Anthony Landale

I was working with a manager recently who told me that her boss was brutal. The style of this boss was one of being intimidating and his reputation was as someone ‘not to be messed with’.

This boss has a very senior position in a large organisation and that organisation is currently doing pretty well. But perhaps not surprisingly my coachee doesn’t see her future there. She told me that bright young managers with good ideas are seen as threatening to this male director. He never encourages people and as a result people who survive in his domain learn to be average and obedient. Furthermore because people are frightened of him they never ask for his help and as a result when things go wrong they sometimes go seriously wrong because they aren’t attended to in time.

This boss sees himself as running a tight ship. That’s the official truth (see post 7 March ‘Don’t pretend it doesn’t matter). But the ground truth is that people are in ‘just surviving’ mode and this has serious consequences for individual, team and organisational performance. Here’s how many people behave when they are ‘just surviving’

• They don’t take risks

• They don’t have much ambition

• They are defensive and anxious

• They keep their heads down

If you’ve got a brutal boss there may not be much you can do about it – unless s/he is open to feedback – but you don’t have to copy that style. As a manager you can choose a different approach by inviting people to talk about what matters to them, helping them find opportunities where they can shine and encouraging people to share their creative ideas. What difference will this make? They will come to work with more energy, more initiative and more determination to deliver. We call that helping people to ‘Play to Win’.

By Anthony Landale

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