Posts Tagged ‘Invisible Line’

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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