less you have been living in a cave, you can't have failed to notice the furore over the recent bullying accusations levelled at prime minister. But is this just a storm in a political tea-cup?However, there seems to be more to this than meets the eye - and it while it certainly provides plenty of fodder for the Tories to batter the battle-weary leadership (again!) the issue of bullish leaders is not a new one.
So here are the 'facts': According to Rawnsley's book, Cabinet Secretary, Sir Gus O'Donnell "felt compelled to directly confront the Prime Minister and give him a stern 'pep' talk about his conduct towards the staff."
This then allegedly led to Brown screaming and swearing at staff, grabbing an aide by the collar of his shirt, pushing aside a secretary who he felt wasn't typing fast enough and taking over the keyboard. It certainly appears that public perception of Brown as a dour, cantankerous and moody leader may not be far off the mark, but could also be masking a somewhat more firey character.
What is certain is that Labour can ill-afford any bad press in the run up to the elections and allegations of bullying should always be taken seriously. Having said that, 10 Downing Street is no stranger to fraught temper tantrums and downtrodden staff. In fact, our political history has revealed that many of our great leaders were a little on the short-tempered side - understandable when you think of the stress they must be under.
For example, Winston Churchill was not a well-liked man within the walls of Number 10. Not only was he rude and obtuse, he was a heavy drinker who expected his staff to work as hard as him. Referred to such things as a 'rogue elephant; Churchill may have led us to glory on the battlefield, but he also left behind a few casualties in his own ranks too.
And according to staff memoirs, Anthony Eden, who suceeded Sir Winston was no better - from mood swings to hysterical outbursts and screaming rages, he was certainly no mellow fellow.
Unsurprisingly, the list goes on: Harold Wilson and Margaret Thatcher were no angels, with the latter gaining a reputation for embarrasing Cabinet staff by shouting at them in public, however no such accusations were ever thrown at her, no matter how terrified of her the staff were.
So is this highly pressured career the reason people to act in such ways? Do you have to be a bully to be a great leader? The contre-arguement is of course that Hitler, Stalin, Pinnochet, Mussolini and Mao to name but a few, were also 'leaders' who were tyrannical bullies, and while I wouldn't compare our past prime ministers to that scale of cruelty and inhumane behaviour, there certainly seems to be a devout passion displayed by all of them: Passion for their party/cause - however ill-judged it may be.
What we need to examine is whether the line has been crossed, whether damage has been done to individuals that cannot be undone and whether we just accept that great leaders (or not so great) are a passionate, stressed out and angry bunch of people who may well explode when the pressure is on?
But arguably, if a leader is loved, appreciated, highly-regarded, respected by their staff, possesses the honesty and conviction to get a nation behind them, would the staff be running to report such internal scuffles?
Is Brown just another victim of our PC society: Where there is blame, there's a claim? Or should we reassess how our modern leaders function - and keep the bullies out of power?
I'd be interested to hear your thoughts...
14 Responses
Bullying
I think that the writer misses an important point. Leaders will never be perfect – agreed – and we should not idolise them either. But any form of bullying at work is inappropriate and in most workplaces there are established procedures for being able to say ‘stop’. However if the prevailing culture is low on trust and openness these policies on their own are insufficient protection to those on the receiving end of bullying. That is where it becomes a leadership issue with leaders role modelling the acceptable behaviours and challenging inappropriate ones.
But if the boss is the bully, the culture becomes toxic with ambivalent attachments generating fear and uncertainty.
High performance workplaces achieve outstanding results as well as being great places to work
Tony
Bullying
First of all I would question the ethics in an organisation divulging supposedly confidential information regarding the Prime Minister or anybody else – hopefully this will be investigated. I do not, however, think anybody has the right to bully. Somebody who believes they could be PM obviously has high regard for themselves and should understand that everyone takes on a job for different reasons which is why they are paid very different salaries. GB might think he can run the country but he cannot do it in isolation so should treat a team with respect. Maybe he needs a course in NLP. Of course this may not be true and if so, as PM I think he probably needs to provide good evidence to that effect.
Leaders/Bullies
I have to start by saying I have no idea of the pressures and stresses that would be experienced by somebody in such a position as the Prime Minister. What I do believe is that whilst we may not be responsible for some situations we find ourselves in, we are responsible for what we say and do in those situations. Using position and the reason of pressure does not admonish any of us from our behaviour. We all say or do things we regret from time to time, we are human after all, I would be interested in the frequency of these behaviours and the effects on those around them.
Sometimes pressure needs to be exerted to move things along, hence performance management and set criteria and goals. When leaders set criteria for others and then demonstrate the opposite then the words "great" and "Leader" will be replaced with "hypocrite" and "Tyrant".
If the secretary is not performing at a speed, accuracy required and determined when recruited (and can be out performed by the Prime Minister himself) then something’s wrong! (tempted to suggest a job swap, however…). Were the expectations clear? So many questions about the process.
Yes passion is necessary along with a drive to get things done and make a difference. Professional standards/criteria and leading by example are the ways that this should be manifested, not physical or verbal abuse of lower status employees, who are there to contribute to the overall goal.
Pick a better strategy to get what you want and maintain your self respect, that will get you the results you want and will gain you the title "great Leader"
Is it Gordon Brown’s dark side we are hearing about ?
The Hogan Development Survey (HDS) helps people identify when their strengths during times of:
become their achiles heel. When does enthusiasm tip into volatility, when does vivacious become dramatic. This is revealed in the HDS instrument often referred to as the dark side.
A previous posting by Geoff Trickey explains this in full
https://www.trainingzone.co.uk/topic/leadership/11-reasons-why-leadership-fails
John Dell’Armi
Bullying
I suggest there is a difference between bullying and the behaviour of a person who is impatient and overzealous in their efforts to get a job done. A bully is a person who enjoys and exploits the opportunity to exercise power over others, often in petty but nevertheless damaging ways. Bullying can never be excused.
The expression of impatience and frustration is of course a weakness and whether we excuse it to some extent depends on how much we identify with and consider important the objectives of the frustrated and impatient person.
If we are substantially in agreement with the objectives of a particular project, perhaps seeing it as vital for the future security of our society or well being of large numbers of people, then of course we can understand how someone trying to drive this project forward might become frustrated by incompetence, laziness, obtuseness etc.etc. of their colleagues and staff.
Some managers prefer to be popular with their staff but perhaps at the expense of being effective.
There is I am sure a balance to be struck, and from a purely personal point of view I am inclined to admire the West Wing style of leadership where we in general witness a leader who is well liked by their staff, but who inspires them to work at their very best – but that’s fiction isn’t it? The real world is more complicated.
Bullying, perception and mental toughness.
I agree that bullying is not acceptable – in the workplace, at school, at home, or anywhere.
What is interesting, though, is that one person’s perception of being bullied is sometimes another person’s perception of "banter" or an acceptable interaction. This is not to denigrate the feelings of the person who feels bullied, rather a recognition that it may be linked to each person’s relative scale of mental toughness or mental sensitivity. (see the links and research /downloads on mental toughness at http://www.aqr.co.uk for studies that have shown this, particularly in school children.) People and leaders in senior positions tend to have high levels of mental toughness because they need to be able to cope with (and perhaps enjoy?) the demands and stresses of the job. Where people have very high scores of mental toughness, which has been measured using the MTQ48 psychometric (again, see the AQR website for more information and background on the measure), their behaviour may seem appropriate to others with equally high levels of mental toughness, who feel comfortable and equal to react in a similar vein. However, to someone with medium levels of mental toughness or particularly for people who are highly mentally sensitive, their behaviour may seem inappropriate. People with very high levels of mental toughness can improve these relationships by raising their own awareness of how people are responding with them, so they can choose an appropriate way to interact with each person they are with at that moment.
I’m obviously not aware of the details of allegations or activity at No.10 so I am not in any way stating that this is happening there. I’m raising this point as I feel that an awareness and recognition that people have different perceptions of what feels like bullying (or not bullying) helps people to be more open to discussing the specific behaviours and situations, and how they come across and what could change, rather than defending or arguing whether or not someone has crossed the line.
I appreciate that it is not easy to change behaviour and habits of how one responds and behaves or to create a habit of being aware to choose how to behave appropriate to different people (whether you are highly mentally tough or highly mentally sensitive, as both extremes may be unhelpful states to experience in some situations). It is not easy but neither is it impossible. I think that having an awareness that it is possible and a desire to try goes a long way to making the first step.
Sue Mitchell
Director & Coach at Aeona. http://www.aeona.co.uk
Bullying or tough management?
The difference between bullying and tough management may not always be clear. You really need to consider two key questions:
* First, how pervasive is the behaviour? A one-off verbal outburst could potentially be understood and forgiven; ongoing behaviour and physical aggression cannot. Tough managers will apply their standards, however high they are, to all staff members while bullies often target one individual at a time.
* Second, what environment is the behaviour creating? Bullying creates an environment of fear, where the victim and other individuals walk on eggshells for fear of triggering an outburst. It can also create a climate of indifference or denial, where individuals who are not targeted by the bully convince themselves that the victim deserves the treatment, pretend that it is not happening, or convince themselves that it is not that big a deal.
Tough managers create an environment where individuals know what the standards are and work hard to achieve those standards set. Anyone who fails to meet those standards knows what to expect from the manager.
Tough managers are also open to feedback about their behaviour and can modify it when it is unproductive. Individuals who are being bullied find it difficult, if not impossible, to give the bully feedback about their behaviour, not least because bullying undermines the individual’s confidence. Bullies also tend to be very savvy about controlling their image, particularly with individuals above them in the organisational hierarchy, which makes it even more difficult for victims to come forward and convince others of the severity of the problem.
The best way to improve performance in an organisation is to create a performance management system that assesses individuals against the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ of performance:
* The ‘what’ of performance includes objectives, key performance indicators and targets
* The ‘how’ is the behaviour the organisation expects of its leaders.
Behavioural frameworks used for performance management should include both the positive expression of behaviours as well as the negative expression of those behaviours. For example CHPD’s High Performance Behaviour framework includes positive Influence – selling your ideas to others and looking for win-win solutions as well as negative Influence – belittling others’ ideas in an effort to make your own ideas look better.
Organisations that look only at the ‘what’ of performance almost inevitably drive a focus on short-term results, achieved through what often looks like bullying, while organisations that look at both the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ of performance drive sustainable results because their employees remain engaged even when times are tough.
Susan Salomone, leadership consultant at the Centre for High Performance Development (CHPD)
http://www.chpd.com
Bullying
I’ve been watching the storm blown up by the weekend’s No 10 bullying story with puzzled fascination. Sometimes I wonder whether I’m reading the same story as the commentators.
I’m really not interested in the party political angle to all this. But two things do bother me.
Firstly, UK law enshrines the right of all employees to be treated with dignity and respect at work. I really don’t buy the suggestion that it’s excusable to shout, scream and throw things under stress, or that people who don’t like being subjected to such behaviour are wimps and cry babies.
Yes, of course leaders do suffer stress at work, and don’t always deal with it well. I’ve been there myself – we’re all human. But isn’t the old adage ‘treat others as you’d want them to treat you’ is a good baseline to check ourselves out from? How can we expect to gain trust, respect and co-operation if people habitually feel afraid in our presence?
That brings me on to my second point. If you’re providing a confidential service to vulnerable, frightened people, you DON’T breach confidentiality under any circumstances. If an individual gives you explicit consent to take up their issue directly, that’s different.
For me it’s really important that people who are targeted by bullies learn how to recover their balance and find ways to feel OK about themselves despite being on the receiving end of less than dignifying behaviour.
(reprinted from my blog, http://annlewiscoaching.typepad.com/confidentleader/2010/02/bullying-confidentiality-and-hype.html)
Does HR and training create bullies (leaders)?
Leadership – the egos have landed
Has the cult of ‘leadership’ contributed to megalomaniac behaviour that ultimately led to the financial crisis? All of this leadership lark is quite recent. For years we got by with management training, good old sensible stuff about being nice, clear and organised. Then, around the Millennium, the training world went all evangelical about ‘Leadership’.
Now the last thing you want to do with a bloated ego is feed it a diet of hubris. These guys (and it’s mostly guys) lap it up – it turns them into Ken Low-like monsters. When you over-inflate a balloon it floats away and is no longer grounded. They think they’re omniscient and omnipotent.
Leadership training
Leadership training may be partly to blame. With no solid core of theory it’s a potpourri of ideas. The cult of leadership, a relatively recent phenomenon, was grabbed with glee by the training community. A mishmash of management theory, culled from a few airport management books, they put their slides together and became leadership zealots, simply padding out the word ‘Leadership’ into a course, a miscellany of mumb-jumbo. No end of half-baked leadership consultants, who couldn’t lead a dog up a garden path, came on strong. Suddenly, it made trainers feel that they were at the leading edge of the organisation, training the leaders of tomorrow. In fact, they were goading their leaders to act even more irresponsibly.
First there was massive confusion in the field, with theories covering almost every logical possibility. We have Charismatic, great man theories (born not made), Trait theories (key qualities), Contingency theories (look at the environment), Situational theories (choose differently for every situation), Behavioural theories (one can simple learn how to lead), Participative theories (collaborative and inclusive), Managerial theories (organise and reward), Transformational theories (leaders inspire followers). You pay your money and take your choice.
Complex behaviours and skills are reduced to simple geometric diagrams, a pyramid here, an interlocking circle here, a four quadrant typology there. Leadership training became a byword for contradictory theories and over-simplification. A few choice quotes are thrown in, preferably from historically famous leaders, some interactive exercises, straight out of traditional management courses and you’re off.
Leadership and risk
An insidious feature of some gurus and courses was that leaders were encouraged to be uber-risk-takers. Risk taking (sometimes under the guise of innovation) became a badge of honour. The slightest hint of weakness was frowned upon. This led to Leadership programmes that weren’t big on managing risk; that was left to Boards and governance bodies, packed with their chosen friends. Non-executives are largely the personal friends of executives in the UK, and the risk register seen as rather old-fashioned and quaint management method, given cursory treatment at board level. Actually the main risks sometimes don’t appear at all. In practice, leaders in banks couldn’t manage risk, because they couldn’t work out what risks they were running.
Leadership gurus: a culture of narcissism
Tom Peters, Marshall Goldsmith, Stephen Covey, Tony Robbins…. they are certainly part of the problem. (Funny how you don’t get women leadership gurus, a credit to their gender and good sense.) I‘d call these false prophets, as they are basically song and dance men, all performance and no substance. It’s good old fashioned preaching with stories, parables, miracle cures, and live performance.
Tony Robbins, a narcissistic Neanderthal, is typical. A tax cheating (convicted), plagiarising (convicted) fraud. His ideas on health are stupid, but harmless. What’s harmful is his use of bogus studies – he quotes a ‘Yale study’ that shows that the 3% of Yale students who wrote down financial goals became richer than the other 97% put together (actually an urban myth). His leadership nonsense is based on training’s shameful cult – NLP, and James Randi has famously exposed some of his techniques as snakeoil scams. This is what passes as high quality corporate motivational and leadership training.
Tom Peters is not far behind with his little parables and maxims. He’s an all too common type in this field – a man devoid of theory. His first book In Search of Excellence with its 7 ‘S’s and 43 excellent companies turned out to be complete rot. Over a third of these companies were in serious financial trouble within five years of the book being written. There was even a book called In Search of Stupidity that satired his approach. Peters had simply picked large behemoths that were dominant in their stable markets, as soon as these markets changed they were too big and stupid to change. He also confessed to having faked the data in the book.
Robin Sharma, lawyer turned leadership guru, with his little poems on the fridge door. The more expensive the speaker, the more fatuous the content.
Why are so many people suckered with this stuff? David Hume explained it all in his masterpiece essay On Miracles (1748). Firstly, we all have an overactive sense of wonder which means we are easily drawn into aspirational ideas, the more miraculous the better. Secondly, our gullibility is increased when we actually want to believe something, and the people who pay to see these guys talk, and buy their books, are believers before they start. Hume was talking about Jesus and religious superstition, but the parallel with leadership training is obvious.
Leadership gurus: a culture of celebrity
An offshoot from the culture of narcissism, leadership training became the last refuge of washed out celebrities and sports people. I can’t tell you how many dull sports stars of yesteryear I’ve heard mumbling out platitudes between their schoolboy anecdotes. Football players rarely play this game as they barely made it through high school. So we’re left with an assortment of oddball sport people. The problem here, is that many sports, such as golf, tennis, swimming, track etc. are devoid of key management skills. These are obsessive, solitary creatures, who spend much of their lives training in isolation. It’s a solipsistic world. Even in team sports, there’s a coach or manager who has to make the strategic decisions and get them organised.
Leaders: Type 1 Megalomaniacs
Fred Goodwin, ex-CEO of RBS, refused to use the word ‘learning’, insisting on ‘training’. This was the man who insisted on staff at the Clydesdale wearing the company tie, an egomaniac, proud of his ‘Fred the shred’ moniker. His bank, now 60% in public ownership, he managed on fear, with the HR department that could be best described as a casualty department. This is the leader who took out a writ against a Sunday newspaper because it had the temerity to question the wisdom of his megalomaniac monument building around the new HQ. In the end he turned out to be the leader who couldn’t calculate risk and took RBS’s share price from 442p to 50p, made £15.5 million in salary in four years, and walked away with a £8.4 million pension pot. Is he contrite and has he shown any remorse? No , Good-win is a bad loser – thankfully now shredded.
He’s only one of a whole rack of ‘bankers’ (you know what I mean) who trousered £54 million in just five years, others include; Adam Applegarth (Northern Rock), John Varley (Barclays), Stephen Green (HSBC) and Andy Hornby (HBOS).
Leaders: Type 2 Barrow boys
Is anyone seriously suggesting that Alan Sugar is anything other than an ill mannered boor? Do we really want to hang on his every bad word about making money? The Leader who said, about women, "You’re not allowed to ask, so it’s easy, just don’t employ them”. The whole ‘Apprentice’ thing looks decidedly grubby in this climate, with Sugar playing the bully and the participants devoid of intellect, talent and even good sense. If these are the ‘Leaders’ of tomorrow, god save us. This type will do anything to make money.
Leaders: Type 3 Crooks and hucksters
What about those four automobile CEOs who immediately after stating that they’ve laid off tens of thousands of workers and demanded billions in support, refuse to give up their fleets of private jets (yes fleets). These guys have annual salaries in the tens of millions and they only travel in private jets and some have negotiated that their wives will only travel in private jets. These guys had so little management insight that they continued to produce gas guzzling SUVs while foreign car makers decimated their market share. These leaders are self-indulgent crooks.
But the King of the hucksters is Ken Low or Enron fame. These guys deliberately set out to steal from customers and shareholders. It’s all about amassing personal wealth and nothing will stop them and their well-paid advisors (Andersons – remember those crooks?) from achieving their goals. I admire the US’s approach to this type of fraud – they haul them off in cuffs. In Europe, they get away with it.
Lions led by donkeys
‘Leadership training’ plays to a culture of narcissism and celebrity that feels the need to promote egos way beyond what is reasonable. It produces Type 1/2/3 leaders. It’s a world that says, ‘We’re all losers, so let’s worship the winners’. And where did these leaders take us? They robbed us and their organisations blind, with bonuses and share options disengaged from performance.
Cool, calm analysis and intellect was replaced by mission statements and hubris. These so called leaders had to behave like religious figures, exhorting others to strive for more, pushing everyone faster and faster. Missions replaced good sense and debt became a virtue, not a vice. Believe me these banks and investment companies all had ‘values’ and training on ethics. It would seem that it never got near their so-called leaders.
If we’re looking for academic leadership, we need look no further than Drucker, who hated the idea of ‘Leadership’ and ‘Leadership’ training, or Jim Collins, who took hard empirical evidence, from thousands of companies, to see what really made good leadership (not necessarily good individual leaders). Not surprisingly, his conclusions contradicted almost all of the ‘false prophets’. God leadership turns out to be good management. Steady, analytical, smart people who know how to deal with others. The good thing about Collins is his focus not on isolating good leadership but in seeing what makes a good organisation tick.
We could do worse than scrap ‘Leadership’ courses and all the hubris, and get back to simple, sensible management training.
Great leaders – great bullies?
I agree with all the comments everyone has made regarding bullying so I won’t repeat them!
I find it incredible that a Government that has introduced more legislation in the employee’s favour than any previous one should find its self in this position. I cannot comment on whether he or any of his cabinet are bullies, political reporting is just too mucky to sort out the truth from the hype.
The thing that shocked me most was the confidential helpline making comments, this is truly unacceptable in any circumstances and I suspect will have caused damage to their whole brand, if you are in a high profile organisation would you want to call that helpline?
When it is decided who runs the country and when we all start paying back the debt we have there will be some public spending cuts leading to job losses, people will feel bullied, has this story done anything to help others manage what is a truly terrible place to find yourself in?
Great leaders or great bullies
In her article, Verity Gough asks “do you have to be a bully to be a great leader?” Absolutely not. Yes, we need straight talking managers, but good managers should be aware of their management style and how the way they act is, and could be, interpreted by others.
Those whose management style is at the tougher end of the spectrum should ensure they aren’t doing things like setting unrealistic targets or deadlines or being prejudiced or discriminatory. This is where we stray into bullying territory.
That said, it doesn’t have to be all ‘softly softly’ when it comes to managing staff. My worry is that, in their efforts to avoid being seen as ‘bullies’ managers will think that being ‘nice’ to employees is a solution to all this. Good management isn’t about being ‘nice’ to employees or pandering to them, it’s about providing direction, communicating clearly and openly and making sure people are achieving the desired results. Employees must remember that first and foremost they are at work to perform the job they were hired to do, and sometimes, in the pursuit of results, a tougher line is necessary.
From an outside perspective it is impossible for me to judge whether Gordon Brown is a bully, and it would be grossly unfair for me to try. Whatever the truth, in simple terms bullying is never acceptable, no matter what the circumstances are, and can only really serve to undermine the efforts and successes of the organisation and its staff.
That said, strong leadership is something we badly need, if we are to succeed.
So What ?
The Number 1 guy at Number 10 is a bully?. So what do we do, since he is indispensable, for now. Do we just look the other way, a small price to pay for national interest ?. What does his appraisal score say on his EI, interpersonal and self-control?. Is there any "need" to improve his ‘bullying’ behaviour that is causing distress, not to mention, low productivity, to a few. Is anyone going to bell the cat?. What would be the most suitably effective intervention be – training, counseling or coaching?. Does he need a mentor to hold his hand and lead him out of his dysfunction. Is the problem as serious as it is made to look?
I beg to differ with Verity’s take on "whether damage has been done to individuals that cannot be undone". Are we saying we just standby and put up with bullying until it causes "irrevocable" damage?. Do we act upon wrongful act/behaviours based on values or wait until the consequential after-effects to react.
It’s time to bring in humility and leadership accountability into the picture. He must sought help on his downside that could hurt his leadership and political image. Besides, managing his stress with better EI can help reduce high risk to heart ailment ( though, I doubt since no PM ever died in office!)
Now, if getting the PM to change his ways is like waiting for the sky to fall, the next best option would be to minimise the risk and potential colateral damage to the environment – affected victims who are disadvantaged in the situation. Perhaps, it’s advisable to conduct proper screening to match the right candidate to the job competencies as well as Mr Brown’s personality profile. I mean, how difficult is it to get someone who can type faster than the PM !? The employees must be provided with as much notice and clarity up front into the nature of work so that people know exactly what they are getting into at Number 10. One of it would be, "must be able to work in high pressured environment and withstand verbal abuse that will not cross the line into "bullying" 🙂
Yes, the PM is only human. We can even sympathise that he has more pressure in his head and hands that anyone else. But, he is also the most powerful guy in the country with access to best resources that money can buy or engage- advisors, trainers, coaches, psychologist, technologist, typist, negotiator, doctors, therapist, etc. What’s stopping him from working smart?. There is always a better way of doing things! And, it takes great leadership to dismount from your horse and move from hubris to humility.
Always MANAGE the tangibles assets and LEAD your people assets.
Hurrah!!
Donald Clark has made my day 🙂
Throwing the rattle out of the pram
No matter how you cut it, having your boss lose their temper makes you doubt their ability.
If the boss was capable of leading their team to great efforts then he or she won’t be subjected to such great stress. We fail totally to engage with and motivate our people to achieve.
Until we do manage motivation, people will always be regarded as lazy "good for nothings", have to be bribed with increasingly ludicrous pay (write your own list!) and their managers know they have to do it all themselves.
It is amazing how many managers believe their people are all lazy and take their organisations to oblivion holding fast to their erroneous beliefs.
The "you’re fired" TV image doesn’t help either – but it is popular TV.
Maybe good people management, inspiring people to achive is like good news. You won’t find it in the popular media.
But you will find it on our website! http://www.motivationmatters.co.uk