Why managers must be more AFFECTIVE if they want to be EFFECTIVE.

 How you make other people feel determines how well your team performs.

Leaders who make their people feel respected, valued, trusted, and part of a team with shared goals, will always have better performing teams. They are effective because they are affective. The word ‘affective’ describes something that has been influenced by emotions. The word ‘effective’ describes something that produces a desired result. As a leader, you have to be affective in order to be effective. Good managers know that it’s all about how they leave others feeling, so they develop the skills that enable them to have a positive affective presence. Poor managers will be unmindful of how emotions are contagious, and they will not care about how their own emotional state impacts on others. They will have a consistently negative affective presence. To develop the skill of being affective, leaders need to work on the abilities that will make them more engaging, attentive, appreciative, inclusive and respectful
Charismatic leaders are brilliant at self-monitoring in order to exercise emotional control. They’re the ones who leave us feeling warm even if they’re feeling sad.
They know that it’s more about how they leave others feeling than it is about how they themselves feel, so they develop the skills that enable them to have a positive affective presence. Poor managers will be unmindful of how emotions are contagious, and they will not care about how their own emotional state impacts on others. They will have a consistently negative affective presence.
To develop the skill of being consistently positively affective, leaders need to work on the abilities that will make them more engaging, attentive, appreciative, inclusive and respectful. To develop warmth and have an affective presence, leaders need to take the following five steps.

1. BE MORE ENGAGING

Be present, focused on people and interested in them. The feeling of someone enjoying your company is contagious and uplifting.
Try to think of everybody in your team as being a guest in your house. Are you thoughtful about their needs? The difference will show in your face: if you think ‘guest’ rather than ‘difficult person’, you will radiate warmth. We’ve all had to work hard to be charming to difficult people on our teams, and know how easy it is to let our displeasure or annoyance show – and that will simply make the difficult person even more difficult.
If you think of yourself as a host, then civility is the name of the game. People who look happy and look like they are enjoying themselves are naturally charismatic. They have a joy of life that shows through and is hugely attractive. When they show pleasure in their experiences, or in what team members are telling them, it’s hard not to infect others with the positive experience they seem to be having.

2. BE A BETTER, MORE ATTENTIVE, AND EMPATHETIC LISTENER

Sometimes the act of listening is inspirational in itself. Listening makes employees feel valued and heard, a key factor in motivation levels. No leader can be affective without being a good listener – but good listening isn’t just about understanding what’s being said… it is about whether you make people feel like they’ve been listened to. Here’s where your active listening skills kick in.
Active listening enables you to pick up on good ideas, create goodwill and form an environment where people can speak up without fear of repercussions. You may not agree with them, but if they feel you’ve really understood them, they’ll be more likely to listen to why you’re not going to act on what they’ve suggested. By listening to them and showing them that you respect their views and understand their point of view, even though you disagree, you earn the right to be heard.
No leader can be affective without listening. Listening is part of the process of decision-making, of developing and maintaining relationships, of problem-solving, of influencing, of driving change and of so many other aspects of leadership.

3. BE MORE RESPECTFUL

Everybody wants to be respected: as human beings and for our achievements. The first kind of respect is owed to everybody, and should be given freely to everyone, equally. The second form of respect is earned, when people perform well or behave in valuable ways. These positive behaviours deserve to be recognised, frequently. Sadly, employees feel that their bosses do not give either type of respect enough.
The result is highly demotivated people, who feel that their bosses treat them unfairly, and fail to recognize effort when it is given. Nothing is more demotivating, and more likely to cause disengagement and poor performance. A lack of respect can have devastating consequences.

4. BE MORE APPRECIATIVE

Being praised always makes us feel good. However, that praise must be earned, and it must be specific. Too few leaders give enough praise, even though positive feedback is the breakfast of champions. Don’t fall into the trap of being quick to criticise and slow to praise.
For more than 30 years now, I’ve been coaching the leaders I work with to praise their people more. It’s been hard work, because so many of those leaders have found it hard to find things to give praise about or struggle to find the right words. I can only deduce that it is because they all possessed the quality of being driven people, which meant that they thought nothing was ever good enough and everything could be improved. It was that drive that made them leaders but made it equally hard for them to find things to recognise and praise. They were too busy finding the things that could be improved.
Most managers believe they’re more effective when they give criticism and vastly underestimate the power of positive reinforcement. Ask an employee how they feel, however, and they’ll say that too much negative feedback diminishes a leader in their eyes. Bosses who respect them, recognise them and encourage them are the ones they will always rate the highest.

5. BE MORE INCLUSIVE

Charismatic leaders know that relationships are the engines of success, so they are inclusive, they encourage diversity, and actively seek involvement from all members of the team. They even involve customers and suppliers, knowing that diversity of thinking leads to more creativity and to better results.
Inherently, we know that inclusivity is a good thing. However, I don’t believe we always understand that inclusivity has many dimensions to it. At its most basic level, it is about including every individual who is a member of a team and giving them a sense of belonging and equality, no matter their age, ethnicity, nationality, religion or gender. Inclusivity is about a team of very different but equal people sharing ideas and throwing down challenges because they feel safe and included and encouraged to do so.
Inclusivity is about including people in leadership itself. Good leaders create a brilliant team of followers. Great leaders – charismatic leaders – create around them a team of leaders.
 

IN THIS COVID-BLIGHTED WORLD, TRUST IS IN SHORT SUPPLY. WE MUST FOCUS ON BUILDING TRUST.

(This is an exclusive article I wrote for the Chartered Management Institute. It appears in the INSIGHTS section of their website.)

Charismatic leaders are crystal-clear about their values and put them on constant display in the close-quarter combat of daily business. In a world in which people are now suspicious of each other (after all, you never know who might have the virus!) it becomes so much more important for managers to build and maintain trust in their teams.

Trust, they say, is money. In business, it is the difference between success and failure.Yet, in this COVID-blighted world, we are short of both trust and money.
Levels of trust have declined as we are forced to become suspicious of people we travel with, work with, shop with. We feel suspicious of companies who might be going down the tubes because of a lack of money. We don’t know whether to trust our bosses as we wonder if we are soon for the chop. We have to rely on computer screens for inter-personal interaction, and it is far more difficult to get a sense of who people are, and what their real motivations are.
The challenge for every manager today is that trust is a catalyst for great performance. As companies struggle to regenerate revenues, or maintain profitability, we’ve never needed great performance more.
When teams or organisations are highly trusted, everything becomes easier. You can innovate faster. Customers will be more willing to try your new ideas. You can get things done with suppliers and partners quickly and easily. The cost of doing business falls while income rises.
When you are not trusted, however, the cost of doing business escalates. Everything gets harder to do, and suppliers and partners require more diligent contract work. Customers are less likely to want to try new products and services, so you have to work harder to get them to buy.
Without trust, a team simply cannot function properly. Everything takes longer, communication becomes more difficult and innovation withers on the vine. Trust and leadership go hand in hand, for very few people are willing to be led by someone they do not trust. If a leader is not trusted, that lack of trust becomes contagious, and members of the team soon start distrusting each other. The contagion can quickly spread in a company and out to customers and other stakeholders, destroying business efficiency and potential.
It is therefore essential that a leader is trusted, gives trust and fosters trust in the team. Trust starts, or ends, with the manager. Being a great manager is therefore not only about brilliantly managing what other people do. It is, first and foremost, about managing who you are being and what you are doing.
If I was to ask you whether you thought you were honest, whether you behaved with integrity, and whether you had a strong set of principles, I have little doubt that the answer would be yes, of course. I also have little doubt that this is true. The problem comes in inconsistent behaviours, inadvertent hypocrisy, and a simple lack of self-awareness, along with a lack of understanding of your impact on others.
It is in these areas that trust breaks down. While managers say they are honest, a worryingly large number of employees disagree. This is a significant perception gap, and one that points to the need for a lot more work by managers to ensure that they are behaving in ways that deliver a greater sense of honesty, more consistent principles and a greater self-awareness.
To close this gap and be seen as authentic, leaders must be skilled in the following areas:
Delivering honesty and integrity, consistently
As leaders we are being scrutinised every single moment, and everything we say, everything we do and every decision we make will be picked over by our teams, who will be quick to interpret those actions through their own set of filters. To avoid being thought of as potentially dishonest, or lacking in principles, it becomes necessary to be radically transparent with people – absolutely straight with them about what decisions you’re making and why. It is then especially important to ensure there is no gap between your words and actions.
Having and living a personal mission and values
Some of the best managers I’ve ever worked with were inspiring because they were crystal-clear about their beliefs and morals and put those on display in the close-quarter combat of daily business. Because they put their values on display, daily and consistently, people never questioned where they stood on issues. They simply knew. This was particularly useful to employees when the boss wasn’t around. When facing a problem by themselves, employees simply had to refer to what they thought the boss would do in the same circumstances, what values he or she would apply, and they knew what to do. Because of their values, there was a strong culture in the team, and a strong sense of belonging, because everyone knew what was right and what was wrong, so they all behaved in the same way.
Being visibly committed
The only way you can lead is by being visible, which means being out and about. If you’re out and about you will be listening to the people in your business, you’ll be listening to customers, and you will be listening to all the people who matter to your team or organisation. Leaders have to find ways to make themselves more visible and ensure that everyone in their team or organisation hears what they’ve got to say. It is amazing how often managers hide behind closed doors after implementing difficult decisions. Employees simply think, rightly so, that you’re being cowardly. Courageous leaders always show up for the difficult conversations, and sometimes just showing up is the message.
Being self-aware
It is rare that we see ourselves as others do. Who we are, and what we believe and feel, shows up in our unconscious behaviours, and may be sending signals we really don’t mean to convey.
There is often a huge gap between how we believe we are coming over, and how we are being received. How you act will reflect in how your employees act. If being a leader is about managing yourself first, then developing the strength of self-awareness is critical to your leadership success. How can you lead and motivate others by understanding them better, if you don’t understand yourself first? Self- awareness is the root of empathy.
Having humility
Leadership is not about you; it’s about the people you lead, the organisation you represent and the customers you serve. When you truly take this on board, you stand a chance of being a humble leader – and a better leader. These are not leaders who are stricken with self-doubt or are negative about themselves. They simply put others first and fence off their egos from public view. As C S Lewis said: ‘Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it is thinking of yourself less.’
Each of these skills (for they are skills) involves leaders behaving in ways that will be clearly visible to those that they lead. They require you to think about what each behaviour means for your daily routine, and how each and every one of your behaviours might need to change and improve in order to have a positive impact on the people you lead. It means managing yourself first, before trying to manage others.

THE BRAIN CHEMISTRY OF THIS CRISIS: WHAT MANAGERS NEED TO KNOW TO HELP EMPLOYEES COPE AND PERFORM WELL

To draw the best from your people at a time of uncertainty, your management style needs to stimulate the right neural reactions. In a Chartered Management Institute article this week I wrote the following:Insights exclusive, one of the world’s most respected leadership gurus highlights the five traits of charismatic leaders

 When employee emotions are dominated by feelings of fear, isolation, uncertainty and self-preservation, it takes special management skills to be able to motivate and energise people to perform well.
Managers need to understand the brain chemistry of a crisis, for their employees currently will have brains that are flooded with unhelpful and negative neurochemicals, all of which have a huge and negative affect on their behaviour.
The answer to combating the dangerous and negative effect of these neurochemicals lies in how you make employees feel… every time you have an exchange with them.
 If you can help them to feel especially important and valued, if you can help them to feel part of a team, and if you can give them stretching but meaningful goals and a strong sense of purpose, one that is compelling enough to cut through the cacophony of distracting issues, then performance will skyrocket.
Why? Because you will be helping to change their brain chemistry, and that will help them to behave differently.
One neuroscientist I interviewed for my new book, trying to keep things simple so I could understand, said that our brains operate on two axes: the first axis is about whether we are moving away from danger or toward reward; the second axis is about feeling worthy or unworthy.
In all of these different quadrants (see the grid), different neurochemicals will be at work, influencing our moods and our behaviours.


 
The worst quadrant to be in is where you feel both in danger and unworthy (quadrant 3). Prisoners in a jail would sit at the extreme end of this quadrant. However, employees who feel their jobs are in peril, or that they face massive change and upheaval, will also sit in this quadrant. It is the worst place to be, and will result in poor performance, bad behaviours and a lack of results.
Employees who do feel worthy, recognised and valued, but who are under threat, will be able to perform well, for a period. This is the case, also, for employees or teams facing a crisis (quadrant 4). They feel good about themselves, confident in their skills, but sustained periods of stress will rob them of energy and fill their bodies with unhelpful neurochemicals. Good performance under stress is only sustainable for a short while.
When employees are incentivised with a big bonus, but are treated badly by their boss, they will become cynical, resistant and are likely to work to rule, even if there is a big pot awaiting them. They will store up their resentment and likely leave as soon as they have pocketed the bonus. These people are in quadrant 2.
Employees who are made to feel valued and worthy, and who are also working to stretching goals, and rewards which they value, will be in the top right-hand quadrant, and will be high performers, capable of sustained high performance. Charismatic leaders will always try to ensure their team members fit in the top right-hand quadrant. They will work hard to make employees feel truly included.
How to induce the right behaviours 
Leaders with the right soft skills will help to induce a brain-friendly environment, a factory for the right neurochemicals that encourage positive behaviours. Those managers who behave in the right ways are able to increase the levels of motivation, discretionary effort and performance – all because they are creating an environment in which the team wants to perform well.
Here are five things to focus on. These are what I have identified as the five traits of charismatic leaders – who possess a greater than average ability to encourage and enable employees to perform at their best.

1. Authenticity – which helps the brain and builds trust

With an authentic personality, a leader communicates and lives a strong set of personal values. This makes that leader more predictable and encourages feelings of integrity and fairness. These appeal to our basic survival instinct, because in our primitive brains it is all about having a fair share of food and warmth from the fire. When leaders appear insincere and unpredictable, they set up uncertainty in our brains, which in turn induces the neurochemicals we least want. Most importantly, an authentic manager will engender trust, and encourage trust among members of the team – and trust has a powerful positive effect on our brains.

1. Personal power – which provides people with confidence

Having personal power is all about confidence. When leaders project confidence and help people to feel calm and focused, positive and optimistic, they again have a positive influence on our brain chemicals. That confidence and focus helps to create alignment among members of the team and fosters good relationships. The emotional state of leaders is like a contagion that affects all of those around them, even when leaders are trying their best to hide the negative emotions. Leaders with confidence are easily able to engage with people, fostering good working relationships. Personal power is about a leadership mindset, positivity, energy and hopefulness.

1. Warm leaders make people feel good and perform well

Leaders have a positive affective presence when they are good listeners and encourage their followers to feel that they have a voice in what happens. They are also skilled at making people feel important and worthy, because they are appreciative and praiseful and they encourage a strong sense of self-esteem. All of this enables autonomy and self-direction. They make members of the team feel that they are connected and aligned with others, safe with the team.
Effective leaders are inclusive and strengthen diversity and integrate points of view from different genders, ages and philosophies while always encouraging an environment of respect. By building this emotional capital and the levels of trust and security, they encourage cooperation and collaboration.

1. Drive and purpose provide certainty and direction

Leaders who convey a compelling purpose, and align individual goals to that purpose, give people a strong sense of direction. They provide clarity and hopefulness, and a greater degree of certainty over the future. They also provide clarity about responsibility, what success looks like and exactly what is expected of members of the team. That compelling purpose and those clear goals are hugely positive influences on our brains. A leader’s drive and energy transmit to others and create urgency. A continuous improvement culture enables agility and innovation because it creates a safe place to admit mistakes and correct them, at speed.

1. Persuasive leaders provide clarity and conviction

Persuasive leaders know that words can change your brain chemistry. They take care when choosing their words. Positive language can transform our reality and encourage high levels of motivation. Positive words propel the motivational centres of the brain into action and build resilience. Negative words have precisely the opposite effect. Persuasive leaders think carefully about what to say, how to say it and when to say it to achieve maximum effect.
Finally, managers need to remember that an exclusive focus on numbers shuts down the brain and, at these times of emergency and great need, can be perceived in a negative way.
Too often, managers who lack the skills of charisma will focus only on financial metrics. This is the wrong place to start, and brain science now tells us that doing so can cause people to shut down cognitively, emotionally and perceptually. To get people to open up their minds, you need to discuss the purpose of an activity, and relate it to the goals of the organisation. Once people understand the why, they can better relate to the metrics. They must be focused on helping and serving others.
When charismatic leaders practise these skills they create positive chemical factories in the brains of their followers, and everyone will benefit.

HOW NOT TO LEAD IN A CRISIS.

The bad management behaviours that destroy good teams.

Even in ordinary times, bad managers create dreadful cultures and poisonous places of work that are harmful to our health, and our ability to contribute anything positive to our employer. 
During this pandemic, when people will be feeling more fearful, distracted and isolated than ever, locked away from every norm they hold dear, bad managers have the potential to finish off even those companies which still stand a fighting chance of surviving this crisis.
Anyone managing a team or leading people through this COVID-19 driven health and economic crisis should be hyper-aware of bad behaviours that can destroy effort and productivity.
Let’s be honest, there are some leaders who simply don’t care about others and it is this level of disregard that leads them to be really bad to work for. They create truly toxic places to work, and so long as they get done what they want done, nothing else matters.
On the other hand, there are also managers (far greater in number) who are well-intentioned and who do care about people, but who simply lack the skills to do a better job of engaging and relating to people. A lack of awareness about what really matters leads them to be bad bosses, even though they are likely to be far less toxic and also likely to want to improve.
The what NOT to do checklist
On the basis that knowing what not to do can be just as helpful as knowing what’s right, I offer the following checklist to help you be more aware of the bad behaviours which will be turning off members of your team, especially now, during the crisis and during the recovery period.
I researched the truly bad behaviours of managers for my new book on Charismatic Leadership. These poor behaviours will make you disliked, increasingly ineffective and possibly even likely soon to be fired.
There are five characteristics of toxic managers:

1. They destroy trust,
2. They unwittingly damage their own credibility and authority,
3. They lack warmth and disengage people,
4. They demolish any sense of common purpose and cohesion, and
5. They kill the much-needed conversations that enable innovation.

These characteristics are brought to horrible life by a set of bad behaviours, which I list here. As you read through this list of bad behaviours, reflect for a moment on each point and consider whether you may be guilty of this sin, to some degree or other. Mark yourself on a scale of 1-10, where 10 is you never, ever do this, and 1 is you do this all the time. Giving yourself a five means you may do this sometimes. Be tough on yourself, because your employees most certainly will be. Examine whether you may be unmindful of any of these sins and may therefore inadvertently be guilty of bad behaviour.
Bad behaviours that destroy trust.

• The very worst kind of boss to work for is one who lacks integrity or displays integrity inconsistently. Those with integrity stay true to their values and are prepared to make tough choices about what’s right rather than what’s convenient. When you get to a place where integrity plays no part in your management, no one can trust you. Without a moral compass and ethics, or even just a sense of what’s fair, the team will quickly dissolve into bad behaviours and poor performance, based on a lack of trust of their leader. This trust deficit floods into their daily working life and infects their relationships with all of their teammates, and, in turn, customers. Right now, people will remember the companies that helped them, and treated them mindfully and respectfully. They will also remember those who took advantage, or simply didn’t care.
• Even when leaders do have integrity, their employees often see it differently. This is because their employees will observe inconsistent behaviours from their bosses which, while simply thoughtless, will lead them to make judgements about the character of their boss. Equally, such inconsistencies, or even the want of speaking up on issues, can make a boss seem insincere and dishonest. Leadership is an act of courage and being courageous often means standing up for the things you truly believe in, even in the most difficult of circumstances. Those without integrity will stand up for very little, and hypocrisy quickly follows.
• Bad bosses discriminate amongst members of their team. They have favourites, whom they shield from the effects of doing shoddy work, or with whom they favour good assignments or great working hours and shifts. They will expect loyalty but won’t be loyal themselves. They divide and conquer, and set up discord in the team, by favouring the opinion of some over others. Members of the team will quickly notice this and then distrust, disengagement and demotivation quickly follow.
• Bosses who trust no one are toxic. Distrustful managers will tend to micromanage others, check everything that people are doing, or disbelieve people unless they can conclusively prove their point of view. This lack of trust will lead to massive bottlenecks. Bottlenecks lead to a loss of productivity. A micromanager will seldom delegate. They ask to be copied in on every e-mail, will want to go to every meeting and will make every decision and solve every problem. They will then make a really big deal out of working 80 hours a week. They care little that that team members feel disenchanted and disempowered. In fact, this actually creates a vicious circle, because if they do sense this disengagement, they will be even less likely to delegate.
• Leaders who keep themselves to themselves can be very damaging to team morale. Those who never speak up for the values they believe in and make it very difficult for people to read them, set up a wariness among their employees, which also leads to a lack of trust. Any employee who finds their boss aloof and doesn’t really know where their boss is coming from will regard them as dangerous and unpredictable.
• Managers who lack self-awareness or humility are damaging. When leaders think they are, for example, great communicators, and members of the team think otherwise, credibility suffers. On the other hand, leaders who show vulnerability are often perceived to be more effective as leaders, because they show more of their human side. As tough as it is to admit mistakes, humility is one of the most powerful attributes of managers and is a great accelerator of building trust.

Bad behaviours that destroy credibility and authority.

• A love of politics destroys relationships. Bad managers love politics, suck up to their own bosses and especially favour those who suck up to them.
• Use fear and bureaucracy as tools to manage. Poor managers would never consider liberating people to have more autonomy. They want employees to feel lucky that they’ve got a job and always hand over assignments with the threat that if it isn’t delivered the way they would like it, there will be highly negative consequences. ‘It’s my way or the highway’, they say. They use disciplinary measures when simply communicating with an employee would get the desired result. Because they are bullies, they will tolerate bullying in the team. Such fear-based management may get short-term results but is simply unsustainable.
• Make promises to employees, and then break them. Even if they have the intention to do something, and then forget, this will result in a lack of trust from employees.
• Ride authority for all it’s worth. Poor managers expect others to serve them and serve their egos. They’ll never roll their sleeves up and will ensure that others do the jobs that they are no longer willing to do themselves. Humble leaders are often out in front, leading by doing and by example. Bad bosses try to promote themselves at the cost of the team, always playing for themselves, at every opportunity. They will take credit for others work.
• Don’t worry about standards, and don’t care about quality or delivering projects on time.
• Never apologize, and never accept responsibility for mistakes. With bad managers, it will always be someone else’s fault. As for personal development, learning is for losers. And they never learn from mistakes; because they don’t make them.
• Constantly brag about their exploits and so-called achievements. Also, constantly demonstrate high intellect, thus belittling and demeaning those who follow you.
• Panic under pressure, and let it show. Bad managers rush around and overreact to even the smallest problems, often causing despair and disdain in equal measure.
• Be negative about their own bosses, blaming them for everything that’s wrong about the organization. Bad bosses never accept that they have the ability to change anything themselves.

Bad behaviours that make employees disengage. 

• Bad listeners are often bad managers, and worse, they either don’t care or are simply unaware of that fact. They regularly show employees that they have no interest in their input and perspectives and treat their views with contempt or disdain.
• Managers who show little empathy or compassion for members of their team will also have a hugely negative effect on morale and engagement.
• Highly critical and vocal managers will seldom celebrate successes, and will relentlessly and publicly interrogate failures, never forgiving mistakes. They never offer second chances and can see no value in giving the benefit of the doubt to others. They will constantly search for faults in employees and ignore their strengths. This kind of behaviour will make every new assignment, and every member of the team, feel very unsafe.
• Bad managers are disrespectful of everyone. They show contempt for their employees, their own bosses and even their customers. Disrespect is contagious, and very soon members of the team will be disrespecting each other and disrespecting customers too, with disastrous consequences.
• Bad managers lack any charm and are cold and aloof. They are not interested in building relationships. They have no interest in the motivations and personal lives of their team members. They pay little attention to work–life balance, and their team members are constantly overworked, with a high risk of burnout.
• Worst of all, bad managers are not inclusive. They exclude people from critical conversations. They have little tolerance for diversity. They prefer ‘birds of a feather’ in their team and are not interested in teams that are built on a diversity of gender, race, culture or nationality. Even if they have strongly diverse teams, bad managers make little effort to ensure that everyone is included in team discussions or decisions.

Bad behaviours that demolish a sense of purpose and kill drive.

• Bad managers are never clear about their expectations, timelines or goals. Worse, they change their minds frequently and leave team members feeling off-balance and insecure. If goals look like they are being met, they’ll quickly ramp them up to higher, unachievable levels. They are myopically focused on results.
• They never bother to connect with what the team is doing, to the organization’s mission and goals. It always feels as if the team is acting in isolation from the rest of the company, and that there is no meaning or purpose behind what they are doing. The team will feel like they are pursuing pointless goals and also feel disconnected from their colleagues.
• They will often give the same work to different people, causing confusion about roles and responsibilities, leaving everyone unclear about what exactly they’re supposed to be doing.
• They pay no attention to company or team culture, and certainly don’t live up to the values of the workplace themselves.
• They do nothing about poor-performing or toxic members of staff and will show little interest in constant continuous improvement. They will equally be disinterested in helping employees to grow and develop, regarding this as a waste of time rather than a way to help improve performance.
• They will show no hesitation in ripping off customers and suppliers at every opportunity, as anything is acceptable in the pursuit of achieving profits.
• They are not in the least bit interested in how their customers feel.

Bad behaviours that kill conversations and innovation 

• Bad managers are secretive and share as little information as possible. Information is power, so they deliberately choose to withhold it.
• Bad managers are bad at giving feedback. Worse still, bad managers are even worse at giving praise. Employees always see managers who give praise often and appropriately as more effective.
• With bad managers, one-way communication is rampant. They are on the broadcast button all the time and have no interest in listening to people’s views or encouraging robust conversations to find ideal solutions. They care little about encouraging good communication between team members.
• Bad managers are invisible. They prefer the security of their office walls to going out to talk to members of their team. They send e-mails at all hours of the day and night, even if members of their team are but yards away in the office.
• Bad managers never prepare for presentations, preferring to speak off the cuff. They have no sense of their audience and are completely unaware of the audience’s issues and concerns. They have a message to deliver and, by heck, deliver it they will, no matter how long it takes. In this age of video conferencing, they do nothing to ensure everyone gets a say and is contributing views and ideas to a debate.
• They can be ambiguous, indirect or even lie, and never check whether people have understood a single word they said.

Storing up a churn rate.
Who of us would want to be working in a team led by a boss who exhibits any of the behaviours I have listed above, especially now? These are the bosses who will have high churn rates in their teams when everything eventually does return to normal, with most of their employees looking to move to another department or even another company, just as soon as they can.
* This article is based on research I did for my new book, “Charismatic Leadership”, and comes from the chapter entitled: “The dark side of charisma.” You can find the book here: https://bit.ly/34QPmmp