The concerns about bad leadership, which Dr. Barbara Kellerman highlighted at her leadership forum, are obviously very real. They become ever more relevant in the light of increasing legislation aimed at enforcing good corporate governance.
The challenge, as Mr. Balestrero points out is that, “it isn’t enough to think that we want to learn, but rather we need to yearn to be changed, altered – “adjusted” if you will – to a different model.” And that can be really tricky when a leader is autocratic, set in his or her ways and disinterested in changing.
The problem, particularly with leaders who have developed an autocratic leadership style is that they are unwilling to listen to anything that might undermine their position. This is equally true even if they only imagine or suppose that it will undermine their position.
What Can Be Done To Change Autocratic Leaders?
One of the very few effective change strategies I have uncovered is to find out what causes the autocrat to become most impatient. They nearly all tend to have a leaning to impatience. It is likely to be expressed as a complaint about someone’s behaviour. Their complaint is the key to unlocking the situation. Once you know what annoys them you can offer to fix it. My offer sounds something like this: “what would it be worth to you if I could help the offending person to change their annoying behaviour?”
This often gets us into a position where we can negotiate what needs to be done and how I will work. As part of the negotiation I get the autocrat to become the monitor and measurer of the changes they wish to become manifest.
Can you see how this approach is starting to involve the autocratic leader in the process of change? Quite often they become fascinated by the process and start to give feedback to both the coach and the person being coached. And when they start giving feedback they become part of a cultural change within their organisation. They are noticing other people’s behaviour rather than issuing instructions to people much as they would to a machine.
Feedback is the Breakfast of Champions
Feedback is just one element of The Communication Cycle. It plays a vital role in our transformational leadership coaching model. Its importance in breaking the beharioural code of autocratic leaders is that it is often the place where it is possible to get such leaders to become involved.
I have no quantifiable research to prove this but it is my observation, after 15 years of coaching leaders and modelling their behaviours, that autocrats tend to have a fear of failure and their first impression of feedback is that it looks like another control mechanism. Hence they seize on it like a kid with a new control toy.
However, once they start to play the feedback game the results often become manifest, which can force them to consider changing their own behaviour. Nevertheless my experience mirrors Dr. Kellerman’s in that there are definitely a number of leaders out there who display sociopathic behaviors that, quite frankly, I would not waste my time trying to overcome.
My message here is one of hope. I strongly believe that most people have a desire to improve and grow. It is our job as coaches and trainers to transform their leadership styles and give them the opportunity to achieve more and to feel good about how they achieve those improved results.
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