WHY MOST LEADERS NEED TO SHUT UP AND LISTEN?

Andy Stanley said a while ago:

“LEADERS WHO DON’T LISTEN WILL EVENTUALLY BE SURROUNDED BY PEOPLE WHO HAVE NOTHING TO SAY”

I cannot agree more. He is absolutelly right. This is not just a personal statement, it’s a fact hard to accept by many holding a leadership role. Everyone in working class today knows what I am talking about. Just type on Google „my manager is“ and immediately the following auto-complete options pop up : „toxic“, „ bullying me“, „incompetent“, „ rude“ and so on, most of these as negative traits. There are also a lot of opinions surveys that produce similar results.

Gallup which is a global polling firm that periodically collects attitudinal data from employees all over the world, repeatedly confirmed by their multiple survey results that 75% of people quit their jobs because of their direct line manager. Such results reveal the bad leadership as the Nr.1 cause of voluntary turnover worldwide. According to the same study, for instance in the U.S.A. for example 65% of Americans say they would rather change their boss than get a pay raise. This shortsighted response fails to recognize  that the next boss might not be any better, but worse. This is general valid in Europe as well. Actually with all the events happend in the last 3 years this percentage is today for sure more than 65%. So that makes me just confrim the following statement:

“A BAD LEADER CAN TAKE A GOOD STAFF AND DESTROY IT, CAUSING THE BEST EMPLOYEES TO FLEE AND THE REMAINDER TO LOSE ALL MOTIVATION“

In small and mendium companies (with few tens until 500 people in staff) this phenomenon is unfortunately turning bad for employees quite fast, because at any sign of loosing some market share or simply because some delay in project planning due to incompetent management the first ones to be laid off are the regular employees which actually do their job well. The mentality of many managers is that job-market is abundant of job seekers therefore in their mind it is not a problem to hire new people when things come back to normal, meaning when the company recovers its market share and has a little bit of profit.

In big (multinational) corporations (with an employed staff more of than 500 people) it happens quite often too. In this case such companies loose a huge amount of money due to too many poor, unskilled and very low trained managers. Big corporations have literally too many completely unnecessary management position at many levels.

That’s the reason why companies try to cover the poor leadership by launching a recruiting campaign where they push a lot o fake propaganda by posting all sort of job openings and lying very credible the job-seekers that if they apply of a job at the company there will be a lot of benefits for them and wonderful career opportunities, brainwashing the candidates as they will join the perfect workplace. In very much cases I’ve met many people (as job seekers) who told me that they talked about something at the interview and after signing the contract and starting the job, they ended up in doing something else than the company representative promised them during the recruiting process. It happened to me, multiple times too. 🙂

I am sure in most cases when you are looking for a job, it is very likely that at one point usually at in the 1st round you interview when you enter in a new recruting process, you’ll be asked: why did/do you change jobs?. Of course situations can be for personal reasons or different unfavorable circumstances not necessaily linked to the job itself but in most cases people change jobs because of their bosses. Obviously you don’t say this at the interview. Even if indeed except your personal situation the main reason is your boss behaviors, being asked this, you must be quick at lying professonally and just give a quick credible statement as neutral as possible you can.

“PEOPLE DON’T QUIT JOBS, THEY QUIT BOSSES”

We might also ask ourselves the as follows:

“What to make of the obvious fact that most “leaders” inept or otherwise, are male?”

(well… this word ” leader” is a too high title for many with this rank – difference between being a leader and a manager is quite big, I rather prefer to use the word « Manager» instead of « Leader »),  

Since women make up around 50% of the adult population and throughout much of the industrialized world, outnumber and outperform men in college, we might expect at least equal representation of women and men in leadership positions. And yet the reality disagrees. In most parts of the world the notion of leadership (or board management) is so masculine that most people would struggle to name a famous female business leader. The under-representation of women in leadership is not due to their lack of motivation, but to our inability to detect incompetence in men. When men are considered for leadership positions, the same traits that predict their downfall are commonly mistaken – even celebrated – as a sign of leadership potential or talent. Consequently men’s character flaws help them emerge as leaders because they are disguised as attractive leadership qualities. Is this really the case in general? Of course not. It’s not even close.

Traits like overconfidence and self-absorption should be seen as red flags. But instead they prompt us to say «Ah, there’s a charismatic fellow ! He’s probably leadership material». I don’t want to enter in politics field, but to be more specific both business and politics is a surplus of incompetent men in charge and this surplus reduces opportunities for competent people – women & men – while keeping the standards of leadership depressingly low. In the world there are many rich countries in natural resources and people with great potential, but they are doomed to stay in poverty due to their very weak leadership. Many companies are exactly like such countries. Multinational corporations still survive because they have capital reserve but in the Start-Ups World many go bankrupt and simply disappear in their first 5 years of existence. All these just because they promote at high levels the management incompetence and the lack of vision on mid and long term.

If you have ever worked in an office, then you have very probably experienced a particular form of bad management displayed by bossed who seem unaware of their limitations and are clearly and unjustifiably pleased with themselves. They are overconfident, abrasive and very much in awe of themselves, particularly in light of their actual talents. They are their own biggest fans by some distance.

Instead of treating leadership like some kind of glamorous career destination or personal reward for reaching the top, we should remember that leadership is a resource for the organization – it is good only when employees benefit from it, by boosting their motivation and performance. Elevating the standards of leadership should not be the top priority. In business a bad manager significantly affects subordinates by reducing their engagement – their enthusiasm for their jobs and the meaning and purpose people find at work. There are many surveys performed which report that a staggering 70% of employees are not engaged at work and that only 4% of these employees have anything nice to say about their bosses. Therefore it is quite clearly  that good leadership is not the norm, but the exception. Productivity loss is not the only downside of disengagement. Disengaged employees are also more likely to quit their jobs. Employee turnover incurs a huge burden, including separation costs, damaged morale and productivity losses associated with the time and resources needed to find and train newcomers. If the leader takes care of its employees, the employees will take care of business, not the other way around. The leaders must always “eat last”. That’s just a short difference between a “manager” (who most of the time tries to keep everything for himself) and a leader.