It’s been a long, hard year, and you are ready for some down time during the holidays.  But, before you go, take a little time for reflection about what kind of leader you have been this past year.

This is a tongue in cheek list of Leadership Don’ts – ways leaders can produce employee disengagement and alienation as well as high employee turnover. Do you or your organization persist in any of the following behaviors and policies?  I’m sure you do not, but if you do, recognize you are contributing to creating a dysfunctional culture and, likely, underperformance.

1. Don’t recognize your employees or make them feel valued.  Show no interest in them personally or professionally. Make sure you do not know their capabilities or to what they aspire, and take any effort on their parts as a matter of course.  If you expect as little as possible and place them in typecast roles that restrict creativity and curb entrepreneurial spirit, you’ll be sure to keep them silently subversive and uninterested in aligning with the corporate mission (if there is one).
2. Burn your employees out.  Particularly in professional service firms where numbers of hours are counted down to the last fifteen minutes, and where client service comes at the expense of employee sanity, feel free to wreak havoc with their personal lives.
3. Micromanage employees.  Insist on unreasonable deadlines, give work at the last minute, avoid responding to employee requests and supervise every detail of their work.  This is guaranteed to make employees passive-aggressive and/or hasten their exits from your firm.
4. If there are any “elephants in the room” – unspoken but generally recognized issues or problems – make sure no one addresses them.  Create a culture where people do not feel safe to speak freely and where opinions are expressed in anonymous chat rooms and in whispers in corridors.  Never listen to anything anyone tells you.
5. Be unavailable.  Stay out of the office or out of the way as often as possible.  That way, you will dodge awkward questions or requests, and you will not have to be bothered with employee concerns.
6. Delay responses.  If employees come to you with problems, tell them you need time to process, and don’t get back to them.  This is a good way to dodge requests for salary raises – in fact, you may get to avoid paying them altogether because they will be out the door before long.
7. Another savvy technique for dealing with employee woes is to hear them out then counter with your own problems.  That way, they will retreat chastised and regretful that they bothered you.
8. Pay them below market rates, and offer few benefits if any.
9. When they have performed well or have come up with ideas, avoid acknowledging them so they don’t get swollen headed.  Focus instead on the deficiencies in tasks not yet completed. Use sarcasm liberally.
10. Give contradictory instructions.  This way, you automatically have a “fall guy” – someone to blame when things go wrong.   Their failures will have nothing to do with management confusion and incompetence.
11. Hold a retreat that includes everyone, and ask for frank views, opinions and ideas.  Then, ignore them all.  Or, take punitive action against those who revealed themselves.  Do not follow through on anything that has been discussed.  This is a proven method to engender cynicism and despair among even hardened employees.
12. Make promises – as extravagant as you like – and then forget them.  This is an excellent way to kill loyalty and trust.
13. Use performance reviews as an opportunity to criticize employees or to evade critical professional development issues.  View such a meeting as a time sink and of extremely low importance, and display your resentment by giving as little time and thought to it as possible.
14. Avoid personal contact as much as possible.  Email colleagues at all times instead of walking to see them.  Duck out of any potential conflict situations.
15. Multi-task during meetings.  Blackberries are extremely useful distractions especially when someone is trying to gain your attention.
16. Call meetings, and don’t set an agenda.  Don’t listen to participants, don’t come to any conclusions and don’t follow up on action items.   Make sure no one feels heard or responsible for decisions or actions.
17. Insist that lunches are taken at the desk in isolation from others.  If there are staff gatherings, make sure no one from the management ranks shows up because they are too busy and too important.
18. Do not set expectations, and do not clarify roles and responsibilities.  This gives you maximum wiggle room when things go wrong.  This is a particularly effective technique when used with previously high-performing employees.  Change their roles and responsibilities arbitrarily without discussing implications or getting buy in.  You will facilitate their exits exquisitely.
19. Show how little you trust your employees.  Set cameras, phone taps and computer checks to trap them, do not allow them to speak to customers without supervision and remind them how unworthy they are of the privilege of working for you.
20. Don’t make your values, guiding principles or corporate mission explicit.  If your employees don’t know for what they are working, and if they don’t have any guiding principles to ground them or to give them a decision-making framework, then don’t be surprised if your employees behave with inconsistency and uncertainty.  Unethical and hypocritical leaders are role models for similar behavior.

Fredia Woolf, founder of Woolf Consulting, specializes in organizational performance improvement and leadership coaching.  She works with clients to increase their effectiveness and impact, to manage transitions successfully, and to achieve positive results for their careers, teams and organizations. She can be reached at fwoolf@woolfconsulting.com.

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Last updated on March 14th, 2010 at 07:14 am