THREE SIGNS YOU’RE A FEAR-BASED LEADER (& WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT)
There are many articles on leadership failures (and you should read them). But here are three primary signs of fear-based leadership that I’ve identified through experience. Sometimes folks genuinely don’t realize these things are happening, because we are repeating organizational culture in a society that is inequitable, and this post is for you.
1. People are having meetings about how to handle you. You have clear preferences and there is a decision-making hierarchy. That’s okay, as long as your leadership style doesn’t create extra labor for people on your staff or create uncertainty that you’ll be open to important information about your operations. Maybe your team hops on a call to strategize giving you news that that you won’t like. Maybe they know your preferences so try to figure out how to make an idea sound like yours or link it to something that you’ve said/done/written. The point is, people are burning your organization’s time because they can’t show up and express their personal and professional concerns to you without worrying about the repercussions. This is magnified when people with marginalized identities will be perceived as “hostile” or “emotional” regardless of how they present their arguments. The impact of all of these machinations is that your staff are less engaged, efficient, and effective at their jobs.
2. There is an “out” group—and its membership is an open secret. Some of this is clear because you telegraph it in shared spaces by skipping eye contact, disengaging, getting up or checking email every time the person speaks – you probably know you’re doing it or can become aware of doing it if it is unconscious behavior. Either way, when this behavior lines up with withholding information or opportunity from a member of the out-group, you’re sending a clear message to the “cuspers” who watch you reward or withhold your attention and power. This is magnified when the favored in-group share identities and backgrounds with you. Even if the out-group members show themselves out (or are pushed out), there will be new cuspers joining the organization and watching how to gain power through your attention. The impact of this is that people learn quickly to stifle their ideas unless they can align it with yours (see above).
3. You point to unnamed people outside of the organization to justify your decisions. When internal issues are raised, you point to external people (who are usually not specific or named) who agree with you. For nonprofits, this is often means you bring up you members or constituents – we don’t know how they’d feel about this, so we’re going to keep doing what we’re doing. In other cases, your decision-making authority gets a lot muddier – we’ll need to take this to our board – when you don’t agree with the course of action or the issue that folks are raising. In other cases, you reference people you’ve gotten advice from outside the organization – people from your network who are hearing your interpretation of the issue. Many of these behaviors are justifiable but when a pattern emerges, it’s clear to people who are paying attention. The impact is that your team will perceive that you’re leaning on unnamed external people who agree with your call rather than trusting their input.
So what’s next? The tactics and process stuff is easy—there are firms that will help support you with that. Apply for a leadership development program. Hire a firm to help you assess your organizational culture. Invest in EDI training for your leadership and staff. Engage in strategic planning to ensure that you have power dynamics in mind when you set priorities, ask for input, or create opportunities for staff.
The personal work is harder. If you sense any of the signs above are true for you, here are some reminders and touchpoints for your leadership:
Don’t overcorrect! Not sure what to do? Careful of engaging in binary thinking and just doing the “opposite” behavior in response to feedback. Folks are asking for transparency and inclusive decision-making? For most organizations, this doesn’t mean dissolving hierarchy or opening everything up to consensus voting. There are a host of points on the spectrum that you can decide to occupy. Instead, be open. Share that you’re working on creating more transparency in decision-making. You may need to partner with someone with some distance (a coach, strategist, mentor) to help you practice more discernment in what is appropriate to share with others.
Adjust your expectations about how long it will take for people to respond to your changes. This one is tough. However long you expect for people to notice your intentional behavior changes, double it. However long you think it will take for them to trust that behavior to be consistent – double that. You should expect your behavior shift to take concentrated effort to aware and adjust, a longer time frame than feels fair (because we judge ourselves by our intent) for people to notice, and an even longer time for people over whom we hold positional power and influence to trust that we won’t revert when things get hard.
Let yourself be human. This is the one that a consultant, no matter how skilled, can help you with. I’ve worked with leaders who are clearly brilliant but unable to admit to themselves (never mind other people) that they have unconscious biases, behave in ways that aren’t inclusive, or communicate imperfectly. And that’s a problem, because that is all of us. You might have personal work to do in order to be open to your patterns and their root causes – and that is important to the ability to inspire others, accomplish shared goals, or step into challenging spaces. And if you do revert to old behaviors under stress or by force of habit, be kind to yourself but don’t use it as an excuse (“this is just how I am,”). Own it and show up again tomorrow.
