Right, enough showing off. It’s time to pool our expertise, knowledge, experience and resources to help those on the receiving end of the Coronavirus-driven dark side leadership behaviour.
What’s become very clear over the last week is that many managers and leaders have already ‘flipped’ to the dark side. This refers to the recognised stark change that can happen when managers and leaders that normally deliver in the way they have been trained to, but when under significant pressure, significant uncertainty and/or feeling out of their depth, revert to their untrained, more desperate style of transactional behaviours.
In this mode power is abused. Controlling, threatening, intimidating words, actions, and inferences are communicated and those on the receiving end are very clear that there is no room for manoeuvre. They can no longer reason with this person or seek help or support from that line manager. The are expected to Just F*****g Do It.
With resources being stripped away with furloughing, remote working and illness, workloads are piling up on those that are left and now many are finding themselves on the receiving end of this callous behaviour.
I’m asking you to engage with this challenge to support people on the receiving end to help them get through this with their mental health intact, as the bare minimum.
And we need to help those managers and leaders who are struggling to cope, which is causing their personality traits to flip to the dark side. How do we help them hold onto the truth that you can’t bully people into performance and what are the best way to find new ways through is to engage teams positively?
Please share your advice, resources, thoughts etc.
I pledge to craft the ‘kit’ you provide into a resource that I will then share back so you can use it, share it, pass it on to those in need. Or, I’m happy for someone else to lead the way. We just really need to help address this situation now. We can’t let 2020 employment conditions become more like 1820 with tech.