What I've learned from bad leaders

The first in our 'Ordinary Extraordinary Leaders' podcast series, listen to Mike Hickman, Leadership Development & Training Manager at Community First Yorkshire as he creates a composite Frankenstein's Monster of bad leadership and shares what good leadership looks like.

Transcript

What I've learned from bad leaders intro and podcast 

[00:00:00] Hi, my name is Mike Hickman. I'm leadership development and training manager at Community First Yorkshire. And this is planned to be the first of a series of podcasts on the theme of leadership. And we thought we'd start with something a little provocative. Not that we're going to avoid being provocative all the way through, I think.

The subject of the first of our podcasts is what I have learned from bad leaders - a deliberately provocative title. Not designed to prod individuals or poke individuals or highlight individuals. Absolutely not. This is me thinking from my role now, my position now here at Community First Yorkshire with all the many leaders that we work with and our leadership development programme.

This is me thinking about the many things from my experience that might inform where we would like to go or the things we would like to talk about and so while I will be creating some illustrations of bad leadership, let's think of it as a [00:01:00] Frankenstein's monster of bad leadership. Let's think of it as combined horror stories, perhaps a composite profile of what makes a bad leader.

If you can find all of these things in one individual, I will be very, very surprised. And I'm sure you'll need a sit down or a lie down as you tell us the story. So where do we begin and why, why begin here? Why, why, why do we want to talk about what makes a bad leader? Well, in one sense, we're putting our Frankenstein's monster up on a pedestal of one sort or another, presuming he doesn't crush it.

And we're looking at all the various attributes so that we can also see the reverse or the obverse or whichever way you'd like to phrase it. So here's our Frankenstein's leader in the room right at the moment, except they're not. The first thing I'd like to put forward as an attribute for this creature is, well, actually more invisible man than Frankenstein.

He or she hasn't turned up or can't be found or isn't [00:02:00] there. And so visibility is the first thing that I'd like to put forward. Learning, listening, sharing from the people that you're working with, working as a team, being able to draw on the best attributes of those people in your team, sort of does require you to be there, and our monster at the moment isn't.

Possibly doing something else - we're not quite sure. Maybe skiing, maybe off painting a picture, maybe quietly lying down somewhere reading a book. I'm being slightly facetious, but the point is, we don't know. And so, the first on the list then is visibility. They need to be present somewhere. We need to know where to find them.

I remember, I was a leader, senior leader in higher education for nearly a decade. And one of the first piece of advice I was given by a mentor was management by walking around. 

[00:03:00] Actually being seen, going in and out of people's offices, asking people how they are, working out whether it's somebody's birthday today and whether or not it is a good idea to say something about it.

All of those things. Visibility, the fact that people know where you are, can find you, you can find them. Very, very important, I think. And it connects also with something else that our Frankenstein might have. And he would have to come into the room for this, he or she, and would have to take the pedestal for this and possibly wear a crown and maybe a wreath or various other signs of this, because what they are now is the big I am.

We know who the leader is because the leader has the nicest or biggest chair. We know who the leader is because the leader has the biggest or nicest office. And so we're in big I am territory. While it's important for the leader to be visible, there is a question about the degree to which the leader has to always be the most [00:04:00] important person.

Our Frankenstein monster leader - perhaps always at the head of the queue, perhaps always with the hand up first. I mean, it really does depend on how Dr. Frankenstein has wired his vocal circuits. But, he's coming up with the ideas first, without necessarily asking other people in the room, or thinking to.

There's something around hierarchy here, there's something again about, I talked about learning, listening, sharing earlier, and that someone who is visible, someone who is around, someone who knows their team is more likely, perhaps, to do this. And if they feel that they need to be at the head of the queue, and if they feel - and I speak as someone who is a senior leader really quite young, and didn't know the rule book, and had to be taught this - if they feel that the important thing is they have the answer to everything, well, don't be [00:05:00] surprised if their voice is the voice that's heard most.

And this links in with various other things like, I've got written down here, Imposter Syndrome and Unknown Unknowns. We'll do Imposter Syndrome first. Frankenstein's Monster may or may not feel Imposter Syndrome. May or may not feel, you know, Bull in a China Shop wise. That he belongs in that setting: merrily destroying the canapes and crushing the champagne glasses. He may or may not realize that it's not the right setting for him. But the one thing that perhaps doesn't happen is actually saying do you know what, I feel a bit of an imposter in this environment. I feel like I'm not exactly here as leader yet.

And perhaps I don't feel as others do; and perhaps others are supposed to feel a particular way, [00:06:00] and I don't. There's been a lot of talk amongst our leadership hub colleagues about imposter syndrome and the fact that, to an extent we ought to feel like, maybe we should have a t shirt that says we're all imposters together.

And that we should own this. We should own these moments when people, when we feel: "I don't actually feel completely natural in this environment." Because from that comes the ability to identify those things we need to work on, or those people we would benefit from working with. And also from that, a big interest of mine, my background was higher education for a long time, from that comes the idea of growth mindset too and learning. Because if you can identify the areas in which perhaps you feel less confident and you can identify where that further information might come from, including the people around you, [00:07:00] then a growth mindset becomes possible. And I guess they will be talking about growth mindset a bit more in the podcasts to come.

Also in here, I have to read what this says: "The worst kind of imposter." They don't have a script. A bad leader doesn't know who they are. Okay, well. Is there a better or worse kind of imposter? I'm not sure. I suppose the worst kind doesn't know they are and we head into the territory of unknown unknowns.

If you remember Donald Rumsfeld from many years back, known knowns, known unknowns, unknown unknowns, etc. And we're talking about Dunning Kruger here as well - that ability, if you know Dunning Kruger, that ability to say something out loud in front of people without realising perhaps that the people you're speaking to know better than you do and that can be somewhat uncomfortable.

Very good for comedy writing, writing is also a thing of mine, but actually very useful in [00:08:00] terms of reflection when we're thinking about leaders, when we're thinking about what people are prepared to say; when we're thinking about is it necessary to be right about everything, or is it just as important or more important to say, "Do you know what, I don't know the answer to this, and perhaps it would be a good idea if I threw this open to other people."

One of the best headteachers I ever worked with was very, very good on the subject of those things he did not understand. He'd got quite a good list of those things he did not understand - by the way, he had many things that he did - and he worked incredibly well with his leadership team, his deputy, and other senior management individuals in the school, to apportion, basically, those things that they all did well between each other.

And in a sense that is trying to tackle the unknown unknowns [00:09:00] and bring them out into the open; realize those things that need developing and share the load a little bit. I've definitely seen that work well, and I have definitely seen our Frankenstein's monster flailing about, determined that he has to build every single thing that he's been asked to do, without taking any help from anyone at all.

Moving on just a little bit and thinking about this composite bad leader - but actually we're leaning more aren't we into good leadership and perhaps what that looks like and maybe, maybe principles like generosity come up and generous leadership is certainly a big deal in terms of our discussions here amongst the leadership hub and others and the mentoring program that we have is built on generosity and that - if you have a reciprocal, working arrangement with those in your team, people are giving and receiving [00:10:00] all the time, and that includes knowledge, that includes help, that includes thoughts, ideas, etc.

And part of that, too, the way we model it, perhaps, is being caring. I threw the idea away quite lightly early on in the podcast that perhaps a genuine leader, a good leader, whatever you wish to call them, the opposite of the Frankenstein leader, will know the birthdays, will know something about their staff, will stop to talk to people, will have that level of intelligence about the people they're working with.

I do think if I look back at the people who have been most influential in my career, that a lot is built just from those, let's say, softer skills, those people skills, that ability to get to know your team. You don't know after all on day one exactly where it's going to go, but by building that skills knowledge of the people you're working with you also [00:11:00] build trust and you also build that reciprocity I was speaking about earlier. If you expect, let's say Frankenstein leader is improving just a little bit and he's got to know my birthday and he's asked me about something that's happened in my private life or at home, whatever it is, that isn't immediately going to pay off. That isn't immediately going to lead to huge dividends. But what it will do, what it might do, is it might encourage a certain degree of trust, and it might encourage the talk that goes on between individuals. You have a baseline, you have a basis for talk from that point on.

And, it demonstrates this whole idea, not just of generosity, but of being genuine. And perhaps our Frankenstein's monster leader, if we think about it, one thing he or she can't quite be is genuine because he's a hodgepodge or she's a hodgepodge of so many different things. So [00:12:00] going back, what are we saying?

What are we saying I've learned from bad leaders? What I've learned from bad leaders is the ability to talk about what I've learned from bad leaders for quite a few minutes now. But the key things, the key things. I've learned a few things about visibility. I've learned a few things about learning from the people you are with - not having to play the part of the big I am who knows it all. That it actually gets in the way of teams developing, working together, trusting each other, that reciprocity. If one person feels they need to speak for 40 minutes of an hour long staff meeting, or must always lead, or must always have the agenda items, or, let's put it another way, must always have all the solutions.

A good leader, as opposed to a bad leader, cares, shows a degree of interest, and that caring then permeates the [00:13:00] whole organisation. And that there is this sort of challenge to unknown unknowns. It's not that they can't be there because we can't know everything. It is that the things that are unknown are more likely to be brought into the open.

That someone is more likely to own elements of impostor syndrome. That they are more likely to own those areas where they need to grow and develop. And that helps others. I remember being greatly inspired by, again, another good example, this is a headteacher again. A colleague of mine was made English leader, and she said, "But I can't do this, I'm not the great expert in English, I don't have this huge long CV, there's so much I don't know.

And he said to her, "Well, the fact that you say that to me is why I give you this job. This is why I know you will develop and why I know you will do well." So [00:14:00] there is that sense of knowing both the leader and the other people the leader is working with that we are not the finished versions of ourselves at any point.

If you believe in a growth mindset, you just keep going. But you're not looking for the finished version. You're looking for the potential. You're looking for the care and the interest, the diligence about developing oneself. And that brings us to the end, really, of what I've learned from bad leaders.

There will be more in further podcasts to come. We'd love to hear your thoughts on this subject and there will be the opportunity for you to do so. And we would also love you to come back and listen to the remaining podcasts in this series which link with the work our leadership hub is doing which links with our mentoring program.

So do have a listen to the other podcasts in this series. And if you have any thoughts about themes for future additions, do get in touch. Our email is [00:15:00] info@communityfirstyorkshire.org.uk. That's info@communityfirstyorkshire.org.uk. 

Thank you for listening.