There are many types of bad bosses, but timid bosses can prevent the entire team from working smoothly.
Editor’s note: This article comes from WeChat public account “Harvard Business Review” ( ID: hbrchinese) by HBR-China.
There are many types of bad bosses, but timid bosses can prevent the entire team from working smoothly. Such bosses also praise bad performance and often avoid difficult problems. In order to gain the loyalty of employees, they agree with any ideas put forward by employees. I used to work with an executive, and employees called him a “wall grass” because he was easily controlled by anyone who walked into his office. It is conceivable how miserable his subordinates were, so he gave him such an awful nickname. He couldn’t take a stand, and the team often didn’t know why he made the decision.
In fact, this is not uncommon. We conducted a 10-year study involving more than 2,700 corporate executives. In my research, I have found that more executives avoid using power than using it for their own benefit. Surprisingly, 60% of executives say that their subordinates give them more power than they think they have, which makes them very distressed; 57% of executives believe that the decisions they need to make as superiors It is more complicated and more risky in the imagination, and 61% of executives believe that their subordinates have too much demand and they have too little time, but if they refuse their needs, they will leave a subordinate with a bad impression. I feel guilty about it.
We found three shortcomings in timid leaders: Want to please others, avoid failure, and avoid difficult decisions. In fact, these shortcomings will have a negative impact on subordinates, but many companies often beautify these shortcomings and treat them as harmless habits.
If your boss is often upset by these shortcomings, it is not wise to ignore them. Over time, this will affect your career and discourage your courage. Subordinates are instinctively accustomed to the company’s culture, so you may unconsciously imitate the behavior of your boss. If people around you avoid it, or if you fully accept the actions of your boss, you will also become timid to some extent, even without you realizing it.
Next, I will provide some suggestions that can help you avoid the negative effects of a timid boss.
Remember, don’t say bad things about your boss with your colleagues. In the face of a cowardly boss, employees can’t help but laugh at him, gossip about him or use him. If your boss often annoys or embarrasses the team, most of your colleagues will scramble to give him a nickname in the back ground to disparage him.
Do you really want to participate in this team behavior? You need to consider that doing so is risky. No matter how many people are involved in this behavior, once you are involved, you show others who you are. Rather than demeaning your boss with your colleagues, study your boss’s behavior carefully. What makes bosses so timid? What would you do if you were also your boss now? How do you make difficult choices today, deal with conflicts, and learn from lessons learned? If you suspect that your team does not respect you, what changes will you make? Watch your boss’ behavior carefully and reflect on your current or future decisions, which will be very beneficial to your development. When you become a boss in the future, you will know that these thoughts have great value.
In order not to become timid, make yourself a role model for the team. There are many forms of timidity, such as fear of facing failure, fear of rejection, and conflict with others. And our human instinct is to seek harmony, avoid conflict, and keep in touch with others, which deepens our fear of failure, conflict, and loneliness. But as a supervisor, you need to understand that these difficult trade-offs, negative feedback, and occasionally obvious mistakes are all inevitable parts of your job. It takes courage to accept this. After all, one can stand some trials. If your boss can’t withstand this test, as a subordinate, you should be vigilant and avoid following in the footsteps of your boss. If you find yourself afraid to express your opinions at a meeting, or to make difficult decisions under the influence of a team, then this may indicate that you are also becoming timid.
Redouble your efforts to make a difference in the right way. Facing a difficult decision, try to talk about it openly in front of your colleagues and let them know what the difficulties are. After these exercises, you will no longer be timid and become more and more brave. You will be an example for everyone. Although this may make you feel uncomfortable, no matter how you take the lead, you will play an underestimated role.
Inform your boss directly about your needs. Your hope is that your boss can make a decisive decision, can execute the plan consistently, and can clearly arrange the tasks. Your idea is reasonable. And when your thinking fails, you can be frustrated because you can’t bring positive change to the team. Although it is difficult to raise these ideas directly with your boss, it works. It takes a lot of courage. I provided for a woman in an institutionConsulting services, I found that she did this well. She said to her superiors, “I appreciate the importance the team thinks of you. I think if I can clearly understand your expectations and the direction of the next work, I will have confidence in my work. Therefore, in At the end of the meeting, it would be very helpful for me to have a clear review of what we have discussed, the decisions we have made, and the actions we are responsible for. If you also feel that this summary section is feasible, I hope to include it in our agenda. “This new approach has had a great impact, greatly solving their teams’ difficult decisions and inconsistent collaboration.
Recognize your fear of change. How can you achieve the change you want without presenting ideas? We are used to expressing our dissatisfaction with our bosses in private, thinking that if they are not qualified for the job, they should not be bosses. As the days passed and the boss’s timidity became the norm, it became more difficult for us to put forward new demands to him. However, once we stop trying to become part of the problem, then we must bear the consequences of our own needs being unmet. It is natural for us to feel fear. This fear often arises because of fear that the boss will not make the change we want.
However, I often find that many teams facing this situation have new fears, and this fear is even more serious. We know that as the boss changes, the team will change in many ways: if the boss becomes clear and decisive, the team member will need to take more responsibility; if the boss is willing to accept different opinions, the team member will have to start providing More opinions. Sometimes, we believe that our boss will never change because we are afraid of making a change. Instead of holding the victim’s mindset, it is better to recognize the reality, that is, the change of the boss will make himself bear more, and actively respond to challenges. Making this change can be difficult, but compared to the consequences of not wanting to change, it’s not that difficult.
Determine the overall level of cowardice within the company. Sometimes timid bosses are only an isolated phenomenon, while other times this timidity reflects the culture of the entire company. In order to decide whether you want to be long-term in this company, it is important that you understand the problem you want to solve. If your boss’s cowardly behavior is an anomaly, then higher-level executives than your boss may be more or less aware of the problem.
In this case, you can wait for the company to take action, or look for opportunities in other courageous and open-minded teams. However, if a culture of timidity has become the norm across the company, then you need to consider how much longer you will be here. Immersing in this cowardly culture may unknowingly have a deeper adverse effect on you until you re-enterYou will only realize these consequences when you are a company that values courage. So the sooner you face a cowardly company, the less remedial work you have to do.
Each supervisor has some flaws that need to be tolerated by employees. But timidity is a particularly noteworthy flaw whose side effects can have a lasting effect on your reputation and career. Don’t take boss’s cowardice as a harmless problem. Be wary of such bosses who give up their power in order to make themselves more popular and for so-called harmony. They may destroy the future of the entire organization, and your future.
Author introduction
Ron Carucci is the co-founder and managing partner of consulting firm Navalent, who helps CEOs and executives of many companies drive organizational, leadership, and industry change.
Ron is also the author of eight best-selling books, including Rising to Power: The Journey ofExceptional Executives, which once topped Amazon’s sales charts.
Liu Jingshan ｜ Translation Zhou Qiang ｜ School