Why an absentee boss is worse than an abusive one.
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| Photo by Jakub Domerecki/EyeEm/Getty Images |
By Scott Gregory, Harvard Business Review
A young friend recently remarked that the worst boss he ever had
would provide him with feedback that always consisted of “You’re doing a
great job.” But they both knew it wasn’t true — the organization was in
disarray, turnover was excessive, and customers were not happy. My
friend was giving it his all, but he needed more support and better
feedback than he received. He wanted a leader who would be around when
he needed them, and who would give him substantive advice, not
platitudes. As a measure of his frustration, he said, “I would rather
have had a boss who yelled at me or made unrealistic demands than this
one, who provided empty praise.”
Researchers have studied managerial derailment — or the dark side of leadership
— for many years. The key derailment characteristics of bad managers
are well documented and fall into three broad behavioral categories: (1)
“moving away behaviors,” which create distance from others through
hyper-emotionality, diminished communication, and skepticism that erodes
trust; (2) “moving against behaviors,” which overpower and manipulate
people while aggrandizing the self; and (3) “moving toward behaviors,”
which include being ingratiating, overly conforming, and reluctant to
take chances or stand up for one’s team. The popular media is full of
examples of bad leaders in government, academia, and business with these
characteristics. However, my friend was describing something arguably
worse than an incompetent boss. His manager was not overtly misbehaving,
nor was he a ranting, narcissistic sociopath. Rather, his boss was a
leader in title only — his role was leadership, but he provided none. My
friend was experiencing absentee leadership, and unfortunately, he is not alone. Absentee leadership rarely comes up in today’s leadership or business literature, but research shows that it is the most common form of incompetent leadership.
Absentee leaders are people in leadership roles who are
psychologically absent from them. They were promoted into management,
and enjoy the privileges and rewards of a leadership role, but avoid
meaningful involvement with their teams. Absentee leadership resembles
the concept of rent-seeking in economics — taking value out of an
organization without putting value in. As such, they represent a special
case of laissez-faire leadership, but one that is distinguished by its destructiveness.
Having a boss who lets you do as you please may sound ideal,
especially if you are being bullied and micromanaged by your current
boss. However, a 2015 survey of 1,000 working adults showed that eight of the top nine complaints about leaders concerned behaviors that were absent; employees were most concerned about what their bosses didn’t
do. Clearly, from the employee’s perspective, absentee leadership is a
significant problem, and it is even more troublesome than other, more
overt forms of bad leadership.
Research
shows that being ignored by one’s boss is more alienating than being
treated poorly. The impact of absentee leadership on job satisfaction
outlasts the impact of both constructive and overtly destructive forms
of leadership. Constructive leadership immediately improves job
satisfaction, but the effects dwindle quickly. Destructive leadership
immediately degrades job satisfaction, but the effects dissipate after
about six months. In contrast, the impact of absentee leadership takes
longer to appear, but it degrades subordinates’ job satisfaction for at
least two years. It also is related to a number of other negative
outcomes for employees, like role ambiguity, health complaints, and increased bullying
from team members. Absentee leadership creates employee stress, which
can lead to poor employee health outcomes and talent drain, which then
impact an organization’s bottom line.
If absentee leadership is so destructive, why don’t we read more
about it in the business literature? Consider a story I recently heard
about the dean of a well-known law school: Two senior, well-regarded
faculty members called the provost to complain about their dean because,
they said, he wouldn’t do anything. The provost responded by
saying that he had a dean who was a drunk, a dean who was accused of
sexual harassment, and a dean who was accused of misusing funds, but the
law school dean never caused him any problems. So, the provost said,
the faculty members would just have to deal with their dean.
Like the provost in this example, many organizations don’t
confront absentee leaders because they have other managers whose
behavior is more overtly destructive. Because absentee leaders don’t
actively make trouble, their negative impact on organizations can be
difficult to detect, and when it is detected, it often is considered a
low-priority problem. Thus, absentee leaders are often silent
organization killers. Left unchecked, absentee leaders clog an
organization’s succession arteries, blocking potentially more effective
people from moving into important roles while adding little to
productivity. Absentee leaders rarely engage in unforgivable bouts of
bad behavior, and are rarely the subject of ethics investigations
resulting from employee hotline calls. As a result, their negative
effect on organizations accumulates over time, largely unchecked.
If your organization is one of the relatively few
with effective selection and promotion methods in place, then it may be
able to identify effective and destructive leaders. Even if your
organization isn’t great at talent identification, both types of leaders
are easy to spot once they are on the job. They also produce
predictable organizational outcomes: Constructive leadership creates
high engagement and productivity, while destructive leadership kills
engagement and productivity. The chances are good, however, that your
organization is unaware of its absentee leaders, because they specialize
in flying under the radar by not doing anything that attracts
attention. Nonetheless, the adhesiveness of their negative impact may be
slowly harming the company.
The war for leadership talent is real, and organizations with
the best leaders will win. Reviewing your organization’s management
positions for absentee leaders and doing something about them can
improve your talent management arsenal. It’s likely that your
competitors are overlooking this issue or choosing not to do anything
about it, like the university provost. Doing nothing about absentee
leaders is easy. Just ask any absentee leader.
See more at Harvard Business Review
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