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Dealing with Incompetent Leaders
By Carole Nicolaides
As a mid-level employee, you’ve been working for the ACME Company, a
manufacturing firm, for the past two years. Your job performance has been solid,
and on occasion, even praiseworthy. However due to the current economic
conditions – poor profit earnings, massive layoffs and company restructuring,
you now find yourself working for a new boss. Ordinarily reporting to a new
leader would not pose a real problem but this time it feels different --
management practices have changed. The team environment has been transformed
from one of true collaboration, honest dialogue and a commitment to problem
solving to one where backstabbing, finger pointing and plain fear are the norms.
Congratulations – you are now under the control of an “incompetent” leader!
An “incompetent” leader by definition is someone whose action destroys
camaraderie, instill gossip, encourage dishonesty, and prevent people from
speaking freely. “Incompetent” leaders tend to use their own weapons to get
noticed and promoted. They usually lack vision, interpersonal communication
skills and confidence to resolve conflict.
You might think the term “incompetent” leaders should only be reserved for those
in the company’s upper echelon such as the Chief Executive Officer of Chief
Financial Offer.
After all, aren’t they the ones entrusted with setting the direction for the
entire organization? While this may be true to a certain extent – CEOs do serve
as the “compass” for the company, but many CEOs are not directly involved in the
daily operations of their organizations. Those responsibilities fall on the
shoulders of senior and middle managers. And, it is the “collective leadership”
of those managers -- their style of execution, their effective ability to
communicate, manage and motivate their teams that keep companies on course. If a
leader lacks the competency to manage his or her team, then team morale
diminishes, productivity and performance drops, and companies ultimately fail.
What’s worst is the fact that today we live in a heavy Information Economy where
bad news about a company spreads instantly thereby allowing competitors to
profit from your company’s incompetent leadership.
In the quest to attain “better and cheaper staff,” one would think that
organizations had all the advantages needed to rid their companies of every
single under-performing employee – managers included. However, nothing could be
farthest from the truth. Unfortunately in many cases, it is the good,
high-performing, mid-level employees who first are shown the door, while
ineffective managers – the ones who really need to take a hike – remain.
For whatever reason these foul apples may have been left behind; the fact that
they are present causes a lot of problems either through their actions or
sometimes through their inactions. The truth is that “incompetent leaders” have
always existed and will continue to exist despite the best efforts from HR and
other performance improvement initiatives to detect and remove them before
bringing irreparable harm to an organization.
So what can you do to protect yourself and survive working for an “incompetent”
leader? Here are some quick tips:
1. Do not make it a personal matter. This is a hard one, simply because working
for an incompetent boss is such a personal matter. Remember, that most of these
leaders do not have a problem directly with you, but they too are frustrated and
are shouting loud their own insecurities -- most likely mirroring to you things
that they should be doing.
2. Observe Your Boss. It might sound funny, but notice what is going on around
your boss. In case you’ve known or worked with your boss before and you observe
a sudden change, then your next step should be to take action right away. The
problem could be as simple as someone asking him something way out of his
league, or someone talking to him about you and your team. Whatever the reason
might be you need to act and confront your boss as soon as possible. If you do
this at the beginning, you might be able to stop a snowball effect -- not only
for you but also for the entire team. Confrontation does not come easy for most
people, yet if you seek a constructive conversation, have an open mind, avoid
turning it into a personal attack, you might be able to ease tensions with your
boss and also improve his position.
3. Accumulate Facts. Nothing is irrelevant if you work in an unhealthy
environment. You need to make sure that you accumulate all the things that
matter for your career -- the good as well as the bad stuff. Good things that
you’ve done, bad things that have happened to you, and things that you could
have done better. The key here is to have nothing against you, nothing that will
give people permission to talk about you and question your character.
4. Know Your Value. You might feel beaten down, overworked, under appreciated
and doubtless about your true value. Grow up! Things happen and your value does
not diminish simply because one cannot see your true value. If you are a
professional, do a good job, and the people that work with you will see a direct
contribution to the team’s success. Then be sure that you have created your own
evangelists – people who will tell others about your true value.
5. Expand Your Network. Now, more than ever, you need to think that working for
a large company is not very different than working on your own. You need to
learn to promote yourself. People need to know who you are, within your company
and outside your company. Successful business owners never stop networking.
There are so many things you can learn simply by networking. The key here is to
find 2 or 3 networking initiatives that you feel comfortable doing and commit to
them.
6. Seek For Comfort Outside Your Office. Many people often make this mistake.
They work for an incompetent boss and they start complaining about her or him to
a “good friend” who also works for the company. For whatever reason this might
happen because you are seeking comfort or love. Sometimes you simply need a
sounding board in order to release the pinned-up stress. Do it outside the
office and avoid discussing your problems with others with whom you work.
Times have changed and even though it might seem hard to work for someone that
you know is not suitable for his or her position, remember things and people
appear to us to teach something. The sad reality is most “incompetent” leaders
do not get fired; they just move on and reinvent themselves in new companies.
The chance that you will either work with the same leaders or someone like them
again before your career ends is great. However if you manage to stay calm and
think about the lessons you’ve learned and how to counteract incompetent
behavior, you will have all the wisdom needed in order to become a better leader
yourself in future jobs.
Copyright ©2003, All Rights Reserved
Carole is President and Executive Coach of Progressive Leadership, offering
business coaching and leadership training to business owners & leaders around
the world. Improve your business relationships, communication, team performance
and bottom line starting now. Visit http://www.progressiveleadership.com for
more info & subscribe to her FREE Leadership Ezine. |
