We've all known them. The jerk of a manager who has a chip on his or her shoulder and lives to make life suck for everyone in close proximity. I've known a couple of people like that in my career. And, from personal experience, let me tell you it's no fun having to deal with that kind of a person in the workplace.
In one instance years ago, this one leader was so tough on her team that we all joked that the candy dish on the front desk should be filled with Prozac to help us all cope on a daily basis. I've never experienced more frustration, angst and literal crying in a workplace before or since. A typical day would start out with a team meeting tirade that did more to demoralize the team than help the company succeed. Weekly tongue lashings were commonplace, with every minor error exploded out into ridiculous proportions. All we could do was take it and wonder when it would end. Unfortunately, leaving became the only way to escape all of this and most of us eventually did. Those that remained became jaded about work in general and, in my opinion, never really recovered. And those of us who did escape took a long while to recover from such emotional abuse in the workplace. It sucked.
Tom Davenport, a blogger on the Harvard Business Review website and an expert on organizational process and productivity, has an excellent post today about how jerks in the leadership ranks can really ruin an organization. He points to a couple of recent examples from the financial crisis as proof that the wrong people in the wrong jobs can have a devastating effect on a company (and, in these two cases, on the whole economy).
At the firm where I work, we talk about the eight drivers of employee engagement, which are drawn from years of experience in the employee communications business. One of those drivers is having senior leaders who care. Time and again, employees point out that it's important to them that they have senior leaders in the organization who care about them, the business, the competition and the company in general. This caring approach is the exact opposite behavior that corporate jerks exhibit. And that behavior can crush employee engagement and, ultimately, the bottomline results of the organization. I've been amazed at how long this behavior is tolerated within many organizations, as if somehow the results are more important than the methods. Sure, being an ass might lead to short-term gains, but that approach will do a ton of damage over the long haul.
After I left that company with the intolerable boss, the company eventually folded. I have no real idea why it folded. I can only take refuge in the thought that it was driven into the ground by someone who didn't understand what it is to be a leader in an organization. Nobody wants to work for, around or with a jerk. I guess karma finally caught up with her.
Good for karma.
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