Looking back with 20-20 honesty, which of the following three no-no’s were you guilty of when you first became a leader?

Many freshly minted leaders fall into unhelpful patterns that will boomerang over time. They don’t realize that maintaining a respectful and civil work environment is crucial to their team’s performance (and in fact also to the very way they are perceived as leaders). Here are three sink-or-swim no-no’s:

1. Don’t succumb to New Supervisor Confusion Disease.  Your unmitigated allegiance is now to the organization. Don’t get confused by the belief that you can maintain your old friendships as if nothing had changed. If you are ‘friends’ with some of your employees and visibly show it, that will inevitably create the impression of favouritism and exclusion. When people feel excluded, their body secretes stress hormones, their concentration is compromised and the pain centre in the brain’s Anterior Cingulate Cortex gets activates. None of this is good news for anyone involved (including yourself).  Remember that in your new role, it is your responsibility and privilege to create a civil work environment where everyone can perform at their best, free of anything that compromises their dignity.
2. Forget about the popularity contest. When you take on a leadership role, it’s no longer about being liked, it’s about being respected. As a leader you must take actions that will decrease your popularity in the short term, but over the long term will earn your workers’ respect. This is especially true if you were promoted from within the team, because you will need to deal head-on with many of the problematic behaviours that you had observed while you were an ordinary teammate. Bottom line, being liked is nice-to-have, but being respected is the must-have. If you want to be popular, get that need met elsewhere.
3. Clear the decks or else. Many newly appointed leaders walk into a team culture that has sanctioned uncivil and even low-level harassment behaviours. Cliques, gossip, eye-rolling, belittling others’ opinions, sarcasm, foul language and off-colour jokes are some examples. You’ll need to take action on these immediately (even if it means embarking on those unpleasant performance management processes). If you don’t tackle the issues immediately, you will get inducted into that negative culture and it will be exceedingly difficult to make changes or manage performance later on. Clear the decks immediately, or be prepared to learn on your own skin that what you permit, you promote.

If you have juicy stories about respect-related mistakes you’ve made as a new leader, please do share them with me – they might find their way somehow to being useful to others via this blog (one never knows).

Here’s a simple but painful truth: abrasive leadership persists only because organizations allow it to.

If you have an abrasive leader in your midst, you already know that this person’s harsh interpersonal conduct triggers distress in people and the work environment. And yet, this abrasive leader is likely unaware of the damage that he or she cause and the risks that the behaviour poses — these matters are situated in his or her blind spot. And as long as things remain safely lodged in that blind spot, the person’s behaviour cannot and will not change.

But the abrasive leader is not the only one suffering from Blind Spot Disease. Your organization might be equally guilty of turning a blind eye and committing other ‘sins‘, as well as making persistent mistakes in managing this leader. All these, in turn, enable and entrench the behaviour.

If you’re feeling increasingly discouraged as you read this, please don’t. There’s some good news too.  Once an abrasive leader becomes aware of the effect that his or her behaviour actually has, change is more likely to happen. And once your organization resolves to take a firm stand on the matter, the chances of that change actually happening are exponentially higher.

Take a look: in your own organization, how well do you fair in having in place systems to prevent abrasive behaviour in the first place, or deal with it once it occurs? If you’re not sure, I invite you to assess your organization’s capacity to prevent and address leaders’ harsh interpersonal conduct by checking out our (free) Abrasive Leaders Organizational Actions Checklist. Hopefully, once you complete the tool and take time to reflect on the results, you will emerge confident that as an organization, you are well equipped to deal with any problem behaviour that may emerge. If not, and if you have a specific leader whose interpersonal conduct is of concern, you might want to assess the risks it poses. To do so, visit our Abrasive Leader Risk Assessment tool (also free) - you may find it enlightening.

Whatever you find, if there’s any feedback or insights your like to share (or if your organization needs assistance and would like to explore whether our REAL™ Solutions for Abrasive Leaders could be helpful), please don’t hesitate to stay in touch.