Episode #69: Nice Or Nasty Bosses

Boss positions over others are often the last refuge of insecure people. They are like little Napoleons, bossing everyone around, flaunting their status power. They don’t have great personal ability but they do have authority and they like to use it. They have worked out that fear is a great tool to use on others to keep themselves in control of the work situation. This is a flawed model and the opportunity costs of having these people in charge are huge. Motivation, engagement, innovation plummet under these types of leaders. Surely we can do better than this in the twenty first century?

Eighty four percent of Japanese hold positive views about receiving nursing care from robots according to a survey by Orix Living. Most respondents see robots as serving to alleviate burdens on care receivers and care givers. The survey found eighty four percent of men want to care for their wives and only sixty six percent of women said they want to care for their husbands. In other news, the rise of the single or ohitorisama phenomenon has led to some changes in retail business in Japan. In 1980 in Japan, only one in fifty men had never been married by the age of fifty and only one in twenty two for women. That ratio is now one in four for men and one in seven for women. With more than thirty percent of households containing just one person this makes for an attractive solo market. Many are craving more “me time” in this fast paced , interconnected and workaholic society. Surveys show Japanese consumers rate quality time alone above hours spent with family and friends. In this social media infested, interconnected, totally “always on” world, some people feel fatigued and want relief from contact with others. Karaoke chains realised around six years ago that there were customers who came by themselves and so created One Kara, that is a tiny booths for solo singers. Some Cinemas now offer seats with partitions and theme parks let singles jump the line at certain rides. Grocery stores sell items aimed at single diners and travel agents are catering to solo travelers.Finally, there have been some innovative developments in Japanese agriculture. Spread company has opened up its second vertical farm producing leaf vegetables. It is getting closer to having such low cost production it can compete with traditional farms on a large scale. In Keihanna Science City it will launch Techno Farm its second facility and grow thirty thousand heads of lettuce a day on racks, under custom designed lights using light emitting diodes. A sealed room protects the vegetables from pests, disease and dirt. Temperature and humidity are optimized to speed growth of the greens, which are fed, tended and harvested by robots. Spread President Shinji Inada said, “Our system can produce a stable amount of vegetables of a good quality for sale at a fixed price throughout the year, without using pesticides and with no influence from weather”. Spread sells lettuce about twenty to thirty percent above normal lettuce prices but consumers see these pesticide free products as an alternative to more expensive organics foods. Climate change is making the weather more unpredictable and this makes Techo Farm’s consistent availability attractive. Inada plans to export his farming system to one hundred countries worldwide, “We are targeting countries where fresh vegetables cannot be produced because of scarce water, extremely low temperatures or other natural conditions”.

This is episode number fifty seven and we are talking about Nice Or Nasty Bosses Soredewa ikimasho, so let's get going. The New York Times carried an article about the growth of rudeness and bad behaviour at work over the last twenty years. Christine Porath, the article author, noted, “How we treat one another at work matters. Insensitive interactions have a way of whittling away at people’s health, performance and soul”. These interactions release hormones called glucocorticoids leading to potential health problems.

The more interesting part of the research on this topic looked at why we are uncivil and more than half said they felt overloaded with their work and 40% said they have no time to be nice. Nearly half linked career progression to using their position power and being nice was seen as weak. Bosses attitudes were enlightening. Twenty-five percent believe they will be less leader-like if they are nice at work. Nearly 40% feared they would be taken advantage of, if they weren’t projecting a tough manner.

There seems to be no shortage of bosses who can only muster position power, know it and so exploit it to the full, because they are so insecure. Strip away their titles and they are total nobodies. The way people become the boss is part of the issue. The individual who can succeed and be accountable in their own little world is promoted to be in charge of others who are nothing like them. They find that the skills that got them selected as leader is not what they need to be a real leader. Their fall back strategy is to use their position power and lord it over their underlings, driving them forward through fear.

Ironically, the Center For Creative Leadership found the number one characteristic associated with senior executives failure was their insensitive, abrasive or bullying style. So we are left with a bunch of wannabe Napoleons, bossing us around and going nowhere in their careers.

What are we looking for in business? We want our people to come up with great ideas, innovations and creative solutions. Some mini-me Napoleon type is not going to command anything more than compliance and so the innovation capacity of the organization is hamstrung. In this fast paced competitive world of doing more, faster with less, this is a big opportunity cost. From our own research on what engages employees to make the discretionary effort to go above and beyond, we found that feeling valued was the critical trigger.

If the mentality is to beat people up to let them know who is the boss, then the “I feel valued” trigger never gets pulled, the ideas do not flow, the cooperation doesn’t happen and the information is not passed on when you need it.

We want leverage, a next generation of leaders to be developed who can move the organisation forward. Youthful tolerance for bad boss behavior is very low and they simply vote with their feet and go across to the competition.

Bosses need to become better time managers, so they are in better control of their emotions. When you are disorganized you become stressed and you spread your stress to all of those around you. Bosses need to be trained in how to smile when they interact with their staff. Sounds simplistic but there is whole raft of things going on in the background for that to happen and they are all good. We want the bosses to be better in communication. Explaining the why and not just the what or the how. By the way, rather than pontificating, we want to use the Socratic method of asking questions, which lead the staff member to their own discoveries of the why. This is how we get ownership of the ideas and the commitment to follow through with them.

We want them to praise people in a smart way. Tell the staff member what they specifically did well, link this to the bigger picture, reinforce that they should keep doing it and thank them. We want coaching that is not critique based around past mistakes but forward looking – what they did that was good, how they could do it even better the next time. And how that will positively impact the business.

Building a positive, supportive workplace must be the boss’s focus, if the organization wants to succeed through its people. We start with attitudinal change leading to behaviour change, producing performance change.

As mentioned, we know from our research that staff engagement requires three conditions and a trigger. The three conditions are the current relationship with the boss – an obvious one. The other two are the belief by staff that the direction senior management are taking the company is the right one. This implies they actually know what the direction is. Lastly, the feeling of pride in the organisation. This also sounds obvious, but the survey results refer to the “organisation” not just insular pride in their siloed “division”, within the organisation. Getting internal cooperation across silos is always a challenge in big organizations.

The engagement trigger is the feeling that the boss cares about the staff and they feel valued. They know they are valued because the boss tells them so directly. Engagement matters. Innovation is only interesting to staff who care about the company. If you are not engaged, you don’t care if the operation is running more effectively or about finding new ways of doing things. These staff haven’t signed on for the old way of doing things yet. Innovation is going to be the differentiator, so the key step before that, is getting people to feel high levels of engagement. The boss role here is critical and are the bosses in your organization ready for this crucial role they must play?