Do New Leaders Try to Be Like Their Bosses?

What defines the success of a newly promoted leader? There are obviously a lot of factors. One persistent element is that new leaders frequently imitate their bosses. And this could be a good or bad thing, based on the example set by the more experienced leaders.

 

Leaders: Role Models or Rule Enforcers?

Consider the following social experiment by author Daniel Pink for his television show Crowd Control.

Pink and his crew painted two lanes on a pavement, one for cell phone users and the other for non-cell phone users. Then he cast actors as "lane guides," directing people's movements depending on their cell phone usage.

As you can probably guess, it didn't go over very well. People were adamant about not being instructed where to walk. When the actors merely posed as regular people and strolled in the correct lanes depending on their cell phone usage, others fell in line and started following the arbitrary pavement rules.

Pink's assessment: if you model the way, others will often follow.

Of course, "model the way" isn't a new concept. It's one of the five leadership techniques listed in Kouzes and Posner's book The Leadership Challenge. Doesn't it appear natural? Becoming a role model is "built into" the role of leadership.

As Pink's experiment demonstrated, lane guides may minimise the level of "threat" individuals feel by merely modelling their desired behaviour rather than behaving as rule enforcers.

 

The People Equation of New Leaders

So, if becoming a positive role model leads to a leader's desired outcomes, why are so many managers still showing behaviours that contradict the positive values they claim to support?

There is a trickle-down effect at play. People act out what they know. It's the old "monkey see, monkey do" principle at work. As a result, the "people equation" of new leaders looks like this:

Observing a bad manager before becoming one yourself equals acting like a bad manager after you become one yourself.

Researchers from the University of Florida and the University of Nevada examined the impact of a leader's toxic behaviour on a newly established supervisor. They reported their discovery in the Journal of Applied Psychology, indicating that under specific conditions, a new supervisor thought it was okay to emulate their boss's abusive behaviour.

The opposite is also true: if you learnt early in your career from a supervisor who modelled largely positive characteristics, you are more likely to continue similar habits. While there is some merit to learning from a terrible manager, those "non-examples" must be countered with positive role models. Otherwise, the cycle will continue indefinitely.

 

Take heart if you don't have the ideal role models to look up to. If you wish to be a leader and find yourself in the terrible situation of being surrounded by "bad actor" leaders, look for more positive role models. Just because you see somebody behaving badly does not mean you have to follow suit.

Source: PeopleEquation