Leadership

Your job hunt has narrowed to two finalists. What kind of boss will bring out the best in you? You are ascending the ranks in your organization and are defining your leadership style. What is the best way to exude strength? Growing up, many of your role models achieved success by exerting control. However, you’ve noticed that they’ve paid a price in their interpersonal relationships. Are you willing to sacrifice friends, family, or professional connections to win whatever race you are running?

When leaders struggle with leadership, it’s often due to a breakdown of the basic coping skills most of us learned when we were kids. Children and adolescents are typically forgiven for temper tantrums and not handling pressure effectively. When you are a grownup, it looks more like a defect in basic executive functioning ability. Let’s consider how this might play out in the workplace.

It’s natural to crave power if you feel empty and weak. And there are countless ways to feed that monster. Most bullies would have to face the cold, dark reality of their low self-esteem if they didn’t have someone to push around. Making others feel small, excluded, or afraid is their currency. Unfortunately, they are all-too-often empowered by their work environments. Usually, the culprits are found in three ‘f-words.’

There are two reasons behavior that undermines team and workplace culture gets tolerated. Most often, it’s because it has become normalized over time and woven into the fabric of day-to-day interactions. Sometimes, it’s because the actions that make the workplace cautious or unsafe are being executed by those in power where they can’t be challenged. It’s a form of bullying. Usually, these two sources of toxicity join so what is tolerated gets eventually sanctioned. It becomes okay to treat others poorly when it cascades down from above.

Teachers seek students. Students seek teachers. There is a natural synergy in the teaching-learning relationship. The traits that describe the best teacher and the best student are similar: open mindedness, willingness to challenge, hunger for growth and solid preparation to name a few. Take a look at the best mentors, coaches, professors, advisors and counselors in your life. What do they have in common? Consider these qualities when building your team.

Change takes many forms. You can grow or shrink. You can give or take. You can fight or flee. You can accept or reject. You can attract or repel. You can be honest or lie. You can feed or starve. You can keep trying or give up. You can engage or resist. You can take a risk or play it safe. Each choice unfolds into a different future. What’s the role of your values?

The wellness of a team is often determined by the health of the partnerships in leadership. In families, the quality of the marriage has a significant impact on the life of the children. In business, the relationship with the chief executive and his or her operations leaders usually shapes the delivery of the organizational mission. Likewise, dysfunction in these partnerships is the fastest way to undermine a team’s effectiveness. What if you could quickly assess the health or sickness of your most important partnership?

Effective decision-making is harder under stressful conditions. Our body chemistry mobilizes as if there’s a crisis and the most primitive part of the brain takes over. Rather than calmly weighing options and considering past experiences, we react in the moment at a maturity level we might later regret. Adaptable leaders know how to reboot the central nervous system to maintain poise and clarity. Try these tips the next time your coping is disabled.

Election Day is one of the few times we get to participate in choosing a leader. Most other days, we inherit our leaders. However, you also exercise this choice when you decide to stay in a job or pursue a career change. Among the criteria for staying or leaving an organization is an assessment of whether the leader can be followed. Workplace culture cascades from leadership whether healthy or sick.  Let’s play follow the leader.

The behavior of the team leader can drive employee engagement more powerfully than the mission statement. We all become complicit with the leader’s words and actions by our choice to work in an organization. Healthy or unhealthy, our career path choices are de facto endorsements. All too often, reasonably minded colleagues stay in situations that are making them sick. Some have limited options when workplace culture falls out of alignment with their purpose. Others become free agents. What we tolerate, we sanction.

Leadership transitions stir anxiety in the workforce. Often, it’s not disagreement with strategic philosophy that makes teams uneasy, but the simple fear of change. Even when the organization isn’t healthy, it’s easier to normalize the pain than it is to brace for transformation. A typical coping maneuver is to create factions within the team. Choose your side by the way you expend energy – adapting to new circumstances or trumpeting how horrible it is that we’re not who we used to be.

Take all the leaders you’ve been privileged to follow and name their most compelling attributes. Imagine all those qualities combined in the character of one super hybrid leader. He or she would be inspirational yet practical. Integrity would be a must. Humor would be a bonus. Consider how the following competencies might be valuable to your organization from the team’s perspective.