Posts Tagged ‘Control’

In trying to understand leadership, it is a good idea to take a brief look at some negative motivational techniques so that we understand what leadership is not. This list is by no means comprehensive; but it does include some of the most common offenses:

• Leadership is not the absence of guidance. Ken Blanchard has a great description for this; He calls it “leave alone, zap.” It describes many managers who provide their staff with absolutely no guidance; then they criticize them the moment that they do not meet an un-communicated set of expectations or they transgress over an invisible line that they had not been told about.

This is often caused by a manager who does not really know what s/he wants or what her/his expectations are. S/He can’t clearly articulate what s/he wants in advance. S/He can only criticize when something is done and it doesn’t “feel” right or when her/his incompetent supervisor does the same thing to him.

• Leadership is not a control freak. Control freak management is the art of not letting a team member do anything, almost to the point of breathing, without permission. Then no matter what the employee does, even with permission, it will be criticized. Control freaks feel they must have direct authority and be in command of absolutely everything. They have a need to criticize; almost compulsively. Even when their staff performs a task exactly the way they were told to do the previous time they will still find opportunities criticism. The work will never meet approval; therefore praise and encouragement is never given.

Control freaks typically have three attributes in common:
1. They genuinely believe that they are doing what is best for the people they are controlling. Take note of this for yourself. Don’t make the mistake of believing that you are not over controlling because you have good intentions or that your controlling nature is justified because of your good intentions.
2. They are insecure. They feel that they have short comings and that the rest of the world is judging them. In order to protect themselves from such judgments they resort to controlling their environment and everyone/everything in it.
3. Control freaks focus on others and their performance so that do not have to acknowledge and address their own issues.
I once had a manager who criticized me if I got up from my desk to attend a meeting two minutes before it was about to start because I was wasting time. However she would also come to my desk at one minute before a meeting and exclaim, “Aren’t you coming to the meeting? What are you waiting for?” No matter what I did, she criticized it. She was the classic example of someone who had to compulsively maintain control and it was mainly done through constant disapproval.

The control freak is someone who is very insecure. S/He is terrified that people will realize her/his level of incompetence and judge her/him (this is often imagined or magnified by their insecurities). S/He will strive to control everything around her/him so this does not happen. For the control freak, all of this happens at a sub-conscious level; the only conscious aspect of it is “a knowledge” that the staff member is incompetent and needs constant supervision in order to protect her/him for her/his own good.
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I have pointed out that one of the leading causes of stress in our society is being held accountable for an outcome without having control of the situation. In business situations this is commonly caused by office politics. An employee is expected to deliver a particular result, but not allowed to make the changes that would allow such a result.

Another cause of this situation occurs when an individual is held accountable for performing a task – without the proper tools or training.

I can think of a couple of situations where this happened to me.

As silly as that sounds, it doesn’t compare to the second example.

The feeling I had is not unfamiliar to those who have the responsibility of a presentation thrust upon them.

You have no presentation skills, but we expect you to do the job anyway. We’re not going to give you training – or even explain what would make your presentation successful. We just expect you to do it.
All of a sudden you are being judged – that is being held accountable – for something you have no control over. You have no control over the success or failure of your presentation because you don’t have any presentation skills.

An Easy Source of Presentation Skills

I created EffectivelySpeaking.Com to provide people with the information they need to overcome the fear and go on to excel at speaking in public. With that in mind, I have created this section to hold a number of articles about delivering an effective presentation – I will be adding more over time.

A Free Course on Presentation Skills

In addition, if you are in a situation that is similar to the one I described, then I would encourage you to take my S.C.P. presentation course. It will only take you a few minutes each day for six days, and then about 45 minutes on the seventh. By the time you’re done, you will have a solid understanding of what goes into preparing and delivering an effective presentation. Best of all, I have made the course available for free to Effectively Speaking Members.

If you want to experience the same relief that I described, then head on over to EffectivelySpeakingMembers.Com and sign up. You’ll find a whole lot more “relief generating” information – and best of all, you can sign up for free.