In the timeless tradition of Jeopardy: What is a better boss, Alex?
Cheryl Conner let us know about this, here on Forbes. She wrote her post on October 16th, National Bosses Day (which we're rooting to have changed to Fully Accepted Leader Day) so the entire topic was very timely. Cheryl was citing this survey result, from "Tell Your Boss," in support of her contention that being a bad boss is the worst mistake any entrepreneur can make. I agree - and I'll see her contention and raise her one. It's the worst mistake anyone in a leadership position in any organization can make.
Let's propose that, basically, organizational success = great ideas + great execution.
So, where do those great ideas come from? And who is doing that great execution? The answer to both those questions: the people who make up the organization.
And if the leaders in the organization are bad, what happens? Great ideas dry up and go away (underground or to other enterprises), and great execution evaporates, a victim of turf wars, unclear direction, self-protectiveness and lack of accountability. When you have a bad boss, work tends to devolve to merely getting through the day without getting blown up: It's hard to focus on excellence when you're worried about your boss throwing you under the bus, taking credit for your best work, or over-reacting to mistakes or difficulties.
I love Cheryl's examples of good bosses, and how they focus on hiring great people and supporting them to do their best work. (Tony Hsieh of Zappos, Larry Page at Google.)
And now we come to you. Are you a bad boss? If so, there are piles of leadership books (mine included) waiting to be read, and hundreds of leadership coaches and consultants (me and my colleagues at Proteus included) waiting to offer insights and support. At least some of them are excellent and useful.
The more important question is - are you improvable? Phil Gerbyshak recently asked me what gets in the way of people leading well, and I responded:
Becoming a worthy leader is like developing any other capability: it requires honest self-reflection, real openness to learning (which includes an openness to being wrong and to not knowing), and a willingness to change your behavior. These things sound simple – but require discipline, consistency and humility. In other words, people get in their own way. The good news is, though, we can use those three approaches to get out of our own way – and there are very few other real impediments.
In other words, if you're now a bad boss, and you see that, acknowledge it, and make a regular effort to improve - you can. Copping to the fact that you're not a great boss can be initially painful and demoralizing, but you can start to see positive results pretty quickly, and that makes up for some of the emotional discomfort. The good news is, most people want their bosses to be good - it's a lot easier to stay in your job and have your boss improve than it is to go out on the street to find a new boss/job. So once your folks start to see some consistency of good-boss-behavior from you, they'll come out from hiding and start to offer some of those ideas and deliver some of that execution we were talking about earlier. Everybody wins.
And I'd LOVE to hear some stories from reformed bad bosses - are you a bad boss turned good? Please tell us how you did it...
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Erika’s new book, Leading So People Will Follow, has been selected by Amazon as one of the 10 Best Business Books for October, and as one of this month’s Jack Covert Selects.
