaders!

The first scenario was in a manufacturing facility. The supervisor had to have several tough conversations with team members about mandatory overtime. They had a detailed system for how it was handled, but that didn’t make the issue any more popular. When he had to show up on one of his days off to attend a training session, he could have checked the box by walking in the door at 8a and heading right back out when it wrapped up at noon. Instead, he arrived around 4a like he would for his normally scheduled shift and stuck around for a while after the training session wrapped up so he could interact with his team members. He didn’t have direct supervisory responsibility that day but he wanted to show his team that he was willing to do his part and not just expect it from them.

In the other scenario, the owners of the company have a few months each year where the overall workload nearly doubles. They can add some additional staffing but most of it needs to be handled by very experienced personnel. For that period of time, they expect nearly all of their team members to increase their weekly hours by about 50%. While that’s a big ask, they really do provide a huge amount of flexibility throughout the rest of the year. In all the years I spent in manufacturing, it seemed like most of the management team averaged 9-10 hours each day, Monday through Friday, all year long. The shop floor employees had significant periods of mandatory overtime, and the supervisors had to coordinate their schedules to provide coverage for that overtime. Rarely do I remember seeing one of the management team members in the building on a weekend… With these owners though, it’s the exact opposite! While they do ask their team to pick up additional tasks during their busy season, both of them increase their workload even more. They typically average 50 or so hours a week in their slow season but they each put in 100 to 115 hours each week during their busiest time of year.

If we set the bar really high for our team members, positional authority will certainly help us get results for a period of time. But when we’re willing to provide a great example by setting the bar even higher for ourselves, we can earn influence we would never receive by just cracking a whip. Let’s wrap up this look at qualities of a bad leader by digging into one final thing that Cindy and I cover in depth in our Emerging Leader Development course...

My Way or the Highway!

We started down this path by looking at some Essential Qualities of Leadership , then we looked at just how critical Leadership in Management really is, and we’ve worked through several Qualities of a Bad Leader - which I believe provide us with great insight on what NOT to do! Let’s look at one final example to close the loop and tie this all together...

While each of the qualities of a bad leader that we’ve looked at to this point can certainly drive a wedge between someone with positional authority and the team they’re responsible for, there’s one thing that I’ve seen serve as that final proverbial nail in the coffin: the my way or the highway approach to basically anything and everything that needs to be done…

One of the tasks I was involved with frequently while I still worked in manufacturing was developing something called “Standardized Work Sheets” for various processes in the facility. Regardless of the name, it’s a fairly common approach used in Lean Manufacturing initiatives. The idea is that there’s one BEST WAY to perform each task. But even then, nothing says that this is the ONLY way to perform the task or that the current best way will necessarily be the best way forever. If someone had a different idea, we would study it for how it impacted safety, quality, and efficiency. If at least one of those three showed improvement and the other two didn’t dip, there was a strong chance that this would become the new best way for performing that task.

With that in mind, have you ever reported to someone who just wasn’t open to the possibility that anything under the sun could be done in a way other than according to their mandate? Yeah, I know that’s a fairly stupid question… We all have! And I’m guessing that your blood pressure just spiked a bit as you pictured that person’s face.

So why in the world would someone take such a stance when it can be so counterproductive to leading a team?

In many cases, I believe it’s really an issue of insecurity. There’s often an unrealistic view that if a subordinate comes up with a better idea or becomes more effective in performing any given task, then their own value is in question. Sometimes the person with authority will absolutely refuse to provide their team members with everything they need in order to learn and grow out of concern that someone will develop a stronger skill set in a particular role. The challenge with that thinking is that the supervisor or manager who has that concern is rarely responsible for performing those tasks that they’re still holding onto.

In each of these situations, the way we think about the issue can make us an effective leader or break us as a leader! Developing team members who can complete a task even better than we ever could doesn’t call our own ability into question, it shows that we’re effective in training others! Being open to ideas that can improve our process isn’t acknowledging the old ways were bad, it shows that we’re focused on always getting better! And providing opportunities for the people around us to thrive doesn’t threaten our own turf, it opens the door for us to move onto even bigger and better things!

Cindy and I address nearly everything we’ve looked at here over the last several messages in significantly more detail through the six lessons of our Emerging Leader Development course. And each lesson challenges participants to detail the specific action steps they can apply immediately that will provide them and their organizations with a tangible return on investment. We even offer strategic leadership coaching as a way for those participants to get even better results and build their action steps into their organizational culture! If you or someone on your team would get value from digging even deeper into these Essential Leadership Qualities , building more Leadership in Management throughout your company, and avoiding these Qualities of a Bad Leader, we should catch up one on one to talk about what that can look like!