The early days of 2017 seem like a perfect time to talk about bad leaders and ways to survive them. I’m not exactly sure why this thought came to me, but what the heck — somehow it just feels appropriate.
“Survive,” by the way, doesn’t mean beating bad leaders at their own games. That just turns you into one of them. Survive means maintaining your dignity and professionalism while also succeeding … or at least not failing … in the environment bad leaders create.
As my graduate training was in evolutionary biology, we’ll make this a bestiary — a catalog of unfortunate critters. We’ll start off with …
Howler Monkeys
Howler monkeys are managers who holler a lot. There are two subspecies, Toddlers and Actors.
Toddlers throw tantrums whenever something doesn’t go their way. Why? Because … drumroll … it works. They bellow, and everyone in the vicinity scurries around, doing whatever they can to stop the screaming.
Toddlers learned tantrums work at about the same age they learned to speak. Nothing since then caused them to unlearn the behavior. Actors, in contrast, only pretend to lose their tempers. They learned how well screaming works by watching Toddlers in action, concluding that, as the philosopher said, ’tis better to give than to receive.
Howlers have three goals: To deflect responsibility for whatever happens to have gone wrong; to provoke behavior they can use against you later; and to establish their position in the organizational pecking order … the unofficial organizational chart that describes who kisses who, in what order, and where.
When dealing with a Howler, your worst course of action is to lose your own temper in return. Do this and you lose, because yelling is like the Highlander — there can be only one, and the Howler got there first.
Instead, calmly and deliberately walk away. As you gather your papers and stand up to depart, say something like, “Let me know when you’re ready to have a businesslike conversation and we’ll continue this discussion.”
Unless, that is, you report to the Howler. If you do:
- Master the art of blandness. That is, ignore the Howler’s volume, tone, and pulsing forehead artery, and pay attention only to the content. Control your own body language, repeating to yourself, over and over, “I’m relaxed, professional, and unimpressed.”
To help you keep your cool, take notes ostentatiously, which emphasizes the close attention you’re paying to the serious issues the Howler is raising with such force and sincerity.
- Take control at the optimal moment. What follows is for group situations. You’ll need equivalent tactics when you find yourself on the receiving end of one-on-one screaming. To take control:
When, and not until the Howler starts to repeat the same serious and important issues, raise your hand … not in the manner of a child who wants the teacher’s attention, but palm forward, like a crossing guard who needs the pedestrian on the other side of the intersection to stop.
When you have the Howler’s attention, apologize for interrupting, then say something like, “If I understand correctly, we have three issues that need our immediate attention.” Stand up, move to the whiteboard, and write them down from your notes as you list them.
Then continue, “I have suggestions for the first two (if you do) — I think we should xxx. For the last, does anyone else have any thoughts on how we should deal with this?”
- Document every episode as thoroughly as you can. Don’t plan on doing anything with it. But Howlers are often pretty good at scapegoating too, so you might need documentation if you find yourself on the receiving end of an unearned disciplinary action.
- Speaking of which, redirect any and all attempts to assign blame by overtly taking it: “What’s our goal right now? If we need someone to take the blame, I’m happy to do this. Now … what do we need to do fix the problem and prevent it from recurring?”
But mostly, leave. Focus your energy on finding a different job with a better manager. Life, not to mention your career, is too short. The longer you live around Howler Monkeys, the more being howled at becomes your normal — you’ll turn into the sort of employee you wouldn’t hire; dispirited, unmotivated, apathetic, and with an ingrained habit of keeping your head down in the Whac-A-Mole game of organizational dynamics.
Or, even worse, you’ll become an Actor — you’ll have learned to lose your temper for fun and profit.
* * *
If this week is an indicator, it appears I’ll need a whole week’s worth of space for each bad leadership critter.
You’re invited to contribute. What I’d like from you are:
- Species: A type of bad leader or manager, associated with an unpleasant creature, whether alive, extinct, or mythical. I’ll also consider unpleasant ecosystems if you come up with a nasty organization type instead.
- Root Cause: What you think leads to the character flaws you’re describing.
- Solution: What, in your personal experience, works to help an employee survive unscathed and without being mutated in the process.
- Permission: This includes permission to give you credit for the idea, if you’d like that, or instructions not to. It also includes permission to use your ideas intact, or to modify both your thoughts and your writing as I see fit. Please don’t take offense if I do. Even if I like your writing that doesn’t mean it fits KJR. And if I disagree with your thinking … well, my name will be on the final result. I’ll do my best to give proper credit without burdening your good name with my opinions.
Heh, what a funny first paragraph! I just love how Everything is politicized now.
Oh, and I only read the first paragraph.
Jason, surely Bob’s intent was to leverage the early days of 2017 as a time to reflect on the waning days of bad leaders and marvel at how we survive them for eight years.
Our esteemed blogger, columnist, and management consultant is a liberal, but we love you anyway, Bob.
I believe I’ve made my political affinities clear, here:
https://issurvivor.com/?p=5908
and here:
https://issurvivor.com/?p=2516
Regarding your assessment of President Obama, without evaluating his performance in office or predicting that of his successor, I’ll make one certain comparison: Every day in office, Obama showed class. This is something Donald Trump is utterly incapable of.
Don’t care about those other posts, Bob. You started THIS post politically, and my threshold for that crap has been exceeded lately…. I’m pissed about the politicization of Everything.
So when you write columns about IT without all the political harrumphing. I’ll read them again.
What, you don’t think business leaders have something to learn about leadership from elected leaders – both in terms of what to do and what to avoid?
Over the years I’ve written, taught, and consulted about leadership extensively. Public examples are useful as illustrations because they’re part of our shared experience, and I take advantage of them without apology … while avoiding taking overtly political stands on political issues.
I suspect I’m more tired than you are of politicization, in particular of issues that should be matters of evidence and logic. Climate change and the theory of evolution by natural selection are just two of the more obvious examples.
What constitutes effective and ineffective leadership is a different matter, and I’d only be politicizing if it I were to propose that all elected officials from one party are exemplary leaders while all from the other major party should be shunned.
Brilliant article. My thoughts, though they are not for everyone:
1. Accept that you need a different set of rules when dealing with Howler monkeys. You still must listen, once, and you still need to be fair, but you must be extremely consistent with them. They experience “push-back” as boundaries, which is generally not true for the other 75% of the population. So, push-backs actually help them have a functional map of interpersonal reality, even though they would be cruel for most other people.
2. Push back early and firmly. Don’t give them second chances, as this only confuses them as to where your real boundaries are, or as to what mistake they really made. This actually helps them, so long as you are clean and accurate in your push-backs. For most people, push-backs mean “you’ve gone too far”, whereas for Howlers, push-backs mean “you’ve gone just far enough”.
3. Lastly, their weak point is often having great difficulty remembering and using the Golden Rule, when dealing with others. With skill, you can show them their problems with others often come from not following the Golden Rule, but be mindful that you could really hurt them by using the Golden Rule to initiate an unwanted “massive shame” attack within them. That’s why I think it is important to push-back early, so you don’t get so mad that when you finally do explode, you wipe them out, when you really didn’t want to.
That’s my 2 cents on what is usually a difficult and ultimately tragic problem.
I applaud you for not naming any representative examples living or dead!
Great article! I’ve dealt with at least one howler and you’re spot on regarding dealing with them. One question (and I assume that I missed this somewhere) — “Highlander”?
Pop culture reference to a movie. I won’t explain it in case you decide to watch it.
Correct, I haven’t seen it. I Googled it as “What is a Highlander” and only came up with Toyota and Scottish references. With the knowledge that it’s a film reference, I just tried “Highlander” by itself and came up with the film.
I’d like to add a subspecies of Howler monkey. I’ll leave it to you to name it, but I have worked with two examples. Both were the CIO of my organization, at different times. Both were hired by the same director. In both cases the howling was a primal reaction to being pushed out of their comfort zone into human interaction that did not follow their script. I think they are different from the Toddler because they were able to focus on extremely hard and frustrating problems, but just never learned the skills to cope with differences of their opinion or process.
I did not report to either of them and only worked with them as a member of a project team. The first one became so enraged at something I said that I thought he was going to have a heart attack. He wasn’t threatening me, he just had an epic fail of basic humanity. I guess he had done this before, but I hadn’t even heard of it, so I was completely unprepared. this went on awhile and the whole group of us just left the room.
The other person was a bit more calculating, and could deploy bluster and his large, intense physical presence as a means of control, but his epic meltdowns seemed to be equally beyond his control.
Neither, of course, ever apologized after the fact or even acknowledged that anything unusual had happened.
Huh. My thinking is that these are different beasts. Howler Monkeys (in my classification scheme) scream to get their way. You’re describing folks who don’t have enough self-control, especially when coping with frustration.
From your description, they don’t gain anything in return.
Care to select a beast to go along with this? You get first choice.
Sounds like Rainman — whenever he got out of his comfort zone, he’d freak.
Hilarious and so so true.
Here’s one of many for me:
Species: Eeyore the Donkey who says “We have way too much work. We can’t tell you how much but it’s too much. We are chronically understaffed. We can’t tell how much but it’s a lot. And I’m not allowed overtime with these union employees. But no matter how much work you give us we will get it done on time on scope with quality. Whoa is me and my poor overworked team.”
Root Cause: Victimhood is very comforting and can be maintained indefinitely if you ban planning tools that would help quantify, prioritize, and accept a reasonable workload.
Solution: Convince the employees in the group that knowing their upcoming work and planning for it makes their jobs easier, less stressful, and more fulfilling.
Permission: No credit please I coach these people. Feel free to change anything you like. You’re the expert who takes the heat for the column for us turtles slogging in the mud! 😉
I read a book called “Managing the Unmanageable” that has personality descriptions at the individual contributor level. This blog reminded me how I learned to identify the types in interviews and working relationships. I like the idea of thinking of leaders now.
I can think of a couple of traits for leadership:
First, those looking at short-term gains instead of balancing short-term with long-term strategies and goals. Perhaps a ferret.
The other “beast” being a buzz-word, shiny-new-object solution leader. Perhaps a parrot.
Maybe another species are leaders who are not held accountable by their up-line. Looked up that and found snakes and lizards lay eggs and then abandon them.
Solutions: Still working on it. But my general theory is to build trust though integrity, patience and persistence.
Permissions: No credit, I as I know these thoughts are being placed in capable hands!
Try to take emotion out of the conversation and whatever you do, don’t lose your cool. The issue becomes when you are totally divorced from emotion, you really stop caring and that’s the worst employee you would want to become.
Sometimes you can get good results by focusing on the emotion of the Howler instead of the content. For example, say something like “Wow, it sounds like you are really upset/angry/concerned about this situation. What can we do to fix it?/What do you need me to do?”
Sometimes acknowledging how strongly a person is feeling about a situation can be helpful. Howlers may become that way because they feel only yelling gets results – the only way to get people to listen. If you tell them straight off you hear how important the topic is to them – that you are not dismissing them – they may be able to calm down enough to discuss the issue rationally.
Another root cause of Howlers can be inability to manage the stress placed on them by their bosses. Some bosses are really good at absorbing the crap thrown at them by upper management, and filtering it down to just the actions needed and presenting that calmly to their team.
Others get yelled at by the boss, then turn around and yell at everyone who reports to them.
If you recognize this type, you can try starting by sympathizing/empathizing: “Hey, sounds like this situation has got the big boss really wound up. What can we do to get this back under control?” Again, it’s acknowledging he’s only human too – got his own stressors to manage. Sure, if he was a good manager he could do that himself, but he isn’t so you do the best you can.
I had a boss like that – he was fine most of the time, but he had no filter. All the crap he received he passed right along.
Then I got a boss with a working filter, and wow the stress relief – it was a revelation!