When leadership goes wrong

Developing key skills

In Week 3, you looked at the skills and abilities a good leader needs. In this section, you'll focus on some of those that a poor leader can lack and how to develop them.


Figure 5 A gap in your leadership skills?


Activity 6 What skills were lacking?

In Activity 1, you thought of a negative experience of leadership and considered what that leader did wrong and how you might have behaved differently. Go back to that example and think more specifically about any skills or abilities the leader didn't demonstrate.

List the skills in the space below:

While there are many different skills that could be listed here, those that have the most impact on leadership often involve how an individual relates to, is perceived by, and communicates with other people. You will explore some of these issues in the following sections.

Lack of emotional intelligence

In Week 3, you identified the importance of emotional intelligence in good leadership. It incorporates elements such as empathy, self-awareness and self-regulation, all of which are potentially missing or under-developed in many of the types of poor leadership outlined this week.

The video you watched in Week 3  included an explanation of how emotional intelligence can be developed. Bariso (2016) suggests seven steps:

  1. Reflect on your own emotions
  2. Ask others for perspective
  3. Be observant
  4. Use 'the pause', i.e. stop and think before you act
  5. Explore the 'why', e.g. ask yourself: 'Why does that person feel the way they do?'; 'Why do I feel differently?'
  6. When criticised, don't take offence. Instead ask: 'What can I learn?'
  7. Practice, practice, practice.

Point 7 is an important one. These are steps that won't come naturally at first and require perseverance over time to become embedded.


Lack of integrity

Integrity is always high on the list in surveys of leadership skills or when recruiting leaders. The Oxford English Dictionary (2017) defines it as:

Soundness of moral principle; the character of uncorrupted virtue, especially in relation to truth and fair dealing; uprightness, honesty, sincerity.

It might also be described as always doing the right thing and being honest.

Amster (2015) offers the following tips to help you strengthen your integrity in the workplace:

  • Fulfil your promises
  • Keep appointments
  • Before you make a commitment, reflect on whether you can deliver
  • Get comfortable with saying no.

A Mind Tools (n.d.) editorial on 'Preserving integrity' recommends analysing every choice that you make and asking yourself the following questions:

  • If my choice were printed on the front page of the newspaper for everyone to see, would I feel OK about it?
  • If I make this choice, will I feel OK with myself afterwards?

Tips like these can provide a helpful checklist if you're unsure about how to proceed.


Lack of resilience

Resilience has become a buzzword in recent times, referring to an individual's ability to 'bounce back' from difficult and challenging situations. In his report 'The resilient leader: Debunking the myths and growing your capabilities', Lock (n.d.) describes resilience as:

  • remaining vulnerable enough to feel for and with others
  • becoming strong enough to live with uncertainty and ambiguity
  • learning to grow, not crumble through adversity.

Lucy, Poorkavoos and Thompson outline the five key factors that make for a resilient leader in their Resilience Capabilities model. They include a series of questions that are extremely useful to reflect on:

Perspective

  • Are you able to positively reframe negative experiences and find opportunity in adversity?
  • Are you able to accept what you cannot change, and focus your efforts on those things you can?
  • Are you solution-driven or do you tend to get stuck in the problem?
  • Are you able to face fully negative information whilst not dwelling on it?

Emotional intelligence

  • Do you acknowledge your own feelings and express them appropriately?
  • Are you able to change your mood when you need to?
  • How intentional are you about providing support to others?

Purpose, values and strengths

  • Do you have a clear sense of purpose at work?
  • Do you have a clear sense of your personal strengths and make the opportunity to use them regularly in your work?
  • Do you have a clear sense of your own values and act in a way consistent with those values?
  • Does your work fit well with your personal values and beliefs?

Connections

  • Do you have a strong and reliable network of colleagues inside and outside of work that will help you through difficult times?
  • Are you able to meet your varied needs through a diverse support network?

Managing physical energy

  • Do you make time to exercise regularly?
  • Do you get enough sleep?
  • Do you make sure you eat a healthy diet?
  • Do you make time in your schedule for the pursuit of activities that give you joy and/or help you relax?

Managing physical energy, or taking care of yourself, is a key element of resilience that is often overlooked. How can you grow and lead your team through adversity if you're tired, unhealthy and stressed?

Throughout this week, you've considered the impact of poor leadership on followers and next week you'll look at the leader–follower relationship in more detail.

Back to '3.2: Authentic Leadership and Followership'