Tag: #Authenticleadership

MICRO-MANAGEMENT IS AUTHENTIC BULLYING

Posted on by Leave a comment

By: Stephanie Diana Wilson- Eubank

Micromanagement is a method of leadership which based on my research of remote work and my own work experience is a hostile and lazy form of leadership.  It is lazy because rather than leading with the understanding your greatest resources a company has is its employees.  Hostile because micromanagement has been shown to not only create room for management bullying but to cause harm to employees emotionally. Remote work becoming more normative since COVID has allowed for more transparency of how authentic leadership as a term being corrupted by controlling leaders who are insecure, and incompetent to shine through. Leading remote teams is more emotional work on the part of leadership but, it is good and necessary work.  Before I detailed the facts of how micromanagement is beyond harmful to employees onsite and remote there are some concepts of remote workers as a focus need to be detailed first.

Such as there is a great article pre COVID found on, https://journals.aom.org/doi/abs/10.5465/ame.2000.4468068 on how to manage remote workplaces.  In said article the author Cascio details how remote workers suffer from three types of isolation.

  • Social,
  • Professional, and
  • Geographical.

Due to these types of isolations managers of remote workers and teams need to work on calling or reaching out to subordinates.  Not just for status on projects or assignments.  Rather to reach out to employees and just say, “hi”. There is an interesting TED Talk, (Durrwachter, 2020); regarding the power of saying, “How are you doing?” and “ hello my friend”.  As leaders we need to bother to talk to our employees!  To ask, how are you?  We all have been traumatized globally by the pandemic.  Many of us are still living in the trauma.   The surprising thing is candid, open, and reasonable conversations spark and genuine leadership and communication arises.  Which is the true intention of authentic leadership.  Not the excuse to be a tyrant and a bully that the term has come to be synonymous with. 

However, there are articles like, (Milne, 2021); detailing how there is now spy ware for managers to investigate employee’s cameras and see them and monitor them.  Showing linkage with these programs with communication software like Slack where the user can watch a team and chastise them if they are not at their computer at the exact moment management is checking on them.   There is ample evidence on how micromanagement hurts the work force and can hurt a company’s work force.  Such as the article from Forbes, (Kurter, 2021); and the article from Psychology Today, (Golden, 2020); on how micromanagement hurts businesses.

Micromanagement is not only detrimental to a company and its employees but, it is a testament to lazy management.  How is it lazy management?  For one as noted in remote workplaces there is additional work that must be put into cultivating a team.  Micromanagement is a leaders’ scream that they as leaders did not hire people that they trust to get the job done.  When employees don’t feel like management trusts them it is unnerving.  Micromanagement just shows a leader who isn’t willing to adapt and get to know their team and how best to support them.  At the end of the day remote or onsite employees are a company’s best resource and need to be treated as such. 

If this article helped shed some light on how micromanagement is not in the best interest of a workforce especially not remote please share.

Work Cited

Cascio, W. F. (2000). Managing a virtual workplace. Academy of Management Perspectives, 14(3), 81–90. https://doi.org/10.5465/ame.2000.4468068

https://journals.aom.org/doi/abs/10.5465/ame.2000.4468068

Durrwachter, D. (2020, October 1). Authentic leadership. TED. https://www.ted.com/talks/dianna_durrwachter_authentic_leadership.

Milne, S. (2021, September 5). Bosses turn to ‘Tattleware’ to keep tabs on employees working from home. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/sep/05/covid-coronavirus-work-home-office-surveillance.

Kurter, H. L. (2021, July 1). Is micromanaging a form of bullying? here are 3 things you should know. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/heidilynnekurter/2021/06/29/is-micromanaging-a-form-of-bullying-here-are-3-things-you-should-know/?sh=45a23efa4467.

Golden, G. (2020, October 30). 8 micromanaging boss traits that endanger your business. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/curating-your-life/202010/8-micromanaging-boss-traits-endanger-your-business.

Is it Authentic Leadership or an Excuse?

Posted on by Leave a comment

By: Stephanie Diana Wilson- Eubank

There is a movement in trends of leadership called authentic leadership and in both on site and in remote workplaces authentic leadership as a skill is being perverted as an excuse for poor people skills and aggressive management behavior.  First let us define what authentic leadership is.  In layman’s terms it is a leader who is honest to all and is just genuinely themselves.  Not seeking approval from others so that the goals are the focus.

First off how is authentic leadership defined in professional capacity versus layman terms?  Forbes has a great article titled “What is Authentic Leadership” that you can check out for further clarification.  The link for that is, https://www.forbes.com/sites/kevinkruse/2013/05/12/what-is-authentic-leadership/amp/  However, to sum up the article an authentic leader is someone who is able to be themselves and are results driven with a brand of personal honesty.  If interested there is also a great Harvard Business Review article, https://hbr.org/amp/2005/12/managing-authenticity-the-paradox-of-great-leadership for more info on authentic leadership. 

Now this article is not to disparage different learning or performance types.  Everyone has a type of manager they work best with, but this article is specifically for those in leadership roles who act badly to their employees and argue they are using authentic leadership tactics.  This article is to bring the topic of abusive managers.  Where my focus topic of my research is regarding remote employees these sorts of bad players also do more emotional harm for remote employees.  Forbes also has a great article on what is detailed as professional isolation which is a normative pitfall for remote employees as they don’t get to interact with management face to face as often.  Which can put remote people at a disadvantage at the start.  Which means managers must do a little more collaboration to help ease that issue so that it does not create a constant revolving door of hiring.  You can check out the Forbes article at https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurelfarrer/2019/02/15/beware-professional-isolation-is-more-than-loneliness/?sh=17a736712723. 

First off how is authentic leadership defined?  Forbes has a great article titled “What is Authentic Leadership” that you can check out for further clarification.  The link for that is, https://www.forbes.com/sites/kevinkruse/2013/05/12/what-is-authentic-leadership/amp/  However, to sum up the article an authentic leader is someone who is able to be themselves and are results driven with a brand of personal honesty.  If interested there is also a great Harvard Business Review article, https://hbr.org/amp/2005/12/managing-authenticity-the-paradox-of-great-leadership for more info on authentic leadership. 

Many of us have had the boss like the meme from the office with the power object watch and the coffee mug saying, “Yeaaaaaa, I am going to need to you do this project in less time than we agreed”.  Or the manager that when you ask a legitimate question says, “you got to be f***ing kidding me” and starts to berate an employee for a simple question.   Or the manager who always says exactly what they are thinking with no filters.  My personal favorite has been a manager who throws items off desks and screams at people to get his way and HR explains away his behavior because he is a high producer and is, “passionate about his work”.  Yeah… someone’s “passion” should not require me to play dodgeball at work because he cannot accept federal agency guidelines for compliance.

However, Doctor Ramani who has been featured on several Youtube psychology channels, her own channel, and has lead Ted Talks on Narcissists and the abuses in all its forms.  This includes cases of narcissistic abuse within employment.  Here is a link to her interview at MedCircle titled, “Is Your Boss A Narcissist?” at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2P-5q0C31m4&feature=youtu.be .  In this the doctor analyzes she talks about how some managers have work place enablers who allow for managers to have all around bad or inappropriate behavior because they explain away the behavior as, “hey they get results” and/ or “hey they are mean but, you always can trust them to tell the truth”.  The truth is this is a perverted form of enabling narcissistic abuse and using the concept of authentic leadership as the excuse.    

In summary authentic leadership is not about who can be more of a jerk boss and call it honesty and result driven management.  That just perverts the concept of authentic leadership which is being one’s self enough to focus on tasks while still being a human.  When it comes to authentic leadership especially where remote employment is concerned.  Remembering in these COVID lockdowns as it reshapes our economy, we as leaders need to remember a little humanity and caring goes a long way.  And that humanity is the true sign of authentic leadership.