Stephane Jacqmin

A friend of mine who used to work for an advertising agency was telling me the other day how his new boss, who had been sent from Head office into his company, made his life so miserable for close to one year that he ended up quitting his job.

The agency where he worked used to be a great place. People were taking ownership of their roles, were meeting customers’ needs on time, were building their own future and were engaged in what they were doing. By all standards this was a great place to work!

Then this new boss arrived. After a few weeks of transition during which he got to know the people and what was going on on the agency floor, he started to run the place at his own pace and with his own style.

He spent time in meetings all day long, sometimes late into the night, asking his people to show up at very strict deadlines, reviewing their work constantly, telling them what to do, and what not to do, and all the time going into an unbelievable level of detail, seeking to influence everything that went out. He had opinions on every single work assignment and on every single customer, often offending his people since his comments were targeting customers he had sometimes never met himself.

After a few months having joined the business, the people on the floor rapidly felt disempowered. They started to disengage with what they had to do. Some of my friend’s colleagues, at one point, built an alliance against the new boss…. but it just went nowhere since people in the head office were clearly protecting him.

This story had me thinking about the impact we have on people, and how rapidly, through our daily behavior, we either encourage our people to create their own future and have them engaged and empowered, or how rather we can destroy such a culture, limit people’s potential and end up with people feeling miserable, just not willing anymore to do the job, and ending up changing companies.

Leadership nudge

So take some time this week to notice the impact you have, through your daily behavior, on the people around you – how can you engage them even more powerfully and have them create their own futures?

By Stephane Jacqmin