Posts Tagged ‘verbal abuse’

The Tell-Tale Trait of Unquintessential Leadership: Allowing, Tolerating, and Committing Abuse

Posted: April 3, 2013 in About The Quintessential Leader Blog, Examples and Analyses of Lack of Leadership and Unquintessential Leadership, General Things about Quintessential Leadership, Myths and Misconceptions About Management, Qualities of a Quintessential Leader, Quintessential Leadership, Quintessential Leadership is an Art, Team Building & Development
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Beneath today’s termination of Mike Price’s contract as head basketball coach at Rutgers University lies a very common story about the way many people in leadership positions now function and operate day-in and day-out.

Rutgers' head coach Mike Rice It’s interesting to see how much indignation about this.one.incident comes pouring forth, while the larger problem – and the bigger picture – is virtually ignored.

The reality is that this is a vivid example of a now very-common story line that shows how abuse of all kinds is allowed (and, often, encouraged), tolerated, and committed by people in leadership positions throughout every segment of society today. Committing abuse is present in some shape or form in every organizational construct today. It’s a reflection of a society that has come to accept the existence of abuse as being normal. As quintessential leaders, it is imperative that we are discerning and attentive so that we recognize abuse, no matter how subtly-shaded it is, and reject it as wrong and eliminate it wherever it exists.

Mike Price’s story as an abusive coach at the collegiate level is not unfamiliar. Bobby Knight at Indiana University and Woody Hayes at Ohio State come to mind almostBobby Knight Indiana University immediately.

Woody Hayes Ohio State UniversityHowever, as I discussed last year in “Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely,” regarding Penn State and which I discuss in detail in one of the components of Building Trust and Being Trustworthy, all of the people in leadership positions at Rutgers have shown unquintessential leadership in this matter. Because this is the second time in 16 years, that we know of, this kind of abuse has occurred with Rutgers’ athletic program – it is obvious that allowing, tolerating, and committing abuse is accepted as standard operating procedure among those in leadership positions at Rutgers. And when those in leadership positions at an organization accept abuse, abusive behavior spreads throughout the organization.

But frequency of occurrence is not the most damning evidence that those in leadership positions at Rutgers University accept abusive behavior as being normal and okay. The back story to Mike Rice’s termination today, however, is.

One of Rice’s coaching assistants, Eric Murdock, brought Rice’s abusive behavior toward players – recorded on video from practices from 2010-2012 – to the attention of Rutgers University’s athletic director, Tim Pernetti, early last summer. Rice fired Murdock in July 2012. Pernetti suspended Rice for three games and fined him $50,000 in December 2012 after the attorneys for Murdock, who sued Rutgers University for wrongful termination, produced video proof of Rice’s abusive behavior toward his players in November 2012.

If Murdock had not threatened to release the video tape to larger audiences, this would have been the only action that Rutgers University would have taken against Mike Rice. However, once the video became public, then those in leadership positions at Rutgers University – and this includes those in executive leadership positions outside the athletic department – decided the behavior of Rice was egregious enough to terminate his contract with the university.

And therein lies an unquintessential leadership philosophy: it’s okay to do the wrong thing as long as you don’t get caught and/or no one else knows or finds out about it. Everyone in a leadership position at Rutgers University clearly embraces and believes this philosophy. By extension, this philosophy is being passed on as acceptable and normal to every student who attends Rutgers University. What does this say about how these students will act and behave when they get into leadership positions in their careers?

Think about that carefully for a while. It should make all of us in leadership positions and we, who are striving to be quintessential leaders in every aspect of our lives, stop and take stock of our own actions, behaviors and beliefs. Do we allow abuse? Do we tolerate abuse? Do we encourage abuse? Do we commit abuse? If we do, then we need to change completely. If we don’t, then we need to stay vigilant to ensure that what has become normal and acceptable behavior among those in leadership positions doesn’t sneak into our behaviors, beliefs, and actions or into the behaviors, beliefs, and actions of our teams.

Inevitably, many people in leadership positions may look at Mike Rice’s behavior and think “well, I’ve never cursed at, thrown things at, or physically pushed around those I lead, so I have never been abusive to anyone I’ve led or lead.” That is very dangerous thinking, because abuse has many faces.

We, as quintessential leaders, as I’ve said many times must be brutally honest with ourselves in examining who and what we are and do to ensure that the person we’re not the most dishonest with is ourselves. This is not easy, but it is absolutely necessary. Let’s all ask and answer the following questions about ourselves in our fearless self-examination of whether we have been or are abusive.

Have I ever implicitly or explicitly threatened someone because that person pointed out something wrong or flawed or inconsistent in me or my behavior?

Have I ever publicly embarrassed or harassed someone to try to force that person to agree with me or see things from my point of view under the guise of helping that person?

Have I ever used the “I’m in charge and if you don’t like it, you can leave” statement to try to intimidate someone who had a different – but not wrong – perspective and/or opinion than I did?

Have I ever used the “silent treatment” to try to manipulate someone into agreeing with or going along with me?

Have I ever talked over someone’s head in an attempt to make that person feel inferior or ignorant?

Have I made general disparaging comments about the intelligence, the quality, the substance, and the efficacy of my teams to put them or keep them “in their place?”

If we answered “yes,” to any of these questions, we’re guilty of having been abusive. And this list of questions is not exhaustive. I urge all of us to think deeply about this subject and identify abuse so that we understand what it is we are fighting and must not allow to become part of our way of being or thinking or doing or speaking.

As human beings, we all tend toward abuse as a defense. It seems to be hard-wired into who and what we are. But, as quintessential leaders, we hold ourselves to a higher standard and part of that higher standard is treating everyone as we ourselves want to be treated. You don’t want to be abused. I don’t want to be abused. And it must be our highest priority not to be abusive in any part of our lives.

I spoke of the courage that quintessential leaders must have in my last post. This is a concrete example of what that courage looks like.

The Most Non-Quintessential Leader in My Experience

Posted: May 21, 2012 in Examples and Analyses of Lack of Leadership and Unquintessential Leadership, Myths and Misconceptions About Management
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I have worked with one person who was a quintessential leader. The next post will be about that person and how grateful I am that our paths intersected early in my career, because I learned a lot from him not only about what quintessential leadership looks like in practice, but also about having the highest standards of integrity and practicing what a person says he or she believes.

The rest of the people in leadership positions throughout my career so far have been managers (and not stellar in even that arena) and non-quintessential leaders. Some were decent people personally, but had no leadership skills. Others were not decent people personally and also had no leadership skills. As I’ve sorted through the names, faces, and experiences, contrasting and comparing them all, one person leads the way in non-quintessential leadership and I will point out the areas in which this became glaringly obvious.

You may recognize these characteristics in someone you know and/or have worked with. And the more of these symptoms that are evident, the more toxic the work environment and the lower the morale will be. If you are experiencing burn-out and all that encompasses, then you probably have a non-quintessential leader like this.

He had a reputation when I got hired and I quickly heard that he was a “yes” man, a suck-up to those above him – and a tyrant to those who worked for him, and wishy-washy, going with whatever the prevailing winds moved the executive leadership of the organization, which left his teams in constant disarray.

Ironically, he did not want me to be hired because he thought I was too assertive and too committed to changing things drastically. In the conservative mindset of the organization, change was viewed with suspicion and resistance, and if anything did actually change (very few of the fundamental changes that needed to be made to become efficient, effective, and productive were made while I was there or have been made since), it was only after going through layers and layers of committees, organizational red tape, and many hoops held up by the executive staff to jump there. Change – or the attempt to change – was thoroughly exhausting and was mostly an exercise in futility.

He was ignored (and I didn’t find this out until later, but I realistically know that it was only a small contributor to the tenor of the relationship he and I had, because I know I shared the same kind of relationship with him in general that all his other team leaders did) and the CTO, who liked me personally and professionally and wanted someone who would shake things up in a positive and productive way, made the offer of employment to me, which I accepted.

As I began the job and was observing, evaluating, and listening to my team members and my peers, I also observed, evaluated, and listened to those who were responsible for overseeing all of us. The first thing I noticed about this man was that he had gotten where he was not because he was qualified for a leadership position, but because he was skilled in playing the elaborate political games this organization reeked with. He ingratiated himself with the people who wielded power in their respective business units and who had the unqualified support of the CEO.

They were like gods to him and he bowed at their altars regularly, slavishly acquiescing to their every whim and demand, whether it made sense or not, was reasonable or not, was right or not, to the exclusion of the majority of the organization’s other employees.

In disputes in which they leveled charges against his employees, they were always true and right and his employees were always dishonest and wrong. He never checked facts and never investigated a situation before drawing a conclusion. He simply took their word at face value and supported them. Not once in all the time I was there did I ever see him support or go to bat for one of his employees.  Ever.

For context, it is important to note that the people he cowtowed to and curried favor with were an ivory-tower group of people who were prima donnas and consistently made mountains out of mole hills, if there was an issue, and if there was not an issue, but they decided a person wasn’t paying them enough attention or being subservient enough, they fabricated issues.

And this group of people was who he always threw his support behind. He was more interested in himself – and his career, because he was a lifer at this organization – than he ever was with his teams. And that was reinforced time and again.

His climb up the ladder was the result of his own self-centeredness and kissing up to the right people. He did not have any leadership skills and was not even that knowledgeable about the technical areas he was responsible for. But he had teams that made him look good and he never had any problem taking all the credit himself and promoting himself when things went right.

Equally, when things went wrong – both because of poor leadership on his part and because he constantly agreed to things that either couldn’t be done the way he agreed to them or couldn’t be done in the unrealistic timeframes he agreed to or both – he never took any responsibility, instead placing all the blame and castigation – he was quite adept at that – on his teams.

He was neither respected nor liked by any of us. But we were stuck with him, so we did our best to do our jobs in spite of him. It was never easy. The turnover rate of his teams was (and still is) the highest in the organization and yet no one ever questioned it nor did anything to address it. Those who’ve endured had other personal reasons for staying, but it has not been without a lot of grief and heartache and ulcers along the way.

Toward the end of my tenure there – when he’d crossed a major line by calling me into a “meeting,” closing the door, and proceeding to yell and scream at me, getting worked up into a full rage which had him standing banging on his desk and threatening me (I was alarmed enough for my physical safety that I was trying to assess how close I was to the door and whether I could get out fast enough if he came after me), and the administrative assistants sitting outside the door were “frightened” (I heard this after the fact) for me and went to alert the CTO, who shrugged and did nothing – I spelled it out to him (I refused to meet with him alone anymore after this meeting, and after three months, he couldn’t remember what he did and after I told him, could not understand why I was so upset about it).

Prior to my last annual performance review there, I wrote a document and gave it to him and told him we would not do my performance review until he had read it. Performance reviews with him were a nightmare. They lasted a full day and consisted of him haranguing all of us over our deficits. None of us ever got more than a cumulative “meets expectations,” and, of course, raises were tied to that, so none of us ever got much, if any, of a raise. Early on, after talking with one of my peers who also became a good friend (we were complete opposites in temperament and approaches, but together we made a very successful team), I discovered that our director blasted me for not doing more of what he criticized my peer for doing and he blasted my peer for not doing more of what he criticized me for doing. That’s an impossible situation to try to navigate.

He kept delaying my last performance review and one day I got a call from the CTO saying he wanted to meet with me. In the meeting, he said that my director had tried to read my paper and just couldn’t get through it. The CTO said it was hard for him to get through it, not because it wasn’t well-written, but because it presented a lot of information in a “dense,” high-level way that, although it was completely understandable, required a higher level of intelligence and capability than this director had. I then aired my professional grievances against him and the CTO’s response was disappointing. He said that this director had a “limited range of responses” and it was my responsibility to just deal with it.

By then, I was seriously pursuing other career opportunities, so I just walked out and finally did the performance review, which netted me the usual “meets expectations.”

When I submitted my “burn-no-bridges” resignation letter to this director, he was genuinely surprised. He was so enmeshed in the organizational mindset of “you stay here until you die or are fired (which rarely happened)” that he could not wrap his brain around the fact that someone would actually leave by choice. He did not ask me why I was leaving, nor did he express any regret (and although 200 or so people showed up at my going-away party, he did not). My last action of significance, though, was making sure that the person I had groomed to replace me and who I knew would stand toe-to-toe with him just like I did in support of my team members (she was more charming and proficient verbally than I was and, amazingly, he liked her better than most) got my position. I left, knowing that although there was no leadership at the top, that my team members had a leader who was poised to become a quintessential leader.