Correcting Bad Leadership: Actions Speak Louder Than Words

Stopping Bad Leadership in Its Tracks

Respect and loyalty are earned through action, not words. Regardless of your title or status within an organization, its your commitment to sound leadership and how you treat others that make you someone people respect and want to follow. Ineffective, or worse yet, bad leadership reflects poorly not only on you, but on all facets of the organization, from internal culture to outward perception.

Breaking the Habit: Tendencies to Avoid

When poor leadership is modeled at the very top, it can make a huge difference in how employees work across an organization and interact with each other and with customers.

“I’m Sorry” Isn’t Always Enough

We’re not talking about the casual apology that follows a simple mistake, but the recurring pleas from individuals who regularly make commitments and then seemingly disappear, neglecting the promises they’ve made.

Beyond causing simple irritation, being unpredictable, changing or canceling plans at the last minute, and failing to follow through on commitments can also create anxiety and uncertainty in the workplace.

Professor of Business Psychology Thomas Chamorro-Premuzic notes that “If you are a boss, don’t introduce an unnecessary layer of complexity to your employees’ lives by making them guess what you will do next. Be reliable, predictable, and even boring if necessary. You may be the only predictable factor your employees can count on in a time of great uncertainty.”

Monkey See, Monkey Do

Poor behavior can have an amplifying effect within an organization and filter deep into the company’s culture. For instance, if the CEO models bad leadership and interpersonal skills, others will begin to do so as well. “As the head goes, so goes the body,” so to speak.

Remember, the CEO is not the only person responsible for setting an example within an organization. The leader of a department or a team can have a similar impact as well. Before long, you have employees thinking “She did it this way and she’s successful, so what’s wrong with me doing it that way, too?”

Guilt by Association

If you’re a leader who blows off meetings on a regular basis, it becomes a reflection of the entire organization. And when this behavior is allowed to continue, it is in danger of becoming synonymous with your organization and how other’s perceive it. Once ingrained, such perception issues can become quite difficult to dislodge, posing not only a problem for your PR department, but potentially for your bottom line as well.

Leadership Basics

Be Kind

Treating others with kindness is common sense in business and in life, and many times, it is the easy thing to do. However, busy leaders with packed schedules can easily default into transactional behavior that others may interpret as curt or downright rude.

Remember that as a leader your actions not only signal to others what kind of person you are, but by extension, how your organization treats its staff, partners, and customers. A negative impression of you can easily become associated with your business and take great effort to mitigate. In this way, taking the time to respond with simple kindness can reap rewards down the line.

Be Courageous

Courageous leaders uphold their organization’s values by modeling good behavior and not tolerating bad behavior. They reward good demonstrations of those values and correct those who violate them, honestly and fairly regardless of rank or status. Allowing bad behavior to go unchecked is dangerous for company culture and morale. The longer its tolerated, the harder it will be to change.

Be Self Reflective

It’s human nature to judge ourselves by our intentions, but others by their actions. In order to be a good leader you must be able to apply this same scale to yourself as well, because this is ultimately how others will judge you. Be honest with yourself and take stock of any disparity that may exist between what you set out to do and what you actually accomplish and adjust accordingly.

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[Editors’ Note: To learn more about this and related topics, you may want to attend the following on-demand webinars (which you can view at your leisure, and each includes a comprehensive customer PowerPoint about the topic):

1. Marketing Tips For The New (Or Old!) Business Owner – Part 1 
2. The Start-Up/Small Business Advisor
3. Crowdfunding

This is an updated version of an article originally published on October 16, 2017 and updated May 15, 2020.]

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