Self-doubt and the bullying boss
Johnnie Moore posts a touching analysis of what drives bullying bosses in organizations. Some recent research concludes that a perceived sense of incompetence can cause people to lash out against others.
This has been my experience. Our culture demands answers, expertise and bold confidence in making decisions. Most people are trained starting in pre-school that these traits are in the domain of the individual and that your success depends on them.
What is missing is training in asking questions, seeking help and acting from clarity. In schools, these practices are forbidden in exam rooms, where students are evaluated on their progress. You are not allowed to ask questions, to ask for help, or borrow other’s ideas. All of that is considered “cheating.”
The stress that comes from needing to perform as a solo act can be huge and the resulting manifestation of this stress can be toxic. I have worked with and under both kinds of leaders and once worked with one leader who started collaborative and curious and evolved into a frightened bully. It seems to me that these individuals that suffered did so alone, with the thought that as a leader, they should somehow carry the load by themselves.
In a world in which nothing is certain, and answers are elusive, these expectations will always result in stress. I can find it in myself, when I step into new work, at a new level, how my anxiety rises. This is why, when I am doing something new, I almost always work with friends.
My take away from this piece is that relationship and work are equally important. To sacrifice relationship[ building for “outcomes” is to not only jeopardize the sustainability of good work, but to create a climate in which good work is unlikely to ever get done.
You ARE allowed to borrow others’ ideas, though. As long as you properly cite them and give recognition to those that originated them. You’re not allowed to put down ideas as if they are your own if they were not, in fact, your own. And, in fact, academic research is heavily based on augmenting the findings of others with your own research. But in any good research, you are required to do a literature survey to find out what has already been done in your chosen field of inquiry — first so that you don’t repeat it, but also so that you know how you can be useful to the field.
Further, in undergrad education you are mostly working with the ideas of others. You are not meant to be particularly original, so the idea that you can’t borrow others’ ideas is wrong. But you are expected to acknowledge them, and you are expected to work with authoritative sources (i.e. not John Smith in the seat next to me). You are meant to become knowledgeable in the field as it currently exists so that you can move onto originality in your Masters and Ph.D studies.
So, in undergrad education, it’s essential that you prove that YOU have become knowledgeable in the field and not that someone else has become knowledgeable and you copied their answers.
But, also, there is a collaborative component in many undergrad programs. Business, especially, because it almost always leads to employment and employers expect collaboration in business. Group work is not uncommon, either. Another reality, though, is that the undergrad model was designed to prepare you for research toward a Masters degree and not for employment. Universities have become defacto training schools, but they were not designed that way.
And Masters research is collaborative — you work under the supervision of a research supervisor, and often with other students with the same research interests. As the goals get larger, so does the sphere of collaboration. But, at the undergrad level, you are working toward becoming a member capable of functioning independently.
In the organizational context, I think there are broader problems. If you don’t offer career paths for ambitious people other than those in management, you will get unsuitable people going into management. And if you allow nepotism to play a significant part in hiring decisions, you will get incompetent people into management positions and they will blow their top when they can’t understand anything that is going on around them. Nepotism also tells people that having top ability will not get them the best job.
I don’t see much wrong with the system as it is now. Most of the defects are cultural ones — our culture is in decline and we are trying to put band aids on the symptoms.
But, as we are not about to give up, I think that the right incentives need to be there — to offer employment to people that are capable of doing it and make sure the ones that can’t do anything well at all are either in institutions, in jail, or are a state of policed homelessness. Do everything you can to weed out nepotism. Preserve the threat of homelessness — do something, or you may starve to death. Real consequences need to be there for those that capable but aren’t willing to work earnestly. And then let people decide how they will become employed.