I am thrilled to welcome Randi Radul as a guest blogger this month. I don’t share this space very often but I’ve made an exception for Randi. Not only is she an ICF Credentialled Coach, but she is also the Lumina Learning Global Business Partner which makes her a thought leader in the world of psychometric assessments. With more than 10 years of experience as a Lumina Learning Practitioner and Master Facilitator, she has coached around many difficult workplace dynamics. In this blog, Randi tackles the very delicate subject of The Bad Boss with compassion as well as objectivity. Read on and gain some golden leadership nuggets. Please leave a comment and tell us your experience with the “Bad Boss” issue.
Why Bad Boss Energy Matters
When I first left the corporate world, I was full of confidence in my ability to eradicate the “Bad Boss”. You know who I am referring to. They are the people that oversee your work, that spend 40 hours per week hovering over you, “micromanaging” you, affecting your self-worth and overall quality of life.
That might sound dramatic, but if you have had a difficult manager, you know that your whole life is impacted by their behaviour, not just the hours that you are at work.
As a new coach starting out, I thought my corporate experience and coaching skills were best used eradicating bad managers. I believed (and still do) that ineffective leaders are not bad people. They don’t set out each day to make our lives miserable. They are simply managers who lack self-awareness and are most often quite insecure.
I set out to have people refer and recommend their toxic managers who needed to be reformed, and I devised a plan to gently approach those folks. After a few failed attempts to connect, I discovered that a lot of managers don’t think they are bad leaders. They feel that their way is the right way, and they are not interested in coaching. I learned my first major lesson as a coach; you cannot coach someone who is not asking for coaching.
It turns out that the people who have hired me and have benefited from my services are great leaders who want to be even better. This was a welcome surprise, as trying to convince the toxic leaders to collaborate with me had become exhausting.
While I may not have built a practice supporting ineffective leaders, I have learned a few things about supporting leaders who may show up with Bad Boss Energy. I am going to break them down in the hopes that there are a few gems that may help you on your leadership journey!
1. Self-Awareness Gaps Create Friction
A lack of awareness of self and others significantly increases the likelihood that you are showing up as an inconsistent leader. Whether you are direct and competitive or collaborative and roundabout, there is a chance that your team is frustrated with you from time to time, and thereby feels that you are a difficult manager. Understanding our strengths and communication preferences is important to building our confidence and understanding what we bring. When we are leading people who are our personality opposite, it’s likely that our messages don’t always land in the way that we intended, and the net result is Bad Boss Energy.
2. Overextended strengths can damage trust
There are universal behaviours that tend to impede our ability to lead effectively. Overextended behaviours or “doing too much of a good thing” often lends itself to Bad Boss Energy. Whether you overextend by retreating, becoming detached and aloof, or overextend by becoming logical and argumentative, your behaviour will have a lasting effect on the people around you and will contribute to the overall organizational culture.
Our overextended behaviours are difficult for us to see in ourselves but rest assured that everyone around us knows when we are overextended. Taking time to learn how we show up when the pressure is turned up, goes a long way to avoiding being a reactive manager.
3. Insecurity shows up in leadership
A lack of confidence in your innate leadership abilities and knowledge of your positive contribution to the team may contribute to the Bad Boss Energy. If you do not understand your role in the team and why you are in the position you are in, (i.e. technical expertise, strong grasp of the vision, ability to effectively mobilize resources and people to deliver objectives); you may exude an energy of insecurity, which is a strong characteristic of a poor manager.
Embodying and understanding why you are in your role, leading this team is imperative to shaping the employee experience.
How to Catch These Patterns Early
The bottom line is we can ALL be Bad Bosses. Without self-awareness, an ability to manage our overextensions and a healthy dose of confidence, we can carry Bad Boss Energy, which weakens the impact that we have on our teams and ultimately creates resistance to delivering on the organizational missions.
Conclusion
Investing in ourselves to minimize the risk of a Bad Boss energy is a wise investment for ourselves and our teams. Our satisfaction will improve because of improved self awareness of self and our teams, the team cohesion will increase, and the overall organization will be better aligned and set up to win!
About the Author
Written by Randi Radul PCC CPA
Lumina Learning Canada Partner
I hope you enjoyed this article If you would like to reach out to Randi, you can find her website here.
If this blog has left you wanting to go deeper, you can read more about psychometric assessments here.
