Category: Leading/Strategizing

There’s plenty of research about how bad leadership creates health problems for employees. This piece argues that it is also bad for companies. I wonder how many leaders are brave enough to fire a toxic manager.

Very interesting and funny Financial Times piece on how many of the features of today’s office, including constant technological interruptions and working from a coffee place are not that new. The article then goes to list some things that are novel in the new world of work. My favorite are the idea that you should like your job: “A clerk writing in 1907 referred to his colleagues as ‘miserable little pen drivers – fellows in black coats with inky fingers and shiny seats on their trousers’.”

Today, I start a new section on the blog with examples of leadership which displays very little regard for employees as human beings. The point is not to shame individual people, but to prompt self-reflection: none of us is free from doing something less human despite our best intentions.
The honor of the first post goes to the US coast guard, who offered the advice to employees during the US government shutdown in early 2019 that included the following:

Other than cutting back on your expenses, the only other way to compensate for the loss of income is to add new income.

Be creative.

Finding supplemental income during your furlough period might be challenging, but here are a few ideas for adding income:
-Have a garage sale — clean out your attic, basement and closets at the same time.
-Sell unwanted, larger ticket items through the newspaper or online.
-Offer to watch children, walk pets or house-sit.
-Turn your hobby into income.
-Have untapped teaching skills and expertise? Tutor students, give music or sports lessons.
-Become a mystery shopper. Retailers are desperate to check how their in-store customer service is and will employ you to shop and rate their service.

See the full text in this link.

Culture may be a far less effective leadership tool than previously thought. In a 2016 paper, Professors Stephen Vaisey and Omar Lizardo found that the values that people hold later in life are mostly shaped by the values acquired in their early life.

What does this mean for leaders?

Well, this research suggests that leaders may have very little power to change people’s values through corporate rituals and other ways of managing corporate culture. If people’s values are difficult to change, then leaders need to pay far more attention to the role of values in the hiring process. Leaders have to chose, rather than develop people with values and beliefs that match their company’s culture.