Bully, Micromanager, Puppet, Liberator: Which Leader Are You?
Why?
How you present and operate day to day as a leader has unavoidable lasting consequences on peoples lives and the business they operate in, for better or worse. However, if you are equipped to navigate the leadership landscape by accurately assessing your leadership performance, and perhaps others, you can significantly reduce the likelihood of costly mistakes in favour of more wins for yourself, more wins for those around you and more wins for the team, department or organisation you are responsible for leading.
What?
To better understand the effect you have on the people around you we will cover the cause and effect of different leadership styles on teams, departments, organisations and ultimately business outcomes. You will learn how to spot when you and others fall in and out of 4 key leadership archetypes, how these archetypes directly link to the environment they create and how to measure their contribution to business success and failure.
How?
Using academic behavioural models we will uncover the abundance of environmental evidence hiding in plain sight by answering 3 key questions:
What behaviours manifest as a result of different leadership styles? Revealing 4 key leadership archetypes.
What impact do these archetypes have on an organisation? Revealing their direct connection to culture.
What impact does culture have on business outcomes? Revealing culture’s direct connection to success and failure.
Leadership Styles
The model below is based on a decision matrix the US Navy SEALs use for leadership selection, which focuses on the relationship between Performance, defined as: A demonstration of technical skills, and Trust, defined as: A demonstration of values and principles. I have updated this model by adding 4 archetypes to offer a sense of who might manifest in each area:
Source: Based on US Naval Special Warfare Leadership Selection for Navy SEALs & Kenny Wallace 2020
These four leadership archetypes correlate with specific behaviours that can be measured in any individual, team or organisation.
Bully: Results orientated, easily throws others under the bus in order to achieve their end in mind.
Micromanager: Slows everyone down through relentless interference in everything everyone does.
Puppet: Yes person, avoids challenge, making decisions and struggles to get anything meaningful done.
Liberator: Creates aspiration, defines end in mind, encourages autonomy, resolves conflict, takes hits for the team.
Now that we have given these leadership abstractions context, what effects do these archetypes have on organisational culture?
Impact on Organisation
The model below is based on a matrix created by Dr Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Professor of Psychology at Claremont Graduate University, who was first to formally investigate the traits associated with high performance, which he collectively called Flow; A highly focused mental state conducive to productivity. I have modified it for a business context to correlate a leadership style with its individual and organisational impact by looking at the relationship between Challenge, defined as: Degree of difficulty to be overcome, and Support, defined as: Available resources. Four organisational states emerge:
Source: Based on Massimini, Csíkszentmihályi & Carli Model 1987 and Kenny Wallace 2019
These four cultural archetypes also correlate with specific behaviours that can be measured in any individual, team or organisation.
Anxiety: Missed deadlines, avoidance of interaction, negatively impacts employee sickness absence.
Apathy: Absence of enthusiasm or presence of indifference, negatively impacts employee retention.
Comfort: Lack of activity and accountability, negatively impacts employee productivity.
Flow: Pro-active, self-directed, emphasis on personal responsibility, positively impacts all of the above.
Our leadership archetypes and their quadrants from the first model correspond directly with the cultural archetypes and quadrants of this model. As a result we can correlate any of the four leadership styles with inescapable and specific measurable environmental outcomes, especially when holding any Leader or Manager accountable for their performance in terms of how they’ve led/managed people to deliver their individual and team objectives. Should a line manager claim all is well, yet their team retention rate is 50%, we can prove their claim is false and challenge their leadership style, which in this case would most likely Micromanaging.
In fact, during a large enterprise organisational transformation I witnessed a newly appointed senior leader, on a salary north of £100k, achieve a retention rate of 0% within 12 weeks. Every single one of their team resigned as the new appointee was a relentless and remorseless micromanager. To be fair there were faults on both sides, however someone at such a senior level should have the skills to navigate and resolve this kind of situation before the exodus occurs.
Impact on Business
If we now go back to our first model from the Navy SEAL’s and change the Y-axis to Effectiveness, defined as: Degree of mission success, and X-axis to Efficiency, defined as: Best use of resources, we can correlate the impact of organisational state on business outcomes:
Source: Based on US Naval Special Warfare Leadership Selection for Navy SEALs & Kenny Wallace 2020
These four business outcomes also correlate with specific outcomes that can be measured in any individual, team or organisation.
High Cost/High Yield: Exhausts resources to achieve a great result, which is expensive and short lived.
High Cost/Low Yield: Exhausts resources to achieve a poor result, which is just expensive.
Low Cost/Low Yield: Barely moves the needle, useless if you want progress or change.
Low Cost/High Yield: Optimises available resources to achieve sustainable results.
Our four cultural archetypes and their quadrants from the second model correspond directly with the business outcomes and quadrants of this model. As a result we can correlate any of the four cultural states with inescapable and specific measurable business outcomes. If a population within the organisation exists in a cultural state of Apathy, we know that retention will be low and the reduction in headcount, ergo capacity, will directly affect the remaining population’s ability to deliver their product or service OTIF.
If we follow this through with our example, our newly appointed senior leader previously had four direct reports to produce all the output required to achieve all their objectives and outcomes. An 80% reduction in headcount was an untenable situation to say the least.
Conclusion
So what?
Leadership styles manifest through objectively measurable behaviours and associated outcomes that correlate with what a specific leader does and does not value, regardless of what they say. i.e. They either did or didn’t do something that inescapably generated a culture of Fear, Apathy, Comfort or Flow.
The effect of leadership styles on culture manifests in objectively measurable behaviours and associated outcomes that correlate leadership styles with specific organisational issues, i.e. Sickness absence, retention, productivity, delivery under a particular leader either stayed the same, went up or went down.
The effect of culture on business outcomes manifests in objectively measurable behaviours and associated outcomes that correlate organisational issues with organisational capacity, i.e. Negatively affected Sickness absence, retention and productivity directly affect an organisations ability to deliver on time in full (OTIF).
Now what?
Leadership is far more tangible than we are led to believe with the endless rose-tinted spectacles and platitudes posted on social media. In fact, everything you need to know about your organisation is out in the open for all to see, even in your management reporting dashboards.
Organisations are only as efficient and effective as the poorest quality of leader they are willing to tolerate. During one project I witnessed a senior leader be appointed in a large enterprise, who operated inarguably as a micromanager and within 3 months every one of their direct reports resigned, without exception. The workload of an entire team and everything associated with it abruptly halted. Very much a case of the Peter Principle in action: People in a hierarchy tend to rise to a level of respective incompetence.
If you leave the organisational issues previously mentioned and their root causes unresolved it can have catastrophic effects for the financial viability of a business. In another project in a medium enterprise I recommended a particular manager be moved to a different role as the role required a highly skilled short, medium and long term planner, which this person definitely is not. Senior leadership ignored my recommendation in a bid to avoid having difficult conversations and to this day the company experiences high sickness absence, low retention and hit and miss delivery.
What next?
Now that you have a better understanding of leadership archetypes the effect they have on organisational culture and business outcomes, lets consider how you might use what you have learned:
Are there particular leadership archetypes you have discovered you default to that point to you hindering vs helping yourself and those in your charge? If so, which archetypes in which contexts?
Given the correlation between leadership, culture and business outcomes; has this highlighted a disparity between your perceived performance as a leader and objective measures of success? If so, what skills does this disparity point to and how might you test that?
Has a line manager, peer or subordinate sprung to mind you now need to change how you interact with in terms of your leadership style or theirs? If so, what is your first step to change things for the better?
Take your learning one step further and complete my Case Study Review. Capture your learning from this case study and commit to changes you deem relevant for your situation. A copy of your completed review will be emailed to you instantly.
For further insight on the effects of good and bad leadership on organisational outcomes do read: Culture: Leadership & High Performance.
If you are in the process of dealing with a personality similar to the one in this case study, then do consider working with me to either assess your Individual Readiness to manage this type of personality or address issues that have come to your attention as result of this case study.
