I once met a highly pedigreed CEO who had worked with the best in the industry, studied at the best b-school in the world, drawing a hefty salary in Euros, highly clued in and networked. At work, however he was abusive, unreasonably aggressive, micro managing, often bent rules and policies for his favourites, humiliated people in public. He was the tyrant people worked for, out of choicelessness. Everyone in that organization looked at self as a victim and a temporary dweller of that `septic tank’ (that’s what they called it). In three years, he was not able to grow his business and blamed his team’s attitude and capability for it.
In another case, there was this maintenance head of a big-ticket appliances manufacturing company. He always aspired to become the production head. Being the eldest child, he always made sacrifices for his younger siblings, took up a job after completing his diploma whereas he wanted to pursue engineering, financed his brother’s education, got his sisters married and married late. He buried his passion for dramatics and music. At work he could never ask anything for himself. In spite of being qualified in production engineering he contended with a job in maintenance department, always went out of his way to please his internal customer and got nothing in return, pushed his subordinates towards the roles they aspired for but could never make a strong pitch for his own aspirations. He feels like he is standing at the end of the tunnel.
Both these leaders were subjected to development centres, leadership education at ivy leagues etc with little change. Leader’s personality is a crucial but often overlooked aspect of leadership. What mettle leaders are made up of determines what they create. I came across many leaders with challenges related to the `issue of authority’ and low self esteem. This is one of the most common finding of our fraternity of behavioural process consultants. Yet there is no recognition of these challenges in India Inc and no focused effort to work with them. These things are overlooked by some of the leading coaching frameworks that only superficially focus on outcomes, turning a blind at the root cause.
Many leaders we worked with across levels could not confront or influence bigger leaders. Issue of authority is usually camouflaged as a social norm of `respect the seniors’. In reality, we project our primary system on to our seniors/ bosses/ teachers and create stereotypes. Those stereotypes drive our actions. So, my boss is like my father who was always so critical of me, never appreciated anything good in me, made all choices for me and my boss does the same therefore I don’t get along, I don’t suggest, I don’t share ideas, I only do as he says. The first leader in my examples had experienced a very troubled childhood and was so angry that he always manipulated people for his personal victories.
He was a man on a mission who got his sense of power by making people feel powerless. This is an unconscious behavioural process that most people have no control over. Now if we coach this fellow to learn a new behaviour of talking politely, privately, asking questions in the spirit of inquiry etc , there is every likelihood that he is going to become more manipulative. Boss-subordinate relationship which is such an important aspect in organization’s success is as feudal as it was in the medieval times and transformation of this relationship is possible by working at the root cause, not at the symptoms.
I completely subscribe to the theory which states that 80% of people in India have experienced some kind of abuse as children ranging from psychological rejection, `conditions of worth’ to physical (beating up by parents) and sexual abuse. This impacts self esteem. Unless consciously worked upon, they create a deficient thinking about self in most leaders affecting their leadership potential.
In my coaching interventions I have met many leaders across levels who nursed such deficient self image. They were gripped by `do I really deserve this?’, `I am not good enough’ or `how could I’ or `what if’ syndromes coupled with all sorts of fears like that of failure, ridicule, rejection etc. With this on their mind, they are rarely in a position to speak their truth in a constructive manner. The second leader in my examples suffered this syndrome. Sadly this topic of leader’s self esteem is not even on anybody’s radars. Even psychologists have grossly ignored it. Except for the legendary work of Nathaniel Brandon, there is no other body of work on this.
Leaders with these challenges in their personality are seldom able to make best use of the tools and techniques they learn, because hiding behind that well equipped exterior is something very fragile. These deep seeded patterns are capable of making leaders incongruent, inauthentic, and political. Instead of owing up these deficiencies and working on them, they try to fake optimism, confidence or disproportionate aggression, unreasonable valour and so on. Recognizing these patterns and changing them is another big leadership challenge. It is a treat to find leaders who wants to know such limiting patterns in self and work on them.
