Ineffective Leaders

Does your organization lack quality leadership? In this episode of HBR’s advice podcast, Dear HBR:, cohosts Alison Beard and Dan McGinn answer your questions with the help of Peter Bregman, the CEO of Bregman Partners and author of the book Leading with Emotional Courage. They talk through what to do when your leaders are indecisive, unprofessional, or value the wrong things.

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Listen to more episodes and find out how to subscribe on the Dear HBR: page. Email your questions about your workplace dilemmas to Dan and Alison at dearhbr@hbr.org.

From Alison and Dan’s reading list for this episode:

HBR: If Your Boss Could Do Your Job, You’re More Likely to Be Happy at Work by Benjamin Artz, Amanda Goodall, and Andrew J. Oswald — “Although we found that many factors can matter for happiness at work – type of occupation, level of education, tenure, and industry are also significant, for instance – they don’t even come close to mattering as much as the boss’s technical competence. Moreover, we saw that when employees stayed in the same job but got a new boss, if the new boss was technically competent, the employees’ job satisfaction subsequently rose.”

HBR: Great Leaders Are Confident, Connected, Committed, and Courageous by Peter Bregman — “No matter your age, your role, your position, your title, your profession, or your status, to get your most important work done, you have to have hard conversations, create accountability, and inspire action.”

HBR: Find the Reverse Leaders in Your Midst by Scott Edinger — “Reverse leaders lead through influence, not authority, and they gain that influence by making strong interpersonal connections. To do that they must be self-aware enough to understand the effect their words and actions have on other people. As more and more knowledge work requires people to work effectively with peers, the example of the way these people treat their team members becomes increasingly important to organizational effectiveness for all leaders, formal and informal.”

HBR: What You Can Do If You Have a Gossiping Boss by Joseph Grenny — “And finally, gossip is, by definition, a notoriously inaccurate source of social data. The most accurate judgments about others’ motives, competence, or actions are judgments that have been exposed to broad and open examination. Dialogue is the best vehicle for establishing social truths; gossip protects its messages from this kind of scrupulous examination. There is no integrity in a process with no accountability.”