How to manage petty leaders in your organisation – 5

Leader endorsement is another means by which pettiness affects the quality of leadership in organisations. Behavioural psychologists report that followers express lower satisfaction with leaders who utilise influence techniques that contravene their preferences.

For example, research experts found that childish, petty, and inconsistent discipline is negatively associated with employee dissatisfaction. Also, managers who make unexplained and arbitrary decisions undermine employees’ trust in the managers and the organisation, which indicates that a leader’s inequitable action reduces the leader’s endorsement.

…it was found that the higher the unmet expectations and desires for control and the lower the perceived legitimacy of supervision, the greater the reactance, as operationalised by the frequency of complaining, bending the rules, criticising people…

To buttress this outcome, two provisos, however, are necessary:

First, research on leader-member exchange theory indicates that some leaders frequently display different patterns of behaviour toward different subgroups of subordinates. This may be particularly true of petty managers since they appear to play favourites and may pursue a divide and conquer strategy.

Thus, a petty leader may have one or more “lieutenants” who endorse their leadership style. However, since the relationship between a petty leader and their lieutenants tends to be based on a calculated exchange of services often supported by implicit threat rather than an affective commitment, this endorsement is contingent on the relative power and the respective needs of the parties and is thus inherently fragile.

The second provision pertains to the psycho-dynamic notion of “identification with the aggressor,” where one assumes the attributes of an aggressor to be transformed “from the person threatened into the person who makes the threat.” This defence mechanism protects one from the anxiety caused by the aggressor. Although anecdotal evidence suggests that the process does occur in organisations, it appears to be a somewhat extreme reaction. It is more likely to occur in bureaucratic organisations where the employee has little or no hope of avoiding the aggressor.

Frustration, stress, and reactance are other means by which pettiness affects the quality of leadership in organisations. Frustration is regarded as an interference with goal-oriented activity and goal maintenance: the more complete and persistent the interference, the more incredible the frustration. Frustration is experienced as a negative emotional state. While stress is defined in similar terms, that is, as an unpleasant emotional experience associated with elements of fear, anxiety, irritation, and the like.

Petty leadership likely engenders frustration and stress in several respects:

i. arbitrary decisions and noncontingent punishment may create fear and anxiety as well as unpredictability which thwarts planning and goal-directed activity,

ii. forcing conflict resolution and discouraging initiative may interfere with subordinates’ ability to affect their tasks and work unit, and

iii. belittling subordinates and withholding considerate behaviours may create fear and anxiety and threaten the maintenance of self and social esteem. Some petty leaders act erratically and punitively to ensure that subordinates remain uncertain, anxious and thus attentive to the leader’s every whim. This manipulative behaviour is nothing else but bullying.

Research on human behaviour found a significant association between coercive and punitive supervisory behaviour and the prevalence of fear, anxiety, and anger among subordinates. Most employees anonymously reported higher stress when managers were verbally abusive toward them, became angry at them for something, not their fault, wasted their time on non-strategic tasks, and publicly criticised them.

Also, a leader’s officious and inconsiderate behaviour fosters irritation among followers, and destructive criticism breeds more anger and tension than constructive criticism.

Further, reactance theory suggests that people react against perceived causes of frustration in either a direct problem-focused manner to regain control or an indirect non-problem-focused way to assert their authority. Thus, in a study of bank workers, it was found that the higher the unmet expectations and desires for control and the lower the perceived legitimacy of supervision, the greater the reactance, as operationalised by the frequency of complaining, bending the rules, criticising people, reducing productivity, acting against people’s welfare needs, arguing, and acting angrily toward others or things.

It should be noted that reactance is indirect and covert. Given the tendency of petty leaders to over control subordinates and punish deviations, direct and overt reactance against the petty leader is likely to have a high cost and a low probability of success. Thus, in confrontations with “sadistic managers,” the “rebellious employees always lost.” Under such conditions, it is not long before employees learn to be more selective in venting their frustration.

In addition, helplessness and work alienation are other means by which pettiness affects the quality of leadership in organisations. Helplessness is regarded as the perception that outcomes are independent of behaviours.

Read also: How to manage petty leaders in your organisation

Petty leaders likely foster helplessness in several respects: by discouraging initiative and closely controlling subordinates, petty leaders reduce subordinates’ autonomy; by restricting communication, petty leaders reduce subordinates’ opportunities for participation and understanding of the work environment, and through arbitrariness and non-contingent punishment, petty leaders render the work environment unpredictable.

In such a work environment, we have a “pathological prisoner syndrome” in response to the petty leaders’ frequent harassment and capricious behaviour. This syndrome is one of passivity, dependency, depression, helplessness and self-deprecation. Hence, the feeling of helplessness may be aggravated if the direct reactance discussed above is indeed discovered to be futile. Thus, there is a significant association between reactance and helplessness among psychologically harassed employees.

Meanwhile, work alienation is a sense of separation of the individual from work and the workplace. In this instance, the petty elements of over control, arbitrariness, and punitiveness erode a follower’s psychological attachment to the job and organisation. Also, subordinates of petty leaders tend to withdraw either physically in terms of leaving the unit or organisation or psychologically cease to care and become passive and less creative. Similarly, the bossiness of leaders in such organisations contributes to an “institutional neurosis,” including a lack of initiative, disinterest, and general resignation.

Please lookout for a continuation of this article.