September 10, 2023 • 19 mins
Are you a leader who's confident in their style, or do you often question if your approach is the most effective? Stepping into this nuanced dialogue, we question the merits and detriments of authoritarian leadership, and the impact it can potentially have on not just the work environment, but also on individual employees. Drawing from our personal experiences in leadership roles, we delve into the possible pitfalls of a rigid leadership approach, and the critical importance of flexibility and adaptability.
Unravel the fascinating correlation between leadership style and employee productivity and happiness as we further our discussion. We bring to light the dark side of authoritarian leadership - the fear it instills, the mistrust it breeds, and the negative working environment it fosters. Listen in as we discuss how a leader can adapt their style to the team's needs and how recognizing when a leadership style is ineffective could be a game-changer. All this and more as we explore the profound impact leadership styles have on an organization's overall health and productivity. Infused with intriguing discussions and insightful observations, this is one conversation you won't want to miss!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Team one stand by Copy.
Team one stand by Breach,breach, breach.
There you guys, welcome back.
So last week I wrote an articleor a post or a blog post
(00:26):
whatever you want to call itwhere I discussed the death of
leadership.
Now, I admit that the titleitself was ominous and, more
likely than not, I chose to usethat title as an attention
(00:51):
grabber you know, not exactlyclick baits, I don't say that
but as a way of getting people'sattention to how important it
is to have a, you know, widervariety of leadership styles, as
(01:12):
opposed to just always kind ofback down like a dictator.
You know that particular type ofleaderships for those that are
curious is called authoritarian.
A lot of times it's what thoseof us that grew up in the 80s
and 90s and even earlier, youknow it's.
(01:35):
It was the parenting style wewere used to.
You know do this or suffer theconsequences, and that's changed
a lot over time.
But when you're talking aboutleadership styles, you need to
be able to have a wider varietyin terms of styles of
(01:58):
leaderships than just the go toauthoritarian.
Don't get me wrong.
Authoritarian definitely hasits place.
There are definitely times whenyou need an authoritarian style
of leadership.
Not only can it save lives and,you know, prevent a lot of
(02:23):
legal issues, but you know,there are times when it's needed
just because you've, you know,you've got a subordinate, you've
got an employee or what haveyou that you really are, you
know, nothing else has seemed tohave worked.
Nothing else with thatparticular employee has worked
and the other leadership styleshas, you know, affected anything
(02:47):
and in turn it's kind of leftwith it.
You know, because if the otheremployees start to see that this
one employee is, you know,allowed to do things, or the
subordinate is allowed to dothings that are contradictory to
rules and regulations thateverybody else is expected to
(03:07):
follow, well, then they start todo the same thing and then,
before you know it, the wholeship has run amok.
So by no means am I saying thatan authoritarian style of
leadership is ineffective,because it is not.
It is most certainly aneffective form of leadership and
(03:27):
if that's the type ofleadership that someone chooses,
you know they will find that,at least in the initial, it is
effective, that accomplishesthings, it gets things done,
because the subordinate or theemployee understands that by not
doing whatever it is, they'regoing to suffer some kind of you
(03:51):
know, more harsh, more harshpunishments in order to do their
job or not to do their job.
But if you know, in order tomaintain their job they're going
to have to go through somepretty harsh things and it can
also lead to, you know, a prettyrough work environment for them
(04:15):
Should they choose not tocomply.
I'd say it's sharp.
If they choose not to comply,they could, you know, obviously
suffer, you know, a poor workingexperience, and that's through
(04:36):
no fault of the employer or thesuperior or supervisor or what
have.
You Should just simply be thatyou know they're a problem
employee.
That's the only way to getthings across to them, because
you know they seem to think thatthey can do whatever they want
or do it however they want, andthat's not the case a lot of the
times.
(04:57):
And to go one step further andcapitalize on what I was saying
about that, then listen into anaudiobook.
Those that don't know.
I don't like to read.
I have a hard time readingbecause I get bored and I fall
asleep, not off, whatever.
(05:18):
Oh, but it's not that way.
If you find a book that youlike and you're interested in
I'm interested in a lot ofthings and just because I'm
interested in it doesn't meanthat I'm going to read it.
So thank you for audiobooks.
But getting back on it, I havebeen listening to an audiobook
(05:41):
by an artist, say an artist byan author by the name of Greg
Hartley, and those of you whoknow anything about Greg Hartley
he is, you know, he has madequite the name for himself, both
in the military aspect of hislife and then also in the
(06:01):
personal and professional aspectof his life, because that's one
of the things that he talksabout is human interaction.
Most notably, you'll findthings on Greg referring to
behaviors of the body, so whatsomebody's mannerisms are when
(06:23):
they're talking.
But in this particularaudiobook of his that I was
listening to, he talks aboutleadership styles and how he
doesn't believe that there isany one type of leadership style
that is better than the others.
(06:44):
And I can see that I can.
I can completely subscribe tothat theory for the sheer fact
of that.
You know, while I may havenever run a big company and had,
you know, a lot of employees orany employees, honestly, well,
I may not have had that I haveworked in supervisory roles and
(07:06):
been in leadership positions,and being in those positions has
afforded me the opportunity tolearn how to be a leader and in
doing so I have found that notevery leadership style works
with every individual, and Iknow one leadership style is
(07:29):
going to work for one person thesame as it's going to work for
the other and in that, usingthat guiding principle, that
means that the authoritarian,authoritarian style of
leadership is not always thebest one, not only the best,
(07:54):
always the best one, but it'snot always the way that's going
to accomplish the most optimumoutput, the most optimum results
.
You know you'll get someimmediate results from it.
Some of them can be positive,some of them can be negative.
(08:15):
But if you only use anauthoritarian style of
leadership, I promise you thatthe negative results are
ultimately going to outweigh thepositives.
You may get whatever you'rewanting, but you're going to
(08:36):
lose a few things in the process.
One of those things are people.
You're going to lose yoursubordinates, your employees, if
they're constantly living fearof suffering some kind of
negative aspect of theirprofessional job.
(08:58):
You know, if they're constantlyworried about.
Well, if I come in, or when Igo in today I could be fired.
When I come in today I could bewritten up.
You know, making sure that theytry to abide by everything and
still constantly having to befearful that they're going to
(09:19):
lose their jobs or suffer somekind of punishment for something
that they didn't realize theywere doing wrong.
You know which?
We've all felt victim of it.
You know, oh well, you knewwhat the rules were.
You knew what the this, thatand the other were.
You still did it.
So it doesn't matter whetheryou knew you did it or not at
the time, it's still in there.
(09:40):
You're still responsible for it.
It's kind of a kind of abullcrap way of doing things.
You know everything has to bedone in perspective.
You know what's, what are thecircumstances that led to this
violation, what are thecircumstances that you know
(10:02):
prevented this abordinate oremployee from adhering to a rule
or the rules or whatever thecase is?
You know sustenance matters,substance matters.
You know you have to havecontext.
That's what I meant.
I say context matters.
You have to have context intowhat's going on, not just simply
(10:26):
well, broke the rules, time forpunishment.
You know now saying thatultimately you can't move to the
authoritarian, no, sometimesit's needed.
However, if you have anenvironment in which your
employees constantly fear andyes, I meant I said that fear,
(10:51):
they constantly fear thatthey're going to suffer some
kind of punishment for someminor mistake then your style of
leadership has now becomeineffective.
Your style of leadership is nolonger effective when your team
(11:11):
and that's what, in my personalopinion, we need to start using
your team, because it's a teameffort you're not out there
doing the job.
But when your team starts toget the perspective that you
know, for minor rule violationsor violating policy, you know
(11:33):
some minor things again we'retalking minor, okay.
For some minor violation,they're gonna, you know, pay
some huge consequence you got.
If your work environment hasgotten to that point, your style
of leadership has failed.
(11:54):
And what can compound failedleadership style is when a
leader can see, or has seen, thesigns that their leadership
style has failed and doesnothing to change it.
(12:18):
If you're a leader and you'veseen the signs that your type of
leadership, your style ofleadership, is starting to
become ineffective andineffective in terms of you know
it's starting to negativelyaffect the lives of your
(12:44):
subordinate, your employee, yourteam.
If you see those differences,if you see that your leadership
style has become less effectiveand you, as a leader, have done
absolutely nothing to changethat, well, you've become a
(13:10):
failed leader, and I'm notsaying that lightly, because
we're not perfect, those of usthat are in leadership positions
.
It's not always an easy job.
You're dealing with multipleindividuals and multiple
different personality types,personality styles, and as such,
(13:30):
you have to be adaptable.
It's not just about what youthink, but it's about what your
team thinks.
So it's not an easy job.
But as a person in a leadershipposition, as a leader, you have
to be able to look for thesesigns and then adapt your style
(13:53):
of leadership to what's needed.
And if you know this, you seethese signs and you do
absolutely nothing to change itbecause you are so ego driven to
have it your way.
(14:13):
You're a failed and ineffectiveleader, because real leaders
realize that the value of theirbusiness, the value of their
company whatever they're aleader over comes from their
team.
That's where the value is.
As a leader, you have to keepthe company's bottom line in
(14:38):
mind.
That's your job Make sure thatwhat the company is trying to
accomplish gets accomplished.
But you're not the company,you're not the business.
You're an individual and you'reresponsible, as a leader, to
(14:58):
those that you manage, that yousupervise, that you employ.
And when you see that thingsare not going the way they
should and you do nothing aboutit.
That makes you complicit.
It makes you complicit inwhat's going on.
It makes you just as muchresponsible for the lack of
(15:26):
reaching your goals.
Now, if your company, yourbusiness or whatever, is it
reaching those benchmarks thatyou set for yourselves and
there's a problem with theleadership style and you've done
nothing to do anything about it, and it's not just your team
(15:50):
that has failed to do that, itis you, as the leader, that has
failed to do that, because youhave a direct role in the output
of your subordinates, youremployees of your team.
A direct role.
It was said to me once beforethat, as a leader, your attitude
(16:16):
will dictate the attitude ofyour subordinates, and in part I
agree with that.
In part I agree with that,because if your team trusts you,
if your team likes you, if yourteam has faith in you that
you're going to do the rightthing, that you're going to lead
(16:37):
them in the right way, then,yes, your attitude as a leader
will be directly represented bythose that you supervise, those
you manage, those you employ.
It will be directly resembledor modified by them.
(16:59):
So, yeah, I agree with that intheory.
But if you're a failed leaderand you're somebody who only
thinks about the bottom line, Ican promise you your team is not
going to emulate that sameattitude, that same go out and
(17:23):
get it, that same intent toaccomplish whatever goal, task,
whatever it is that you are,because they care absolutely
nothing about you.
They care absolutely nothingabout what you think, but more
so about how you've made themfeel, and that's a big thing.
(17:46):
So when I was in the Air Forceand this was one of the things
that surprised me, because youknow it was the military, I
don't want to hear any crapabout cheer force.
Okay, those of you that were inother branches you can say it,
I don't want to hear anyone else.
I don't want to hear it.
But while I was in the AirForce, one of the things that
got said to me by my supervisionat the time because I was just
(18:10):
a, you know, a freshly buddingE3, was that they had found that
when their airmen had happierlives, they had a better product
, they saw more productivity,saw better results at work when
(18:32):
their employees or their airmenhad happier home lives.
And this was back in 2000, 2001.
The Air Force is saying this tome 2000, 2001,.
They're saying look, we foundout that when our airmen have
(18:56):
happier home lives, we get moreout of them.
You know, now is that thecompany making sure that the
company accomplishes whatthey're trying to accomplish
100%, 100%.
Now does it matter whether theyreally truly care on how your
(19:17):
home life is?
Because you believe they did,and even if you didn't believe
they really did, you knew thatthey were going to try to make
sure that your home life wasgood.
And who doesn't want to happyyour home life?
Who doesn't want a good homelife?
Now, that's your solitude,that's your place of rest.
(19:39):
So, whether they actually caredor not, you knew they were
going to make sure that you hada happier home life.
By having a happier home life,they knew they were going to get
a better product and moreproductivity out of you.
Team one stand by Copy.
Team one stand by Breach,breach, breach.
There you guys, welcome back.
So last week I wrote an articleor a post or a blog post
(00:26):
whatever you want to call itwhere I discussed the death of
leadership.
Now, I admit that the titleitself was ominous and, more
likely than not, I chose to usethat title as an attention
(00:51):
grabber you know, not exactlyclick baits, I don't say that
but as a way of getting people'sattention to how important it
is to have a, you know, widervariety of leadership styles, as
(01:12):
opposed to just always kind ofback down like a dictator.
You know that particular type ofleaderships for those that are
curious is called authoritarian.
A lot of times it's what thoseof us that grew up in the 80s
and 90s and even earlier, youknow it's.
(01:35):
It was the parenting style wewere used to.
You know do this or suffer theconsequences, and that's changed
a lot over time.
But when you're talking aboutleadership styles, you need to
be able to have a wider varietyin terms of styles of
(01:58):
leaderships than just the go toauthoritarian.
Don't get me wrong.
Authoritarian definitely hasits place.
There are definitely times whenyou need an authoritarian style
of leadership.
Not only can it save lives and,you know, prevent a lot of
(02:23):
legal issues, but you know,there are times when it's needed
just because you've, you know,you've got a subordinate, you've
got an employee or what haveyou that you really are, you
know, nothing else has seemed tohave worked.
Nothing else with thatparticular employee has worked
and the other leadership styleshas, you know, affected anything
(02:47):
and in turn it's kind of leftwith it.
You know, because if the otheremployees start to see that this
one employee is, you know,allowed to do things, or the
subordinate is allowed to dothings that are contradictory to
rules and regulations thateverybody else is expected to
(03:07):
follow, well, then they start todo the same thing and then,
before you know it, the wholeship has run amok.
So by no means am I saying thatan authoritarian style of
leadership is ineffective,because it is not.
It is most certainly aneffective form of leadership and
(03:27):
if that's the type ofleadership that someone chooses,
you know they will find that,at least in the initial, it is
effective, that accomplishesthings, it gets things done,
because the subordinate or theemployee understands that by not
doing whatever it is, they'regoing to suffer some kind of you
(03:51):
know, more harsh, more harshpunishments in order to do their
job or not to do their job.
But if you know, in order tomaintain their job they're going
to have to go through somepretty harsh things and it can
also lead to, you know, a prettyrough work environment for them
(04:15):
Should they choose not tocomply.
I'd say it's sharp.
If they choose not to comply,they could, you know, obviously
suffer, you know, a poor workingexperience, and that's through
(04:36):
no fault of the employer or thesuperior or supervisor or what
have.
You Should just simply be thatyou know they're a problem
employee.
That's the only way to getthings across to them, because
you know they seem to think thatthey can do whatever they want
or do it however they want, andthat's not the case a lot of the
times.
(04:57):
And to go one step further andcapitalize on what I was saying
about that, then listen into anaudiobook.
Those that don't know.
I don't like to read.
I have a hard time readingbecause I get bored and I fall
asleep, not off, whatever.
(05:18):
Oh, but it's not that way.
If you find a book that youlike and you're interested in
I'm interested in a lot ofthings and just because I'm
interested in it doesn't meanthat I'm going to read it.
So thank you for audiobooks.
But getting back on it, I havebeen listening to an audiobook
(05:41):
by an artist, say an artist byan author by the name of Greg
Hartley, and those of you whoknow anything about Greg Hartley
he is, you know, he has madequite the name for himself, both
in the military aspect of hislife and then also in the
(06:01):
personal and professional aspectof his life, because that's one
of the things that he talksabout is human interaction.
Most notably, you'll findthings on Greg referring to
behaviors of the body, so whatsomebody's mannerisms are when
(06:23):
they're talking.
But in this particularaudiobook of his that I was
listening to, he talks aboutleadership styles and how he
doesn't believe that there isany one type of leadership style
that is better than the others.
(06:44):
And I can see that I can.
I can completely subscribe tothat theory for the sheer fact
of that.
You know, while I may havenever run a big company and had,
you know, a lot of employees orany employees, honestly, well,
I may not have had that I haveworked in supervisory roles and
(07:06):
been in leadership positions,and being in those positions has
afforded me the opportunity tolearn how to be a leader and in
doing so I have found that notevery leadership style works
with every individual, and Iknow one leadership style is
(07:29):
going to work for one person thesame as it's going to work for
the other and in that, usingthat guiding principle, that
means that the authoritarian,authoritarian style of
leadership is not always thebest one, not only the best,
(07:54):
always the best one, but it'snot always the way that's going
to accomplish the most optimumoutput, the most optimum results
.
You know you'll get someimmediate results from it.
Some of them can be positive,some of them can be negative.
(08:15):
But if you only use anauthoritarian style of
leadership, I promise you thatthe negative results are
ultimately going to outweigh thepositives.
You may get whatever you'rewanting, but you're going to
(08:36):
lose a few things in the process.
One of those things are people.
You're going to lose yoursubordinates, your employees, if
they're constantly living fearof suffering some kind of
negative aspect of theirprofessional job.
(08:58):
You know, if they're constantlyworried about.
Well, if I come in, or when Igo in today I could be fired.
When I come in today I could bewritten up.
You know, making sure that theytry to abide by everything and
still constantly having to befearful that they're going to
(09:19):
lose their jobs or suffer somekind of punishment for something
that they didn't realize theywere doing wrong.
You know which?
We've all felt victim of it.
You know, oh well, you knewwhat the rules were.
You knew what the this, thatand the other were.
You still did it.
So it doesn't matter whetheryou knew you did it or not at
the time, it's still in there.
(09:40):
You're still responsible for it.
It's kind of a kind of abullcrap way of doing things.
You know everything has to bedone in perspective.
You know what's, what are thecircumstances that led to this
violation, what are thecircumstances that you know
(10:02):
prevented this abordinate oremployee from adhering to a rule
or the rules or whatever thecase is?
You know sustenance matters,substance matters.
You know you have to havecontext.
That's what I meant.
I say context matters.
You have to have context intowhat's going on, not just simply
(10:26):
well, broke the rules, time forpunishment.
You know now saying thatultimately you can't move to the
authoritarian, no, sometimesit's needed.
However, if you have anenvironment in which your
employees constantly fear andyes, I meant I said that fear,
(10:51):
they constantly fear thatthey're going to suffer some
kind of punishment for someminor mistake then your style of
leadership has now becomeineffective.
Your style of leadership is nolonger effective when your team
(11:11):
and that's what, in my personalopinion, we need to start using
your team, because it's a teameffort you're not out there
doing the job.
But when your team starts toget the perspective that you
know, for minor rule violationsor violating policy, you know
(11:33):
some minor things again we'retalking minor, okay.
For some minor violation,they're gonna, you know, pay
some huge consequence you got.
If your work environment hasgotten to that point, your style
of leadership has failed.
(11:54):
And what can compound failedleadership style is when a
leader can see, or has seen, thesigns that their leadership
style has failed and doesnothing to change it.
(12:18):
If you're a leader and you'veseen the signs that your type of
leadership, your style ofleadership, is starting to
become ineffective andineffective in terms of you know
it's starting to negativelyaffect the lives of your
(12:44):
subordinate, your employee, yourteam.
If you see those differences,if you see that your leadership
style has become less effectiveand you, as a leader, have done
absolutely nothing to changethat, well, you've become a
(13:10):
failed leader, and I'm notsaying that lightly, because
we're not perfect, those of usthat are in leadership positions
.
It's not always an easy job.
You're dealing with multipleindividuals and multiple
different personality types,personality styles, and as such,
(13:30):
you have to be adaptable.
It's not just about what youthink, but it's about what your
team thinks.
So it's not an easy job.
But as a person in a leadershipposition, as a leader, you have
to be able to look for thesesigns and then adapt your style
(13:53):
of leadership to what's needed.
And if you know this, you seethese signs and you do
absolutely nothing to change itbecause you are so ego driven to
have it your way.
(14:13):
You're a failed and ineffectiveleader, because real leaders
realize that the value of theirbusiness, the value of their
company whatever they're aleader over comes from their
team.
That's where the value is.
As a leader, you have to keepthe company's bottom line in
(14:38):
mind.
That's your job Make sure thatwhat the company is trying to
accomplish gets accomplished.
But you're not the company,you're not the business.
You're an individual and you'reresponsible, as a leader, to
(14:58):
those that you manage, that yousupervise, that you employ.
And when you see that thingsare not going the way they
should and you do nothing aboutit.
That makes you complicit.
It makes you complicit inwhat's going on.
It makes you just as muchresponsible for the lack of
(15:26):
reaching your goals.
Now, if your company, yourbusiness or whatever, is it
reaching those benchmarks thatyou set for yourselves and
there's a problem with theleadership style and you've done
nothing to do anything about it, and it's not just your team
(15:50):
that has failed to do that, itis you, as the leader, that has
failed to do that, because youhave a direct role in the output
of your subordinates, youremployees of your team.
A direct role.
It was said to me once beforethat, as a leader, your attitude
(16:16):
will dictate the attitude ofyour subordinates, and in part I
agree with that.
In part I agree with that,because if your team trusts you,
if your team likes you, if yourteam has faith in you that
you're going to do the rightthing, that you're going to lead
(16:37):
them in the right way, then,yes, your attitude as a leader
will be directly represented bythose that you supervise, those
you manage, those you employ.
It will be directly resembledor modified by them.
(16:59):
So, yeah, I agree with that intheory.
But if you're a failed leaderand you're somebody who only
thinks about the bottom line, Ican promise you your team is not
going to emulate that sameattitude, that same go out and
(17:23):
get it, that same intent toaccomplish whatever goal, task,
whatever it is that you are,because they care absolutely
nothing about you.
They care absolutely nothingabout what you think, but more
so about how you've made themfeel, and that's a big thing.
(17:46):
So when I was in the Air Forceand this was one of the things
that surprised me, because youknow it was the military, I
don't want to hear any crapabout cheer force.
Okay, those of you that were inother branches you can say it,
I don't want to hear anyone else.
I don't want to hear it.
But while I was in the AirForce, one of the things that
got said to me by my supervisionat the time because I was just
(18:10):
a, you know, a freshly buddingE3, was that they had found that
when their airmen had happierlives, they had a better product
, they saw more productivity,saw better results at work when
(18:32):
their employees or their airmenhad happier home lives.
And this was back in 2000, 2001.
The Air Force is saying this tome 2000, 2001,.
They're saying look, we foundout that when our airmen have
(18:56):
happier home lives, we get moreout of them.
You know, now is that thecompany making sure that the
company accomplishes whatthey're trying to accomplish
100%, 100%.
Now does it matter whether theyreally truly care on how your
(19:17):
home life is?
Because you believe they did,and even if you didn't believe
they really did, you knew thatthey were going to try to make
sure that your home life wasgood.
And who doesn't want to happyyour home life?
Who doesn't want a good homelife?
Now, that's your solitude,that's your place of rest.
(19:39):
So, whether they actually caredor not, you knew they were
going to make sure that you hada happier home life.
By having a happier home life,they knew they were going to get
a better product and moreproductivity out of you.
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The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, And Charlamagne Tha God!