The blogosphere is full of examples of bad leadership. We have all seen the lists of characteristics of those who are bad leaders and we have all experienced them. Some of my favorite examples do not make these lists.
“Guess what I am thinking disguised as brainstorming” is one of my favorites. This one can be difficult to recognize. Participants believe brainstorming is a genuine attempt to incorporate good ideas into organizational decison making; but this is delusion. Typically, we see a large room with the leader with a wireless microphone walking around the audience encouraging people to share ideas on how to fix a problem because “there are no bad ideas.” This continues until the leader hears the answer they wanted to hear, then that becomes the focus of the meeting. Watch for it at the next “brainstorming” meeting. Know that the answer that was decided by the leader before the brainstorming is the one that will emerge.
“Do as I say, not as I do” is another. Call anyone who works in public higher education right now and ask how many times a senior leader has sent an email stressing the need to create accessible digital materials in an email that is not accessible and you will see a current example of this.
“Projection” is a third example. If you want to know exactly what a leader is pay attention to what they claim about others. If they say someone else is doing it, you can be certain they are guilty.
A new characteristic of bad leaders is increasing common, and it is particularly bad for the institutions and organizations whose leaders exhibit it. I call it “unrealistic confidence.” When sitting around deciding what will happen when they take actions, unrealistically confident leaders assume what the effects of their decisions will be and how people in the organization and outside it will react to them. The changes and people’s reactions are singular; everyone is expected to see them exactly as the leaders predict and with the same positive perceptions that the leaders predict.
Unrealistically confident leaders surround themselves with a very small group of advisors who are also weak leaders and support any wacky idea as they are unprepared to reject it. The lack of preparation in for technical reasons, weak leaders promote most any “innovation,” so they cannot justify any rationale for or against it. The lack of preparation is also for cultural reasons; they are in their role because they all nod their heads in agreement when ideas are proposed. The result is no one raises the possibility that anyone will perceive decisions in any other way than what they expect.
This characteristic of leaders is particularly problematic as they lead their organizations off the proverbial cliff. They willingly take actions that are ruinous (predictably ruinous to many observers) to their organizations.
This is my call to those who make decisions about leaders to recognize those who are unrealistically confident. Ask leaders what might go wrong with their decisions, and insist they answer. If you are not willing to push leaders to explain their potential failures, then you are complicit in their ruinous decisions.