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| James Lukaszewski |
Most leaders become perpetrators when their early misbehaviors go unchecked or unnoticed. They continue as these misbehaviors are later met by those close to them with silence and without objection, whereby the perpetrator is encouraged to do it again, this time on a larger scale.
Many sources today express concerns about the increasing number of misbehaviors occurring among senior executives in businesses and organizations of all types. Often, this behavior is committed by the top executive. The range and types of misbehaviors, on the other hand, are relatively narrow and easily identified. And the elements of failed leadership are obvious and survive because they’re allowed to go unnamed, unacknowledged and unchallenged. This article discloses these ingredients of failed leadership based on the author’s experience. There are undoubtedly more.
The real value of this list is that it serves as an alert for leaders themselves as well as those around them who witness negative or risky circumstances. Time and time again, leaders excuse misbehavior, shifting the blame for their intentional mistakes to "those around me" who should have alerted or educated them regarding their poor choices. Leaders who become perpetrators are swindlers who are prepared and practiced at shifting blame when—or if—they’re exposed. There are recognizable prior events, decisions, behaviors and indicators that signal existing or pending misbehavior.
The ingredients of failed leadership
Established values, cultural systems and norms are ignored, neutralized or displaced by whatever becomes accepted yet questionable behaviors.
A management-imposed emergency or attitude of urgency that goes unchallenged. The phrase “do whatever it takes” (DWIT) is among the most prevalent excuses for breaking, changing or ignoring rules. DWIT is taken as an order and an authorization to literally ignore all rules and constraints.
A sense of ongoing top management pressure to “get on the program,” without challenge or without reporting through compliance channels. Too often, in today’s organizational structure, goals are taken as permissions, authorization or orders to ignore the rules. Those in charge—through their own behaviors and stated or implied expectations—change the rules or establish new ones unilaterally outside of normal compliance channels. Crises rarely start “in the mail room” or by “a bunch of rogue employees,” or among junior employees alone. Crisis misbehaviors and attitudes start at a much higher level.
Early warning symptoms are ignored, deferred, or actively defeated. Who wants to be the first to contradict a boss or point a finger? Invincibility and omnipotence triggered by incivility are among the major features of management misbehavior these days. Respondents in MBA studies find that MBA culture often implies leaders’ abilities to leap tall buildings; they’re treated as inherently smarter than anyone and thus view rules and cultural norms as options. Omnipotence and invincibility begin here.
A work atmosphere of invincibility that overshadows or simply blinds participants to infractions, questionable decisions, and stuff that “should work” but doesn’t.
Corner cutting. One of the most common starting places where leadership failure begins.
Increasing resistance to or minimizing compliance and oversight. There’s a natural tendency to resist compliance and oversight. The greatest resistance generally comes from the sales and marketing sectors of a business organization, and that resistance is induced by top-level pressure to perform, the pressure to succeed, the pressure to beat the competition, and the pressure to beat peer organizations.
Decreasing responsiveness to regulatory requirements. Once an organizational culture reduces responsiveness to regulatory requirements and begins selectively ignoring or degrading their importance, the patterns of intentional misbehaviors feed on themselves.
Persistent, rigid, disciplined silence. The implied or direct order to remain silent is powerful and toxic.
Continuously making ever larger compromises to accommodate or cover up previous intentional misbehaviors. Once a manager decides to cross a line, they have become a perpetrator. Still, they’re often surprised there’s no real reaction; the tendency, then, is to cross yet another line to see if that works too. Surprise, surprise, each line crossed is subsequently ignored.
Blame everyone else for not blowing the whistle. (e.g., “Why didn’t somebody stop me?!?!”) When an autopsy of failed leadership is performed, a crucial pattern of excuses often appears: “I took a chance, nobody noticed, so I took another, nobody noticed, so I took another, and it became a habit.” “Why didn’t those people say something or do something when they found out about it?” And “It’s really their fault for not catching me and warning me or turning me in that all these bad things happened.” The description that best describes these intentional executive justifications is “Risk Addiction.”
Some experts have described Risk Addiction as something similar to the behavior of drug addicts, gamblers, smokers and sex offenders. These perpetrating individuals absolutely realize how risky, devastating and damaging their behavior is, but they continue anyway. In leadership Risk Addiction, the intoxicant is power and a willingness among others—colleagues, victims, witnesses, compliance officials and board members—to succumb to that power. They become complicit, co-conspirators in their failure to oppose, disclose or expose.
Leaders in cultures where “yes” is the only answer increasingly act without waiting for a “yes” or a “no.” The unilateral top decision to move ahead compels a “yes.”
Combatting and defeating Risk Addiction
The institutional tools for detecting, deterring, defeating and preventing risk addiction are exposure, behavior labeling and aggressive, constructive disclosure. This includes naming names. If you witness intentional crisis mismanagement, my advice is clear: speak up. Silence is the greatest enabler and validator of misbehavior. Those who observe or are affected by misbehavior need to speak up despite the risks.
Otherwise, executive misbehavior tends to grow and become more clever, audacious, novel and damaging. Invariably, once the perpetrator is caught or exposed, they will immediately blame those around them, who “Should have warned me or prevented me from making these decisions.”
Be alert. Disclose, expose and oppose.
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James E. Lukaszewski, ABC, Fellow IABC; APR, Fellow PRSA, PRSA BEPS Emeritus, is an author, speaker, crisis management consultant and President of The Lukaszewski Group.
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