The Great Manager Mishaps

The Great Manager Mishaps

NOTE: While this transcript has been reviewed, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript.

Jill Wiltfong:

Hi, I’m Jill Wiltfong, Chief Marketing Officer for Korn Ferry, and this is Briefings, our deep dive into topics that corporate leaders need to care about.

We’re all aware of classic toxic leadership traits like anger issues, shifting blame, or taking undue credit. But what if I told you there are some equally pernicious peccadillos in management that are rarely spoken of?

I’m talking about things like dark empathy, poorly timed feedback, or playing too small.

In fairness, being a manager has never been easy, but the recent wave of manager cutbacks has made the job even harder. To think, only a few years ago, the average manager had five direct reports. Today, that number has skyrocketed to 12 or more. And to make things even tougher, less than half of managers receive any training prior to taking on their first leadership role.

But fear not. Today, we’re speaking with a top leadership coach who spent her career putting leadership under a microscope and has unearthed some critical but often overlooked errors that managers make—and how to avoid them.

Class is in session. It’s time to learn the great manager mishaps.

Before we start, if you’re watching us on YouTube, please be sure to like, subscribe, and leave a comment to let us know your thoughts on this topic.

So I am joined now by Liz Bentley, CEO and founder of Liz Bentley Associates. Liz is a nationally recognized career coach and a columnist for Briefings Magazine who has written extensively on the diverse ways in which leaders can go wrong and how they can course correct. Liz, it’s really always great to have you on.

Liz Bentley:

So great to be here. Thanks so much, Jill.

Jill Wiltfong:

So Liz, this is a very intriguing list of missteps that people miss. The first one kind of threw me: dark empathy. I’ve never heard of that.

So we’ve always been taught that empathy in leadership is a good thing. How could it possibly be bad?

Liz Bentley:

Let’s be clear. Empathy is a good thing. We’re not saying that empathy isn’t a good thing, but the thing is that our empathy is biased.

See, we don’t empathize with each other equally. We have a tendency to empathize more with people who are like ourselves, or sometimes someone we just feel more connection to.

And so we become biased in our empathy, and that means we’re not empathizing with other people that we should be. So it’s not equal.

Jill Wiltfong:

So give me an example of how dark empathy shows up in managers and negatively affects the workplace. Rattle one off for me.

Liz Bentley:

Let’s say I have a dominant leader who is a little more aggressive and likes action and likes his subordinates to be more direct and pushing urgency.

And he or she looks at that as great because things are happening, we’re working quickly, we’re getting a lot done. They’ll emphasize the good parts about it and not see the bad parts about it, where maybe they’re stepping on people’s toes, not creating more collaboration, becoming intimidating, sometimes offending people, or shutting people down.

Jill Wiltfong:

Okay, I get it. That makes a lot of sense to me.

So empathy can become bias if we’re not careful, and I can relate to that. You have said that the solution to get around this is to really look at all the feedback that we’ve been getting all along as managers. Unpack that a little bit for me.

Liz Bentley:

We’re always getting feedback, honestly, on how we’re doing. And I call it informal feedback.

So we can get it in someone just saying, “I think you don’t always treat everyone fairly,” or they’ll say, “You’re not recognizing how this is not working for them.”

Or you’ll get it maybe in people just giving you negative feedback through their body language, or through not inviting you to something, or through ignoring or dismissing what you’re saying.

So you need to be looking more clearly at what people are saying to you. You can see where your biases show up.

Jill Wiltfong:

That’s a scene from the movie Whiplash, where a perfectionist music conductor gives a student some instant feedback on his performance.

In the business world, feedback is, of course, critical for progress. But Liz, you’ve written that many managers miss the memo on the importance of timing in feedback.

Sometimes you say instant feedback is the right path, and sometimes it can be better to wait. So how do we know which timing is right in the moment?

Liz Bentley:

Sometimes you want to do it in the moment or more quickly than others. Sometimes you want to just tackle it. And that’s when it’s critical.

We have to course correct right now. We can’t wait. We need a fix, and we’re in the middle of a project or in the middle of something where we need someone to be aware of what’s going wrong and make a change.

But sometimes we need to wait, and that can be really important because first we need to wait to get the whole picture. Sometimes we might only be seeing one side of the story, and we need to go do more research. We need to do our due diligence.

We need to find out what happened, talk to more people, and understand the whole picture so that if we are going to give the feedback, we can give a more comprehensive view of what’s going on.

Jill Wiltfong:

Another big issue that you’ve raised with leaders is they’re completely unaware sometimes that they may have blind spots. And one of the bigger blind spots that you’ve seen in your work with leaders is managers taking too much ownership.

Why does that happen? And frankly, what’s so bad about a manager owning more of a project? Why can that get in the way?

Liz Bentley:

Well, it can seem confusing, because as a leader, you’re supposed to take ownership. The buck stops with you.

But what I see happens is that people take that too far, and they become too controlling. Sometimes they can turn into micromanaging, but they’re overmanaging the people around them and not letting them rise and fall by their own account.

So they’re not allowing the leaders beneath them to take more ownership themselves and therefore own what goes well and what doesn’t go well.

If you don’t allow people the bandwidth to grow and push themselves and fail a little, they’re just not going to achieve more.

Jill Wiltfong:

By definition, a blind spot is something you can’t see. So what are the questions managers should be asking themselves to determine if they’re truly owning too much of the work? Maybe you just can’t even see it.

Liz Bentley:

When you’re owning too much of the work, you’re usually exhausted because you’re owning everything.

So it’s really just working on the spaces that you are supposed to control and not dipping outside of that. And you’ll find you have much more energy. You have much more vision of what is going on, and the results will be significantly better.

Jill Wiltfong:

So we’ve talked about dark empathy, poor feedback timing, and blind spots as some key missteps managers miss, but there are two more.

More on those after the break, so stay with us.

Jill Wiltfong:

We’ve been talking with leadership expert Liz Bentley about the often-overlooked missteps leaders make that can cause real problems in the workplace. And we’re back to take on the final two issues on our list.

Liz, that scene just now was from the movie Rocky IV, where Sylvester Stallone talks about how personal change is possible for everyone.

When it comes to the workforce, you’ve posed this question to managers everywhere, which is: can you change? And you found that many leaders you’ve observed think they are changing when they are, in fact, not.

Why is this happening, and what do you think is holding leaders back from making those changes that are so critical for both personal and career growth?

Liz Bentley:

People automatically think, “Yeah, I’m changing.” And sure, I can change. And if I get feedback, I change and I make these adjustments.

But if you ask people around them, most people are going to say, “No, that person has always stuck their head in the sand when a problem comes.” “No, that person always loses their temper when times get tense,” et cetera.

We don’t really see the big change we need to make. And not only do we not see it, we don’t want to see it. It’s a weakness in ourselves that we just do not like about ourselves.

So we ultimately don’t make that change that we need, but we can.

Jill Wiltfong:

So how do you start? Do you find a confidant, someone who’s going to hold you accountable? What’s one thing, two things we can each do to hold ourselves accountable?

Liz Bentley:

You have to be willing to see the truth and be willing to also let go of the judgment you have on yourself. Because the thing that’s stopping you from seeing the truth in yourself is that you’re judging you.

You’re thinking, “I’m a bad person if I’m someone who gets angry.” “I’m a bad person if I’m somebody who doesn’t want to look at what’s going wrong.”

So first, you have to be willing to let go of that judgment. And then you are going to need someone else’s perspective to help you really see it in yourself.

So that can be a confidant. That can be a coach. That can be maybe even a boss or someone. But it has to be someone that you trust and respect. Because otherwise, you’re not really going to listen deeply.

Jill Wiltfong:

For our final mishap that’s often missed, you say that many leaders play small when they should be playing big. What do you mean by that?

Liz Bentley:

Everybody wants to play big. We all want to hit home runs, right? We don’t want to be base hitters. We want to swing for the fences and go for it.

But the reality is, in our lifetime, we’ve been taught to play small. And the way we were taught was in our childhood. Growing up, people told you to be quiet and be nice and not be disruptive and don’t be difficult and don’t ask too many questions.

Most parents are trying to survive life and get through it, and it’s easier if your kids are easy. And then they’re likable, and then it gets rewarded. And then you see, okay, if I just kind of go along, it works.

But pretty soon, that becomes mediocrity. And all of a sudden, we’re kind of always playing small, because to play big, we have to take risks. We have to be disruptive. We have to say things that are going to make everyone uncomfortable.

And when we don’t learn that, we always have this layer of insecurity and a little bit of sadness because we know that we’re not in our full potential. And it’s because we’re scared.

Jill Wiltfong:

You’ve come up with what you’re calling the three C’s to help people play big, as you say. Briefly leave our viewers with a sense of what those are.

Liz Bentley:

The first C is what’s called being committed, which means you have to be committed no matter what. Not when it’s easy. You have to be committed when it’s hard. You’ve got to be all in for the person in the mirror.

The second thing is you have to be curious. And that means you’re constantly asking questions and you’re not afraid of it. You’re always rethinking it. You’re looking at it from a new angle and not being afraid of what you’re going to see. Be curious about your blind spots. Be curious about where your growth is.

And the last is, of course, courage, because you can’t do any of this unless you’re willing to take that risk and you’re willing to go for it. You’ve got to have courage to do big things.

And the last thing I always say is the three C’s all lead to the fourth C, and the fourth C is confidence. What’s important about confidence is confidence doesn’t come first. It comes last.

So after you practice the first three Cs—commitment, curiosity, and courage—you get confidence. But you don’t get confidence first. And most people are waiting to play big because they’re waiting for the confidence. And that’s the problem.

Jill Wiltfong:

I think that’s super inspiring. I hope everybody walks away today and plays big.

Liz, a really deeply enlightening chat as always. Thank you for being here.

Liz Bentley:

Thanks so much. I really appreciate it.

Jill Wiltfong:

The executive producer of Briefings is Jonathan Dahl. Today’s episode was produced by Rupak Bhattacharyya and Zachary Dore, and it was edited by Jaren Henry McRae.

It contains reporting by Russell Pearlman, Ariane Cohen, Peter Lauria, and Meghan Walsh. Our video segment contains original artwork by Fraser Milton, Haley Kennel, Jonathan Pink, and Sasha Kotzek. Our web operations are managed by Ed McLaurin.

Don’t forget to read our magazine—available at newsstands and at kornferry.com/briefings.

That’s it for Korn Ferry Briefings. I’m Jill Wiltfong. See you next time.