Bad Leadership and Communication Blunders
‘I like to be the center of attention’, ‘I am better than others’, ‘I demand the respect due to me’. What do all those sentences mean? Are these signs of a good leader or a bad self obsessed leader or a narcissistic trait? Yes, it is the voice of a person who is arrogant, authoritative, filled with self admiration and superiority complex. Be it Politics, Military or Business, such leaders are spread everywhere. According to McClelland’s Theory of Needs, Need for Power and Achievement is the highest for these types of leaders. If we talk about the past there were numerous leaders whose decisions devastated themselves and people around the world. I am sure you all will agree with me on this:
Ayatollah Khomeini – He was a religious leader of Iran from 1979 to 1989. He implemented the Sharia Law with Islamic dress code enforced on men and women.30, 000 political activists were killed and thousands were killed in the prisons swiftly.
Adolf Hitler – Do I need to say anything about him? Not even hundreds or thousands, millions yes millions were brutally killed, no, actually slaughtered to death!
Idi Amin – He was an army officer and president of Uganda. His rule was characterized by judicial killings and expulsion of Asians from Uganda. Number of people killed ranged from 80,000 to 500,000.
The list doesn’t end here of bad leaders. This is just the trailer of the movie about to begin. The main reason for their bad leadership was there narcissistic approach to everything and their ultimate need for power. They never learned to compromise and collaborate for a good cause and need for admiration was high as well. A good leader has a strong character and people should look up to them unlike these leaders.
“Leaders do not command excellence, they build excellence”.
Let’s get back to the present - Lehmann brothers, Enron, Tyco, WorldCom, BP and Satyam in India. What would you like to say about them? What is common among them? Big organizations but bad leaders. Like for Tyco it is hard to believe that top level chief executives, chairman and former CFO were accused of theft of more than $150 million. Where were their Ethics at that time? Leaders of big organizations talks about Ethics but never follows them. WorldCom CEO, CFO, Comptroller and director of General Accounting were accused of using fraudulent accounting methods and finally declared bankruptcy. How can they be a role model for other employees by portraying such unethical behavior and leadership style? I wish they had followed more of an authentic leadership style and had a moral compass.
Well, enough said about bad leaders, let’s get to some who can get even worse! Communication is the real key to success for a Leader. To be a good and successful leader, one needs to master the skill of communicating and listening in the process of communication. Recent communication blunder by a leader that was a big hit was …..Rolling drums…..Sarah Palin.
a) a) Sarah Palin's recent interview with Glenn Beck, when she kept referring to "our allies, North Korea," even after he tactfully corrected her the first time. This implies listening is so important in communication, she didn’t even listen what the interviewer was saying.Will US people like to follow such a leader who doesn’t know such basic things about her own country? One who doesn’t communicate effectively? Who is not a charismatic leader?
b) b) President Barack Obama told Jay Leno the President had bowled a mediocre score of 129 in the White House bowling alley. Obama’s lament: “It was like—Special Olympics or something.”. It might seem to people that he aimed at mocking children with disabilities. Are Leaders supposed to be ignorant and communicate in such a manner?
c) c) Secretary of State Hillary Clinton presented a symbolic button to Russian diplomat Sergei Lavrov, thinking the Russian word on the mock button meant “reset.” Her hope was that Russia and the United States would reset the direction of their relationship. Right away, Lavrov explained that an accurate translation would be “overloaded” or “overcharged.” This is one of the examples of cross cultural communication blunder performed by a leader. Russian culture is a high context culture and uses high context messages in communication.Words and Word choice becomes very important so a leader must understand how to communicate, with whom to communicate and what to communicate.
I am sure all of us might have faced many communication blunders – be it cross cultural or written communication. Can you share some incidents or ideas so that we can avoid that happening to all of us – the future leaders!
Some interesting and cool thoughts: Have a look!
Source: Higgs,M.(2009)."The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Leadership and Narcissism". Journal of Change Management. 9:165-178.
By:
Sheena Bedi
Sheena Bedi
Very good examples of bad leadership and blunders in communication! I would like to share the example of blunder in communication which happened recently while one of the officials of Russia was addressing Russian Parliament. To capture the whole picture, I will provide a brief background. After the war with Georgia in August, 2008, when all kinds of diplomatic relations were broken between the countries, and ultimately Russian Federation withdrew the whole embassy and consulate back to Moscow, Russia has imposed an embargo on famous Georgian mineral water “Borjomi” and all sorts of Georgian wines. As “Borjomi” has special healing qualities, Russians refer to the phrase “Try/Drink Borjomi” to indicate that there is always a way out of a difficult situation.
ReplyDeleteLater, at one of the press-conferences in Moscow, one of the representatives of Russian State Duma (parliament) in his speech mentioned the phrase “It is late to drink Borjomi” while referring to the situation in one of the hot spots in Middle Eat. Basically, he was underlying that it was late to take steps as that particular operation he was talking about was doomed to fail. As a result, some foreign journalists who were present during his speech got confused with the phrase and did not know exactly what connotation to give to his words. Many misleading articles were published afterwards by those journalists. Some of them ascribed his phrase to the current situation between Georgia and Russia, though meanwhile it had nothing to do with Georgian-Russian relations.
Tamar Khechoian.
Back to history, there were over thousands pages talking about blunders, I think their common aspect is they were autocratic and did not provide democratic interaction to each other.
ReplyDeleteHowever, we all know this a good leader should not increase locus of control but need to build well communication with his or her subordinates for sure.
Very good insights; you provide many good examples of various kinds of leadership styles. And those give us implication how do we develop our authentic leadership to lead our groups.
By~ Yin-Chin Huang
Tamar and Iris that is another good example of miss-communication and misinterpreting the message.
ReplyDeleteIt is hard to believe that leaders make these mistakes again and again.I think communication should always be "To keep it simple" unlike the example you mentioned.Even the leader was not clear of what he was saying.Worst thing is unclear messages leads to assumptions that the press reporter made and wrote all kind of different things.
Another thing that I thought of was importance of communication is so important in war situation and military action.One small mistake and misinterpretation everyone is doomed.One cannot risk assuming things.
By:Sheena Bedi
The class case tonight regarding BP and the former CEO, Tony Hayward's interviews and quotes following the oil spill. Although, this reminds me a bit of the Cathy Black article Tamar wrote about several weeks ago regarding the difference of being in the public eye (politicians) and the corporate world. Definitely makes a big point that in many cases, the corporate world will require the same communication skills and tact that politics need!
ReplyDeleteI really feel that communication is an integral part of a good leader. Does good communication means good speaking,listen and writing? Well I don't think so. I feel in order to communicate with mass leader must have really high emotional intelligence. I will give some examples. Nelson Mandela when became President of South Africa he was't so popular there in 1994. There was a big division in the country on the basis of color of the skin. Mandela understood this thing. Mandela encouraged black South Africans to get behind the previously hated Springboks (the South African national rugby team) as South Africa hosted the 1995 Rugby World Cup. Mandela presided over the transition from minority rule and apartheid, winning international respect for his advocacy of national and international reconciliation.
ReplyDeleteI will give another example of Gandhi. When Gandhi came back to India after winning hearts in South Africa he understood Indian people. He learnt about their life style, needs, problems and then he became one of them. How? He started living in a village when majority of India's population lived at that time. He adopted simple life style of village. He came their level, understood their problems. By doing this he not only became a good communicator with Indian people, he became an effective communicator. People wanted to listen to him as they found him very similar to them. So communication is not about telling something to someone. A good leader gets deep into the hearts of people, understands them and then act upon it. And when he connects with people then he is called a good and effective communicator.
Vashisth