As a Fighter Wing Commander, one of my favorite recurring events was engaging with our Airmen who were about to graduate Airmen Leadership School (ALS) along with my Command Chief. ALS is the first tier of professional military education for our enlisted force. Airmen must attend this course before taking their first level supervisory position as a non-commissioned officer (NCO). Up until this point in their careers, they have all been focused on being good subordinates – expert technicians in their trade and assertive followers. ALS teaches them how to step forward and lead.
One of my favorite questions to pose to the class was: if I give you three seconds to think of the best or worst leader you’ve had in your career, which one would it be? I have no scientific data to prove my theory, but by measuring the facial expressions in the audience, I knew the majority held the opinion that the bad leader came to mind first.
I will not delve into the science of negative versus positive experiences but offer my own observation: both have value if you keep an open mind.
Arguably, the most natural reaction when faced with the bad leader scenario is to decide how you best “survive” their tenure. This assumes you are not going to attempt to help that leader improve through feedback and your organization or team will simply try to preserve status quo until that bad leader leaves. While preserving the status quo does not necessarily sound negative, let me rephrase it to illustrate the impact: your organization will accept stagnation while your competitors are advancing.
The second approach is a far more dangerous one when it comes to preserving the fabric of the organization – subversion. Bad leader faults are not often limited to lack of credibility. They frequently bring with them other baggage to include lacking or poor communication, dictatorial leadership styles, and passive-aggressive personalities. This typically makes them very unpopular and an easy target for an internal insurrection where junior leaders and subordinates work to undermine that leader in any capacity they can in hopes of causing them to fail and be removed sooner than in the “survival” model. The reason I submit this is dangerous is because you are sacrificing organizational performance and mission accomplishment in an effort to dispose of the bad leader. In this scenario, subordinates are so myopically focused on the removal of that leader, they fail to recognize the second order effects on the organization as a result of this scorched earth approach. It may take three good leaders afterwards to clean up all the broken glass left behind by this tactic, and the organization may never recover as a result, no matter how good the leader is who takes over.
The optimal response in my experience is to take the approach of “how to thrive as an organization despite bad leadership.” Clearly, this is not your bumper sticker advertising your campaign to succeed despite a bad boss for all to see. Some may see this as a variation of the previous approach, just with a more positive spin. I would disagree for a number of reasons. First, this approach puts the organization ahead of any one individual, the essence of a team. Whether it is the lead engine or the caboose causing the issue, how do you keep the train moving full steam ahead? How can you provide feedback to that bad leader, possibly in an indirect way? Many bad leaders take very poorly to any sort of direct feedback, so you need to figure out how to repackage it in a way that they are receptive to it. If they are focused on advancement/promotion, instead of the context on what the organization needs, you might talk about his or her boss and how they will view or perceive things if they do not take a certain action for the organization.
If they cannot accept the feedback, regardless of how you package it, you must find a way to drive the team or organization forward. Junior leaders, managers and influencers can do this. With poor or bad leadership, there is typically a lack of direction and those lower level leaders and influencers can develop a way forward to accomplish the mission or organization’s objectives, without subverting the leader, but simply by leading at their levels. This is empowering and provides opportunity for development that may not exist with a high performing leader at the helm. Focus on the mission, the objective, the team. Those should lift a leader, even a bad one. If it doesn’t, your efforts were not why that leader failed, they were the subject of their own shortcomings.
Bad leaders do not have to equal bad experiences. If you take a step back and realize how much you learn from them, even if it is what not to do, you are generating a net positive experience. Every time you catalog a behavior you swear to never exhibit as a leader, you are growing. The next step is saying to yourself, “I wouldn’t do that, but instead, I would do this…”
There are not many letters between survive and thrive, but the gap in mentality is a canyon. Your mindset drives your actions and your actions impact the organization. A good organization can continue to thrive under a bad leader if subordinate leaders take positive action to continue to work toward mission accomplishment and improving the unit.
Lead well, no matter what level.
Authored By: Scott “Soup” Campbell, Managing Director