Dominant-Submissive vs. Win-Win Leadership

Lately I’ve seen a great deal of glorification of being “tough” as a leader. This interpretation of being “tough” implies that all relationships should be governed by a dominant-submissive model, i.e., one person wins and the other loses.

This model also implies that seeking cooperation, teamwork, and win-win relationships is naïve and “weak.” This outlook sees the world as a literal jungle of constant struggle for survival where there are limited resources and only winners and losers. The argument here is, “Hey, you don’t see a gazelle trying to be friends with a lion, do you?”

However, we don’t live in the literal jungle. We humans take great pride in our higher order reasoning and civilization, so let’s use them to our advantage. Is this “scarcity mentality” realistic in limiting our options and governing our decision making?

In most situations the problem is a simple lack of emotional intelligence. In fact, this is the leadership weakness I see most often in my coaching work. If you want to build a sustainable relationship, you can’t do it by using your leadership power to dominate another person. Well, you can if you’re a prison guard where you have complete control over the other person’s life, but not in a free society like ours.

If you dominate someone else, the first thing on their long-term agenda will be to get revenge. As a business leader you can use your power to dominate others and they will follow you out of fear for the short term, but they will “get you back” as soon as they can. Your followers will balance the “social equity” scales by passive aggressively stealing from you. This can be actual goods and services, or it can be just putting out the least amount of effort possible in your business to keep from losing their job.

You can’t build a sustainable high-performance business with the dominant-submissive approach to relationships. By contrast, if you go with the win-win approach by treating your followers with respect, they’ll follow your lead come hell or high water.

So, how emotionally intelligent are you as a leader?

 Don’t be a stranger. (770) 993-1129. tdockery@TheResolveFirm.com