How to manage petty leaders in your organisation

The word “petty” often invokes intense emotions and images. We think of the preacher who prioritises judging and condemning sinners above God’s love and salvation, or the office manager who verbally assaults an employee in front of her colleagues or customers. In short, we think of individuals who stresses us with small unimportant issues.

A petty leader is defined as one who lords his power and influence over the subordinates. The qualifier “petty” has been used to underscore the theme of arbitrariness and small-mindedness that showcases the behaviour of such leaders.

Empirical work reveals that petty leader behaviours include incessant blame game and criticism, arbitrariness and self-aggrandisement, belittling others, fault finding, lack of consideration, a strongarm conflict resolution style, discouraging initiative, and noncontingent punishment.

Petty leadership is said to cause low self-esteem, unfounded fear, anxiety, self-doubt and lack of assurance, abysmal performance, little work unit cohesiveness, and leader endorsement, and high frustration, stress, resentment…

Petty leadership is the product of interactions between individual predispositions (beliefs about the organisation, subordinates, and self, and preferences for action) and situational facilitators (institutionalised values and norms, power, and stressors).

This article seeks to present a model of the antecedents of petty leadership and the effects of pettiness on subordinates. The management, social-psychological, social work, and political science works of literature have yielded a host of constructs akin to the notion of petty leadership. These include the authoritarian personality, bureaupathic individual, abrasive personality, dictator, wife-beater or child abuser, and the schoolyard bully.

Hence, the question. What is the behavioural description of a petty leader?

There are perceptions that provide a rich legacy of the behavioural descriptions, and the recurring elements appear to include: close supervision, distrust and suspicion, cold and impersonal interactions, severe and public criticism of others’ character and behaviour, condescending and patronising behaviour, emotional outbursts, coercion, and boastful behaviour; they suggest an individual who emphasises authority and status differences, is rigid and inflexible, makes arbitrary decisions, takes credit for the efforts of others and blames them for mistakes, fails to consult with others or keep them informed, discourages informal interaction among subordinates, obstructs their development, and deters initiative and dissent.

Pervasive themes in these descriptions are a tendency to overcontrol others and treat them in an arbitrary, uncaring, and punitive manner.

Petty leadership is said to cause low self-esteem, unfounded fear, anxiety, self-doubt and lack of assurance, abysmal performance, little work unit cohesiveness, and leader endorsement, and high frustration, stress, resentment, demotivation, loss of creativity and innovation, helplessness, and work alienation among subordinates. These effects may trigger a vicious circle that sustains petty behaviour.

The selection and development of good leaders is a constant preoccupation for today’s organisations because leadership is critical for an organisation’s survival. Leadership is a crucial component of organisational effectiveness, whether exercised at the upper or intermediate management level.

Read also: Leadership at workplace – #horriblebosses #toxicworkplace

More specifically, leadership impacts the performance of teams, organisations, and subordinates’ well-being. Some leadership behaviours have been linked to follower well-being, while others have been linked to psychological distress. Further, leadership style has been suggested as the primary driver for the organisational climate. In fact, organisational climate perceptions can be negative due to tense interpersonal relationships.

The growing body of literature on destructive leader behaviour has shown a clear link between such negative leader behaviours and aspects of employees’ psychological distress. In contrast to the extensive literature on constructive leadership behaviours viz-a-viz Transformational Leadership, much less research and theory development have addressed negative or destructive leadership behaviours.

Meanwhile, aspects of psychological distress at work, particularly in various professions, are a growing preoccupation for organisations. With psychological distress on the rise in the workplace, it is important to study the role played by negative interpersonal workplace relationships, such as tense leader-follower interactions.

So, does your organisational climate support and facilitate the relationship between petty leadership and increased psychological distress at work among employees?

The association between leadership and workplace climate is essential because supportive workplace climates have been linked with desirable outcomes at work, such as job satisfaction, organisational commitment, and psychological well-being. Inversely, negative climate perceptions have been correlated to employee distress.

With psychological distress on the rise in the workplace, it is important to study the role played by negative interpersonal workplace relationships because these directly affect climate, which in turn is linked to several negative workplace attitudes and behaviours. Leader-follower interactions are examples of such interpersonal relationships at work.

Further, the research on punitive and arbitrary leadership styles suggests a host of potential predispositions to pettiness. A review of leadership literature indicates that pettiness in organisational leadership tends to be a joint function of certain individual predispositions and situational facilitators. These factors will be discussed sequentially, and then their potential interactions will be considered.

Individual predispositions to pettiness

Discussions on the bureaucratic personality and model of the bureaupathic pattern suggest that a petty leader is an individual who is domineering, impersonal, inflexible and insists upon the rights of authority and status.

The most frequently used measure of this “bureaucratic orientation” is a willingness to comply with authority, a preference for impersonal and formal relationships with others on the job, a desire for strict adherence to rules and procedures, and a need to identify with the organisation and conform to norms.

Bureaucratically oriented individuals tend to be somewhat insecure, suspicious, authoritarian, dogmatic, and lower inability, and tend to place a higher value on conformity and order and a lower value on treating others with consideration. It should be noted; however, that such individuals tend to have a strong desire for control, and such an orientation is conducive to overbearing supervision and, thus, is positively associated with pettiness.

Please lookout for a continuation of this article.