Are You A Good Boss or a Bad Boss?
Are you a good boss or a bad boss?
If you’ve already downloaded my brochure, Coaching for Enhanced Business Performance, you’ll have noticed I included a quote from Daniel Goleman, expert on Emotional Intelligence, that goes as follows:
Self-awareness of leadership abilities was greatest for CEO’s of the best-performing companies and poorest for CEO’s of the worst performers…
Goleman’s book, The New Leaders, was published in 2002 and it turns out that this statement is substantiated by the more recent findings of Robert Sutton, Professor of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University. In 2010 Sutton published a book entitled Good Boss, Bad Boss: How to be the Best and Learn From the Worst about which I recently saw an interesting introductory webinar.
Sutton says good bosses find ways to be in tune with their people and understand what it feels like for others to work with them. In his presentation, he summarises it thus:
To be a great boss, you’ve got to be remarkably self-obsessed. Not for egotistical or selfish reasons, but because staying ‘in tune’ with your people is a hallmark of great bosses.
You can watch Sutton talking about the key themes of his book in the You Tube video below.
Once you’ve watched the watched the video, you may want to ask yourself, how well aware are you of what it feels like to work for you?
Good Bosses and Bad Apples
Good Bosses and Bad Apples
Following on from my last post about Robert Sutton’s book, Good Boss, Bad Boss, another of Suttons’ observations about good workplace performance is that “bad is stronger than good” and, therefore, that:
It is more important to eliminate the negative than to accentuate the positive.
You may have come across the statistic about positive interactions needing to outnumber negative interactions by at least five to one in romantic relationships and marriages. Well it turns out that workplaces operate along similar lines.
Sutton draws on previous research, including that of the “bad apple” phenomenon, suggesting that negative people and experiences have stronger impacts than positive ones. As he puts it in his presentation:
Negative emotions, laziness, and stupidity are destructive and contagious.
How would your boss fare in being assessed against Sutton’s criteria? – You can find out here http://goodbadboss.com/ in his Boss Reality Assessment Survey System (BRASS).
If you’re really daring, you could even ask your team to rate you and report back with their findings!
What Motivates Us
The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us At Work and at Home
“The Surprising Truth…” is the title of this video. Is it surprising to you? You can decide for yourself…
If you’ve come across motivation-hygiene theory, some of the ideas of Buckminster Fuller, or intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, the concepts may be somewhat familiar; but the video comes at this from the perspective of economics, rather than psychology.
The presentation also illustrates how higher pay actually leads to a reduction in performance. And that bad things can result from this.
I have some personal opinions about remuneration that includes a high proportion of performance-related pay, precisely because of the short-termism I have witnessed in some such circumstances. But take a look and make up your own mind.
The video presentation walks through these concepts in a fun and clear way, and I’m sure you’ll find it well worth the 10½ minutes it takes to watch.
Enjoy!