During my 10 years of career coaching—and management consulting prior to that—I have found a counterintuitive phenomenon in management that defies common sense. I have also seen this when I was heading an engineering organization in my first career, more than 20 years back. Now that I have seen this phenomenon enough times, what I experienced then as strange appears as something that is not so unusual. Back then, I ignored it because it did not make sense to me; and you often ignore things that do not make sense because you think that you are imagining what is happening!
This peculiar phenomenon takes place when exceptionally strong leaders, impressed with their own expertise, with narrow views of the world take over team leadership and also act as its public face. Although the impact of the person’s leadership force is more felt in constituencies outside the team, the performance of individual team members is not immune from their toxic influence field.
Individual members can be much more effective and grow if their strong leader redirects their energies in appropriate ways to channel team members’ creativity, challenging them to rise to overcome the obstacles, rather than providing ready solutions without letting them go through the process of uncovering such a solution on their own. Their impact on outside stakeholders is even more insidious!
Let me explain:
Strong leaders derive their strength from their somewhat narrow technical knowledge—highly specialized experience—and their place in an organization that puts premium on such characteristics. What these leaders lack, however, is their ability to mobilize their highly specialized expertise in other areas to create optimized outcomes; their superb technical skills end up holding hostage easily optimized solutions and outcomes from which the overall organization and business can benefit. When these leaders couple their formidable technical skills with wit and charm to influence those around them this combination can be fatal to their organization!
Let’s take the case of Sam, a client I was asked to coach by his employer. Sam was one of the best display design engineers there was with an ambition to grow as manager. So, when he was put in charge of the 14-people displays team, he became the spokesperson for all matters that dealt with displays design. Sam knew about display design inside and out, and the problem was that was all that he knew; he was a lousy systems engineer.
So, when the applications or the marketing team came to see Sam about what their customers had asked them to design for their next-generation displays, Sam quickly pointed out the flaws in their thinking. He was so set in his views and so confident—even cocky—about his knowledge in the displays technology that he was blinded by it, refusing to see why the customers wanted certain design features the way they envisioned them for their next-generation systems. Sam’s glib style and charms made his arguments irresistible; people tiptoed around him because of his charisma!
Not fully understanding the implications of the needs Sam continued to simultaneously charm and bully the marketing and applications experts, refusing to entertain the needs customers had presented. Sam also refused to meet with the customer as he felt that he knew everything there was to know about how displays were designed, and that marketing should address these customer issues. Besides, the marketing folks were skittish about putting Sam in front of the customer for the same reason. Finally, the customer decided to go elsewhere and the company lost a big contract to its weaker competitor!
Because of his design prowess, Sam had done similar damage to the team members’ psyche. When any team member came up with a new idea and brought it to Sam, his first and immediate response was decrial, telling the team why it was a bad idea, not worth pursuing. After enough such experiences the team members merely surrendered to what Sam wanted to do and just followed his orders to keep peace within the team.
Sam, thus, was a poor choice to be placed in a position where he could not only stifle his team, but also wreak havoc across the company by how he carried himself in deploying his expertise. When I engaged with Sam for coaching at the behest of his employer, there, too, he had all the answers. He simply refused to consider any avenues to improve his leadership style for the good of everyone around him. After a few sessions I decided to stop coaching the incorrigible Sam; he was not coachable.
I really do not know what happened to Sam after that. But this experience confirmed something I had witnessed nearly 20 years earlier in my role as head of engineering, where I had my own perfidious Sam doing somewhat the same thing!
Since becoming a career coach I have encountered several Sams. Some approached me on their own for leadership coaching to improve their effectiveness, but the majority was sent my way by their frustrated bosses. Most are coachable and recover to become good and effective leaders.
So, if you have an incorrigible Sam in your team, run away! You must run away even farther and faster if they are glib and charming in their demeanor. If you’re his boss get rid of Sam, as I should have then!
Good luck!
Shubhangi
Very interesting blog. I wonder what beahavioral science would say in such cases. I have seen most of the time the tech experts who get promoted for technical results turning into “Sam” at many organizations. Sometimes, they think that they carry all the responsibility of getting things done on their shoulders, and thus start putting the same burden or more on their subordinates. I strongly feel that whenever a person moves from technical to management side, he or she should undergo training for people management and communication skills. Lack of these two attributes causes turn overs in companies and cost more than training itself in long run.