Pair work. Read text A or B. Decide on the best title for your text. Underline the key sentences, which can help you to summarise the text.

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 505.

Text 2

Look at the words in bold in your text. Can you guess and explain the meaning of these words?

6. Read the texts again and decide if the following statements are true (T) or false (F):

7.Give a 2-minute talk “On Leadership”, summarising the most important issues from your point of view. Structure your talk according to the pattern:

2. Summarise your text to your partner. Then discuss together:

- text genre

- style (formal or informal)

- structure: is it easy to understand? Why?

A. ..................................................

Inspired by some recent examples of bad leadership, I thought I would start a series of posts on bad leadership, and note some of the tactics used by "bosses from hell."

1. Use of Threats and Punishment

Punishment is simply a bad and generally ineffective leadership tactic. The goal of punishment is to STOP undesired behaviors. It does nothing to encourage positive, productive behaviors in employees. People who are punished, or threatened with punishment, feel resentment and want to get back at the source of the punishment.

From the leader's perspective, punishment is ineffective because it turns you into a "police officer," constantly on guard to catch any and all offenders (punishment is only effective if it occurs immediately and consistently after each violation).

Threats can only be effective if a boss is willing to follow through with the threatened punishment ("do that again and I'll fire you"). If unwilling or unable to follow through, then it will be seen as an "empty" threat, and the leader will lose control.

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2. Use of Fear Tactics

Leaders sometimes use fear to try to get followers to toe the line, or as a motivational strategy ("if production doesn't pick up around here, people are going to lose their jobs"). Similar to threats, this strategy can often backfire. Fear can cause stress, and in extremes, reductions in performance and efficiency.

A common use of fear occurs when leaders create an "us versus them" mentality. We have seen this used by political leaders when they create an atmosphere of fear from threats outside of the group or nation (e.g., fear of unnamed terrorists; statements like "they are out to get us"). Fear can cause groups and organizations to "hunker down" and go into a self-protective mode that can stifle creativity and innovation.

3. Self-Serving Use of Power

How often have we heard the phrase "power corrupts"? Actually, power only corrupts when it is used for self-serving ends. Often leaders become "intoxicated" by the increased power that their position gives them. Bad leaders let that power go to their heads and do things that are in their own best interests without considering the interests of the collective.

Corporate leaders who ensure that their salaries and bonuses are secure, while freezing employees' pay or using layoffs to decrease expenses are recent examples of the self-serving use of power.

4. Creating Factions: Ingroups vs. Outgroups

Although there is nothing wrong with creating "A teams" of top performers, or favoring your best employees, there is a delicate balance between creating healthy internal competition and blatantly playing favorites. Bad leaders, however, reward ingroup members not because they are top performers, but because they show loyalty or "kiss up" to the leader.

Bad leaders cultivate their ingroups with favors, and that makes it difficult for outsiders to identify bad leaders, or for followers to dislodge the leader from the position of power. The ingroup followers defend the leader and work to keep him or her in power. Bad leaders often exist because their followers allow them to remain.

Learn the tactics used by leaders from hell

Published on May 23, 2009 by Ronald E. Riggio, Ph.D. in Cutting-Edge Leadership

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/cutting-edge-leadership/200905/how-spot-bad-leader

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Some leadership scholars have argued that the majority of bosses are bad, ranging from merely incompetent to patently evil. While thousands of books are written on good, effective leaders, far less attention is given to really bad leaders - and it is these sorts of bosses that can make our working life a living hell. Do you work for one of these?

• Narcissistic Leaders - It's All About Them. Narcissists believe that they are the center of the universe and everything is about them. Criticism or any sort of disagreement is taken personally and is akin to mutiny. For narcissists you are either with them or against them, and only those in the inner circle will get favors and plum assignments.

One narcissistic boss created an "inner circle" of loyal admirers. The problem was as these followers learned the true nature of their leader, they left the inner circle one-by-one. At the end of the reign, the leader had only a few remaining loyalists, and they developed a siege mentality where everyone outside of the small circle was labeled an "enemy."

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• Laissez-faire Leaders - Fiddling While Rome Burns. This is actually my personal boss from hell. Laissez-faire leaders basically don't lead. They occupy the position, but rarely make the decisions needed to move the team forward. Most simply are unwilling (or unable) to do the work that is required to lead effectively.

My favorite example is a boss who constantly turned down team members' requests for project funding, because it was too much of a hassle (we later found out). With team members scrambling around to find alternative ways of getting tasks done, and a departmental budget largely unspent, the administration cut the next year's budget drastically assuming that the funds were not needed.

• Self-Serving - Me First, You Not At All. These bosses try to take all the credit for the team's accomplishments and deflect all of the blame onto others for failure. Sometimes referred to as "Machiavellian," the goal of these leaders is to get ahead at all costs - and usually followers pay the costs.

I knew one self-serving leader who was very upfront about his Machiavellian nature, and tried to justify his behavior (and his bad leadership). "Look, a lot of the people who work for me aren't going anywhere," he said. "I'm the department head, so it just makes sense that the credit will go to me."

• Deceitful Leaders - Lie to Me Once... Research clearly shows above all that followers value integrity and honesty in their leaders. Leaders who are caught lying, particularly if they refuse to own up to the lie and ask forgiveness, will lose the trust of their followers. And often, odds are if your boss lies to you once, it is probably not the first or last lie.

Published on June 4, 2009 by Ronald E. Riggio, Ph.D. in Cutting-Edge Leadership

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/cutting-edge-leadership/200905/how-spot-bad-leader