My Achy Breaky Boss

Once upon a nightmare, in a distant place called CorporateLand, there was a bright and shiny new emperor who came into the land to rescue the people from their distress and bring forth prosperity to all.

He came in valiantly. He came with purpose. He came to usher in a new corporate tone to relieve the grieving from their oppression of economic cutback gloom. He came and made his debut to the gathered masses of corporate managers in an assembly of the hopefully thrashed in a New Meeting of CorporateLand enlightenment.

He was called by the assembled a name that inspired hope. He was called “The New Leader.”

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Day One

The New Leader’s aura sparkled with glistening assurance of steadfast optimism. His initial claims to the assembled stood for things that would raise everyone up as if they were all lowly boats resting in a mire at low tide. He had so much talent on his resume and so much promise portrayed in his introduction when he arrived on the scene that when he spoke everyone listened for clear signs of personal prosperity and freedom from the bondage that they had so long endured. Everyone was optimistic and heartened with the idea of newness, freshness and boldness that this new emperor would bring to them in their land of fear and economic dismay.

So, the New Leader came to the amassed. He stood before them and opened his heart to them. He revealed his love of God and Country and vowed to be an open book for all the land to see. His transparency and vulnerability were signs of true inner strength for all who could see and hear his clarion voice. All could sense his noble cause for a plan for prosperity and victory for his entire CorporateLand.

Day Two

But alas, it couldn’t last. The New Leader came in on a white horse; he seemed strident and true. But by the second scene, everything had changed. The brief introduction to the New Leader transitioned into a dreadful scene of hopelessness and fear in only the scantiest of time. In a flash, the mask had come off and the White Knight had jumped off of his whitewashed steed and shown that he had come from the dark side.

Hopes were dashed in a moment as the serpent appeared from behind his mask and the shine vanished from the exterior of the man at the helm. The “New Leader” was just a facade for opening day for a trickster who had other designs on the empire. The “New Leader” was just a pirate in disguise coming on board to pillage the bounty for himself and his crew.

Rather than a mantra of prosperity through collective effort and supportive cooperation from positive strategic actions, as intimated in the first address to the masses, a big switch to fear and intimidation came through in a secondary address. The “New Leader” communicated his new edict to carry out a stack-ranking performance policy, nicknamed “rank-and-yank,” to increase productivity. This is a system where every manger was now required to rank their employees based on performance metrics and fire the bottom 10 percent of their team members every year for poor performance. The thinking is that the ones who replace your bottom 10 percent are “bound to be better than their predecessors.”

No white knight. No more horse. Just a sharp ax.

In certain economic climates and under certain economic environments, the “rank-and-yank” system can provide improvements in short-term productivity yields. But in the medium term however, results from this kind of effort turn around and the insidious effects of a poisonous system begin to take hold on productivity numbers. Many feel that stank ranking is just a poor excuse for trying to disguise inept or poor management practices.

Think about this: If you were on a team where 10% of your team was going to be fired based on performance numbers, how motivated would you be to help other team members get better performance measurements relative to yours? Self-preservation dictates that sabotage, more than team-building, would be a more logical behavior for the average person.

Old Playbook

When the new boss comes in with an old playbook, few individual contributors or mangers can get excited about contributing to a team effort. Moreover, individual performance actually turns to isolated silos of self-preserving attitudes that foster fear and a scarcity mindset. Managers eventually create systems whereby they retain their favorites and create no-win scenarios for those who they eventually let go. Politics, envy, backstabbing, greed, selfishness, and coward-ness are all rewarded. Selflessness, helpfulness, sacrifice, forgiveness, mentoring, and nurturing environment are all punished. Short-sightedness wins over patient results.

Be a jerk, keep your job. Help someone else, lose your job. Isn’t this brilliant!

Day Three

As you might expect, the fear rolled down hill and the frightened first lieutenants began scheming to keep their jobs. On day three, an email went out from a direct report of the New Leader (with the New Leader CC’d on the e-mail) directing  the entire team to no longer use the “Out of Office” feature on their email while on vacation. After all, she wondered aloud, “What kind of message would that convey to our customers?” She added “We should all be available 24 x 7.”

As one might imagine, the shiny white night who had so much promise on day-one is now vilified by many in CorporateLand. He is now actually “downsizing” long-term employees and replacing them with lower cost newbies. He is also brining in his posse from OtherCorp to fill senior positions under his wing in CorporateLand. For everyone else, moral is spiraling down and people are planning their eventual mass exodus.

Ahhhhh… if this weren’t so predictable…

The once-promising boss who seem to have a heart-of-gold turned out to be nothing more than an average knucklehearted leader. Too bad. He could have instilled loyalty, enthusiasm, and dedication. Instead, he broke my achy breaky heart.

Have you ever had your heart broken by a leader who turned out to be just full of hot air. Or just full of himself? How did that turn out? What does it feel like to have your heart broken by a leader who lets you and your organization down after showing such promise? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

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Tom Schulte is Executive Director of Linked 2 Leadership &
CEO of Recalibrate Professional Development in Atlanta, GA USA.
He can be reached at [email protected]

Image Source: craftzine.com, writespirit.net, newsimg.bbc.co.uk