Your face sounds familiar

By Egay Uy

THE CEO and founder of Human Workplace, and author of Reinvention Roadmap, Ms. Liz Ryan, wrote that there are signs the man at the top rung of the organization is a weak manager.  Ms. Ryan is also a contributor to Forbes, a global media company focusing on business, investments, technology, entrepreneurship, leadership, and lifestyle.

She wrote that the best organizations know that people do not become leaders just because they got promoted.  And I’d venture to say fake leaders let their job titles do the job for them instead of them doing the job.  Sounds familiar?

To paraphrase Ms. Ryan, quite a lot of poor managers think that being a leader means telling people what to do.  Surely, any fool can bark out orders while a real leader is someone who takes the time and invests the energy to build trust on a team because trust will take a team much further than fear ever could.  And by team is meant not just the sibling or favored employees.

While true leaders listen to their team members and coach the latter rather than threaten them with poor performance review or dismissal, unfortunately there are identifiable heads of organizations who run their group exactly the opposite way. They manage through fear. And that fear is clearly written on the faces of the employees, especially those who say “I always look forward to five o’clock so I can leave this god-forsaken office.”

Bad leaders manage through fear either directly or indirectly.  And worse, if that management style is cascaded to and practiced by siblings or favored employees in the organization, the atmosphere of fear becomes more pronounced.  And the professional life of those who do not toe the line are in a precarious situation.

Ms. Ryan said that a fearful, weak manager is readily recognizable when we run into one because they remind us of schoolyard bullies we knew years ago.  Let me add that a weak manager also tolerates others, siblings or favored employees, do the bullying of others in the organization.  Sounds familiar?

Ms. Ryan offers several signs the boss is a weak manager.  When an employee makes a sound suggestion, the weak managers say, “That’s not your job!” because they are afraid a lowly employee might have a better idea than they had.

Secondly, and which should be the first sign, is when something goes wrong, the weak manager immediately looks for someone to blame – pass the buck to some others, say five employees?  Sounds familiar?

Another sign is that a weak manager makes it clear that employees serve at his or her pleasure – or that of a sibling or favored group – and can be replaced at any time.  Weak managers use fear as a control mechanism because of their own fear that if they didn’t keep employees worrying about their job security, the employees might start telling more truth than the weak manager can handle.

And, a weak manager cannot look in the mirror because they cannot admit to having made a mistake and therefore they cannot learn anything new.  Fake leaders and their self-proclaimed alter egos in the organization bully employees all the time because they do not have the muscles to manage any other way – because they are weak.

So, if your manager is a weakling, your flame will never grow as high as it can grow when you work under someone whose greatest fear is that one day, you will find your voice.

Sounds familiar?