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Off the beaten tracks to wreck your own company

Mythology has provided us the story of Narcissus, who was condemned in revenge for being insatiably in love with himself. One day he found a beautiful reflection in a lake and could not turn away without realizing that it was his own reflection. When a leaf rippled the smooth surface of the water, he suddenly recognized himself on the small waves and felt ugly and died. The fate of Narcissus to misperceive oneself and subsequently passing away is a warning example for leaders not to wreck oneself due to misperception of oneself.

The following points make it easier to recognize some wrong tracks.

  • Want to do everything themselves
    Surely it is not a disadvantage, if you are still able to do something yourself. This starts with the customer contact that you don’t want to lose, continues with the creation of a product and ends with the search for solutions. For a manager to do the tasks, it should know the business and be able to perform subtasks.
    However, this does not mean that you do everything yourself and to interfere everywhere. After years, the originally accumulated knowledge no longer matches the current tasks, which does not stop those people from interfering and worsening the results. You avoid this wrong track by better concentrating on the tasks, solving problems for the employees and otherwise providing the freedom they need.
  • Ignore new things
    Within the framework of leadership, it is advantageous to be interested in new things, actively finding new ways and promoting them. Long-standing bosses are burdened with experiences from the last millennium, what results in giving vague orders for new contents, because they have no idea of a contemporary solution.
    However, this does not stop them from using their traditional knowledge to prevent or remove any innovative solution of their staff – be it, because they do not understand them or because they can only represent, what they know. The obvious way out is lifelong learning and a quota for introducing something new.
  • Hubris – overestimating oneself
    Self-awareness requires repeated engagement with your own abilities, beliefs and mental models. You should be able to expect from those responsible people to regularly check themselves within the framework of self-management. Without the appropriate self-reflection, managers get stuck in a vicious circle.
    As a result, these people overestimate their capabilities. They then fall into a bossy hubris that leaves the rest of the world no air to breathe. And eventually, dramatic wrong decisions are made from ignorance, which endanger the entire company. Executive coaching, tailored to the individual, offers the chance to become aware of your abilities and to select a turn away from the wrong track.
  • Lack of appreciation
    With hubris comes disdain for customers, colleagues, employees and suppliers. Customers are defamed, simply because they don’t understand the solutions offered – even though we know that the worm must taste the fish, not the fisherman. Even inappropriate comments about colleagues in the management team make the lack of respect visible. Not to mention the image of the employees, who apparently do not understand what the boss wants and are not able to implement what is necessary. Eventually the suppliers are criticized, who do not deliver the quality that was expected.
    This compulsion to blame everything on others is a clear wrong track, who threatens the company. Executive coaching gives the bosses the opportunity to rethink, adapt their behavior, and to find a better way for all.
  • Double binds
    A particularly perfidious management style is shown by bosses, who assign a wide range of tasks and in the end do not appreciate the results achieved. They always pick holes in the lacking parts. If tasks A, B and C were determined as stretched goals and „only“ A and B are delivered, the complaint is that C is missing – if, on the other hand, A and C are delivered, the same applies to B, etc.
    The so-called double bind, which, leads to a negative evaluation, no matter what you do, is a common means of toxic retention of power. Only a functioning, mixed management team that regulates itself offers a way out.
  • Unequal treatment
    As a manager you have responsibilities and obligations towards ALL employees. This excludes the preference for individuals. This is aggravated by the fact that they are presented as a good example to the rest. This is particularly noticeable in badly prepared events, which are intended to improve the team spirit, but increase unnoticed the clique formation. If different measurements are applied, then at least half of the workforce has already been lost before the crisis.
    The exclusion of employees leads to poor performance, internal dismissal and even sabotage. This can be controlled by introducing objective assessment criteria and making managers aware of their biases and possible paths.
  • Lies
    Playing consciously with the truth is another sign of a destructive understanding of leadership This begins with a selective information policy that does not tell everyone the same thing. It becomes visible when information is subject to a duty of confidentiality. It escalates, when employees are played off against each other by providing negative information about colleagues or even openly spreading untruths about individuals. This is where toxic bosses become visible at the latest. When semi-official lies are constructed to hide one’s own wrongdoing.
    A moderated cultural development that, above all, establishes the values in such a way that they apply to the employees AND the managers, offers a way out. The focus here is on all confidence-building measures regarding visible behavior and rituals, collective values and deeply rooted assumptions.

Bottom line: Although everyone is talking about the digital transformation, they are overlooking the fact that the business continues to rest on the shoulders of the employees. For this reason, it is a great risk to offend the executing people. They need a long time to become familiar with the business. In most cases, the frog is already boiling at 90 degrees without noticing. The above list helps to identify toxic ways at an early stage. The focus is on managers, who want to do everything themselves, ignore new things, suffer from overconfidence, do not value their environment, create dilemmas, treat employees unequally and preserve their power with lies. There are three resorts for the employees to resolve the situation: love it, change it or leave it. And exactly the third way threatens the company, because the commercial risk increases – especially in smaller companies. As soon as people have something better, they are gone and leave the company to its fate. Employees are not the problem, but those, who ruin cohesion and thus the company. Search with the above list for wrong tracks in order to avoid them and not to wreck your own company.

The ability to apply resources

There was a time when employees were cogs in a big machine. They had a fixed position in the clockwork company, which could be assumed without much preparation. Over time, one got to know the environment, broadened its knowledge, and to eventually rise to a responsible position with a better understanding of the big picture.
In the meantime, these machines have evolved into organisms that no longer consist of wheels and axles rigidly attached to one place, but of units that continuously adapt to changing customer needs, the constant worldwide coming and going of competitors and new technologies (e.g. digitalization and automation).

In this environment, managers need new skills. They are no longer mechanics, who monitor and readjust employees. Carrot and stick are replaced by purpose and personal perspective – no longer either … or, but as well … as. It enables employees to realize their potential and at the same time create added value for the company. Let’s look at some changes.

  • Assign tasks instead of passing them over
    Up to now, tasks, competence and responsibility have been delegated from managers to employees. These transfers implied the giving of something that a leader does, has or must fulfill. This resulted in managers hiring more and more of the same, especially what they know, which did not expand the group’s capabilities.
    However, it is no longer a matter of gathering a flock of like-minded people with identical skills, but rather of building know-how as far as possible that creates many different opportunities. The old tasks of managers are dissolving in favor of the nowadays necessary support – harmonizing instead of isolating; long-term instead of short-term; situation-related instead of bureaucratic; serving instead of controlling; open instead of orderly; effective instead of efficient; confident instead of fearful; securing instead of unsettling …
  • Y instead of X
    The two human images by McGregor have been haunting companies for decades: Theory X assumes that people are lazy by nature and need to be motivated from the outside; theory Y assumes that employees are intrinsically ambitious and committed and motivate themselves. Both theories lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy. If the respective human image is confirmed, then it solidifies and leads to more of the same. In theory X, poor performance confirms the negative human image that leads to more stringent control. In theory Y, the positive image is solidified that leads to more and more freedom, which is willingly filled by the employees.
    The adherents of theory X will continue to fail, as they demotivate their people to such an extent that potential is nipped in the bud. The bosses of theory Y are better positioned. So long as they keep control on themselves and resist any impulse to intervene, this group is continuously approaching the possible.
  • Decide instead of overstretching
    The commercial necessities arise detached from each other. There is no natural order or other indications for prioritization. The managers have no choice but to prioritize the tasks and live with the fact that some cannot be fulfilled. The only backdoor is to use people, who lack the appropriate skills, but who are currently available. This results in follow-up work and conflicts that must be dealt with despite the insufficient capacities. This creates even more superfluous tasks.
    The ability to make the best use of the resources includes the dexterity not to overload your available resources by refusing from the start too much workload and saying clearly No. The aim is not to deliver half-assed but agreed results.
  • Let go instead of micromanaging
    A difficulty that is also shown by the X theory managers is the inner compulsion to micromanage. Micromanagers distribute tasks, monitor progress at short intervals and continually correct the activities of employees. With the appropriate IT-network, it is nowadays possible to ask for the progress by e-mail at any time or even check the half-finished intermediate statuses on the shared drives. The consequences are long e-mails with correction requests. They undermine the employees‘ schedule and limits their room for maneuver. In the short- to mid-term, employees will stop their work enthusiasm and only fulfill the instructions of their superiors. The responsibility for the result is no longer with the employee, but with the micromanager.
    This is certainly the most common form of incompetence in leadership. In doing so, the manager harms itself, the customer and the employee.

Bottom line: In VUCA times, the market, customers and tasks move faster than they can be controlled with traditional methods. The country needs new leaders: leaders who hire people, who can do more than they can do themselves; proponents of Theory Y, who trust their employees; bosses, who know that the sum of the total is more than them; but above all, leaders who DO NOT micromanage. The right attitude supports the ambition of the employees and demands self-organized top performance. Capable managers know how to use their resources.