Difficult leaders. Pt. 2

Welcome, and thank you for tuning into the Leadership Sovereignty Podcast. I'm your host, Ralph Owens, along with Terry Baylor. In today's episode, we'll cover topics such as how to identify an unpredictable leader, How to identify an overly critical leader? How to identify a passive leader? And why understanding what motivates your leader can be the key to your success.

Enjoy the show. And when you think about it, Again, going back to the original point, most people become leaders because they were great individual contributors. Now they're in a different role. They're in a leadership role. They're not being taught.

They don't go through a training program that teaches them what it means to be a good leader. So how do they determine what it means to be a good leader? They typically either emulate what they've seen. They emulate what they've seen good or bad. Or they take the time to learn how to become great.

But I think most people don't do that. Most people just take the time. They basically emulate what they've seen. So if they had a hard taskmaster that was a micromanager, in their mind, it may be that they feel like that is what it means to be successful.

Right. No, you're so true. Alrighty, let's move on. What about the unpredictable leader? This is the person that's just off the cuff, off the seat of their pants.

You have meetings, there's never an agenda. Every time you meet with them, there's a whole new list of things that they're bringing and not really following up on the previous list, everything seems to be a fire.

I know these kinds of leaders. I think they get joy out of shaking things up and watching people scramble. They think I'm coming in there and I'm about to break up everything they think is normal. Just so they could see everybody scramble. I think as we get into the show, when we talk about ways of coping and dealing with this kind of stuff, there are certain tools that you can use to help you deal with that type of situation.

Right? Because again, inherently these people are who they are. They became that way for a reason. Right? Whether it be previous examples and really what I've found is most of the cases that's what it's been, it's been previous examples.

In their mind, what was a good leader? Oh, this guy came in and shook it up. Kept everybody. Remember, Terry, you and I worked at a company where the CIO, he used to come at various times in the day and just walk the floors. I

remember those stories. That was before my time but I And remember those

he just had his angry look on his face just to incite fear because you never knew when he was gonna walk around and you did not wanna be at your desk. You didn't wanna not be at your desk when he came because then he asked your boss, hey, where's this person? Right? That that kind of stuff. People do these things because in their minds, that is what constitutes what a successful leader is.

Wow. And I'm glad I missed that episode. I'm glad I missed that turn around the sun. I'm so glad I missed that. No, I think that is great.

And just two more on this list. There's the overly critical manager. The overly critical manager.

It's interesting. So when I hear that, what I hear is a person who was never listened to. Who? It's kinda like the middle child syndrome, right? They said the middle child syndrome is they're not the oldest, they're not the youngest, right?

They always kind of get marginalized. Nobody ever really listens to them. So they always want somebody to listen to them. So overly critical person is that person that never had that opportunity to say, hey, what do you think about this? How do you think things should go?

Right? So a technique with that type of person is don't lead with your ideas, ask them for theirs first. Right? What do you think would be a good way to and then you complement what they say and then you build something together. But if you come in and you lead with an idea with a person like that, they're automatically gonna try to shoot down everything that they would have thought because you never gave them the opportunity to speak first.

Wow. We may have to circle back around somebody.

That is real good.

That is real good. And then the last one I have on the list, I'm sure there's more. It's the, you know, that passive, that leader that seemingly right, in the midst of adversity or there is a huge decision that needs to be made. They're just kind of passive, right? Always Seem have the bucket and their team always takes the brunt of whatever's

Yeah. Well, know a little bit about that, don't we? Because we had a leader who checked out on us for about nine months.

It was a while. Was

a while.

We took that opportunity to he came back, he was like, these guys.

We was running that thing.

We was

running it. Yeah, we was running it. But definitely have those types of personalities who they don't want any kind of opposition. And at the end of the day, I love the way I've heard this. Everything rises and falls on leadership.

Somebody's got to stand up and be the leader. And sometimes you have to be the leader when your leader won't be.

No, that's great. And so here's what we wanna identify as we know that every one of these scenarios and every one of these type of leaders impacts the environment. It impacts culture. It impacts man, how folks show up in the morning. It's gonna impact the team's interactions.

And so what we wanna do is help us, all of us avoid the pitfalls because these type of leaders are not subject to a certain tier of leader. You can find it at the supervisor level.

That's right.

You will find it at the manager level. You'll find it at the director level. You'll find it at the VP, the SVP. You will even find these and we've seen these levels in the C Suite.

Yeah, you got me laughing because everybody's worked with that person that as a coworker, they were great. As soon as they got that title, the Tasmanian devil came out it. Somebody

told me something the other day and they said, I'm not gonna say what the nickname was for this individual. I'm like, wow, I did not know. It was so bad that there was a nickname floating around.

Oh no.

Right? And just in case somebody hears this, I don't wanna say the name because they'll know maybe the institution or whatever. Saying that, Ralph, let's just hit on this just a little bit. And this will lead us into the next topic, strategies for coping. Even better than coping, strategies for excelling.

I like that better in an environment like this. And the fact that you recognize it, it means that others are recognizing it. It doesn't mean that they're doing anything about it, but they're recognizing What would be that first thing in maintaining a professional posture and composure? Just as it relates to the organization, right? Because you're just carrying yourself through a scenario like this.

Great question. So a couple of things that come to mind that I kind of notated where you have to understand that your success in a company is tied to your leader. Whether they're good, bad, great or ugly, it comes through that leader. And people really, it's been said that people really don't leave companies, they leave their bosses. They leave their leaders.

And we know this Terry, the difference between a great job and a horrible job is just one bad boss. You could have been at one place for twenty years with a great reputation and great success, and then you get a bad leader or a struggling leader and it completely change turns that same job that you do the same thing into a horrible place to work. Right? So you have to understand the importance of this relationship. It's critical in order for you to be successful.

And you for some of those who are listening to this, you may never thought about it like that. You may think to yourself, hey, everybody has to have a leader or a boss. You know, what's the big deal? Well, that person is tied to your success in the organization, at least in under that department that you work for. Right?

You also need to understand what motivates them. Every leader comes to work not just to make money. There are things that are motivating them to get up every day and come to work. You need to understand what that is for that individual. For some it may be, hey we want to hit our numbers, our sales numbers for this, for this quarter.

For another it may be, hey we just want to keep the infrastructure up and stable and not have any outages. Right? You know, whatever it is that motivates that person, you need to be finely tuned with whatever that is. And then you need to understand also what pressures that individual is under from their leadership. Very, very important for you to understand that we can't have this separate thinking of, hey, this is my world and then that's their world.

No. The pressures that's coming down on them is what's going to come down on you. And if what you're focusing on is going in direct opposite direction of where your leader is trying to go, then you become a problem and not a solution. Thank you for listening to the Leadership Sovereignty Podcast. We hope that you not only enjoy the content but gained something to help you on your personal leadership journey.

Feel free to reach out to us on x and Instagram under the handles Leadership Sovereignty. Until next time, stay safe, peace, and blessings.