To be a really useless leader is not terribly difficult.  Stephen Sonsino (a fellow of the Centre for Management Development, London Business School) has done some interesting research into what really useless leaders do:

1. They Kill enthusiasm.  According to Sonsino, really useless leaders, ‘…tend to shut down the natural enthusiasm of their staff’. For example, they hire really smart people and expect acquiescence as standard. ‘You have to stop micro-management in its tracks if you want to boost the performance of your people. You buy 51% of your people’s effort through their pay packet. But if you want the other 49% of effort you are going to have to earn it’, says Sonsino.

2. They kill emotion “…they say things such as ‘emotions play no part in decision making’ and ‘leave your personal life at home’. But decisions are driven in large part by how comfortable we are with them – in other words, by our emotions”.

3. They kill explanation A question Sonsino raises in this regard is, “Why is it that really useless leaders and managers never bother to explain themselves or understand why other people see things differently’.

4. They kill engagement “Sadly most managers that set team goals (observes Sonsino) never involve the team in setting them. Many managers assume that people should just get on with the task they set”,.

Sonsino identifies seven failings where the four above are personal failings while the rest (kills culture; kills reward; kills fairness) are business failings. Almost self evident really. But the challenge is how to best avoid these pratfalls and make our best contribution as leaders.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 16th, 2007 at 7:55 pm and is filed under Communication, Engaging People, Leadership. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.