Leadership, Aggression, and Violence

When you’re the leader of anything you have a great deal of power to influence and even control the behavior of others. It’s like being a parent. While you and your children are all part of the same family organization, you have a great deal more power and control than your children. I’m not saying adult employees should be treated like children (but on the other hand, we all do have a 6-year-old kid that lives inside us).

As a leader everything you do has an outsized direct or indirect effect on those in your team who have less power than you. If you use your power for aggression, dominance, and violence, then these will become the de facto core values and culture for your organization.

Your followers will correctly deduce that these behaviors are what you value and what you reward. Those in your organization who want to succeed will adopt these behaviors because you control the rewards they can earn.

If you believe that “winning” means that you must dominate and control other people, then aggression and violence against those people feels right to you. If you focus your reward system primarily on reactively punishing your followers rather than proactively rewarding them, then you’re using aggression and violence to achieve your ends. The overuse of aggression and violence is a hallmark of ineffective leaders.

We American businesspeople live in a highly competitive environment in which we are encouraged to “beat” our external competitors in a zero-sum game in which ostensibly there can be only one winner. Then we must make a dramatic switch to a more team-oriented and cooperative approach internally because we know that leveraging teamwork produces better business performance.

Of course, you still need to hold people accountable for job performance, but like in Kung Fu, reserve aggression and violence for those rare situations when teamwork and win-win thinking won’t work, i.e., less stick, more carrot.  

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