Working Wounded Blog: Leadership Qualities

May 18, 2005 — -- News Flash: 37 percent of employees believe that the top management at their company exhibits integrity and morality according to Harris Poll.

Business is tough in the best of times. And few would probably argue that these are the best of times. A part of the problem is the rift between workers and their bosses. From the Harris poll above, e-mails to Working Wounded and almost any conversation overheard about work -- bosses and employees appear to inhabit two parallel universes.

Which brings us to John Bolton. He's the guy with the mix-and-match moustache and hair combination who has been in the news a lot recently because of his nomination to be the United States' main guy at the United Nations. He's also been called a rage-a-holic. Yelling at his staff, throwing things at them, and generally being a bully and a jerk.

Which brings us to the topic for this week's blog -- do you have to be a jerk to be an effective leader today? Is Bolton the exception or the rule of bossing?

I'll argue the pro side first. Then the con. Then I'll tell you my take on the question (as if you didn't already know).

Pro-Jerk Argument: There has never been a tougher time to be a boss. Today's occupant of the corner office faces the combination of competitive pressures, a workplace that keeps moving faster and faster, technology, and workers who have less loyalty than at anytime in the history of the modern corporation (which is approximately 100 years, according to Peter Drucker, for those who are scoring at home).

Workers like a firm hand on the rudder at work. They like an executive who is in charge and pointing the organization in the correct direction. And as they say, you've got to scramble a few eggs before you can make an omelet. So a bit of jerkiness is a required part of being a leader today.

Anti-Jerk Argument Eisenhower, the general who led the Allied Forces in WWII and later served as president. A real guy's guy. As weird as it sounds by his bio, he is the source of the best all-time quote of the anti-jerk position. He said, "Hitting people over the head isn't leadership, it's assault."

What Eisenhower knew was that treating employees like rental cars has consequences. Some beaten-down employees will take it out on customers, while others specialize in being passive-aggressive -- employees, to paraphrase Kafka, have their weapons too.

AND THE WINNER IS …

I believe that jerks can have a major positive impact over the short term. But after a while their whip-cracking tends to fall on deaf ears. Or no ears at all as the work force goes running for the exits. So only go "Bolton" selectively, or they will probably start "bolting" on you.

Quote of the week:
"It is the foremost task -- and responsibility -- of our generation to re-imagine our enterprises and institutions, public and private." -- Tom Peters

Weekly book excerpt:
"Re-imagine: Business Excellence in a Disruptive Age" Tom Peters (DK, 2003)

"The Quality thing bet. Call it TQM. Call it Six Sigma. Call it (as the Japanese mostly did) Kaisen -- that is, 'continuous improvement.' Or just call it tinkering. The Japanese took the ideas of industrial precision to the ultimate heights. They taught us a lot about high-class tinkering. Nothing wrong with that -- we learned an incredible amount from them. I would not want to turn back the clock; I would not want to forget those harsh and valuable lessons. Nonetheless, those lessons represented the Last Scene of the Old Economy. The Japanese are not floundering, after more than a decade's worth of ever-deepening trouble. It appears as though, in the '60s and '70s and '80s, they were simply polishing the last patch of skin on the Industrial Revolution's souring apple. Now we need something dramatically different from "getting better" -- from even getting "a whole lot better" -- at what we did for a couple of hundred years. Now we need to train ourselves to play an Entirely New Game -- a game called Re-imagine, in which the rules that define better no longer apply."

Working Wounded Mailbag:.

How not to impress your job interviewer: "The young man who came for an interview mid-week. The following weekend, as my husband and I visited my in-laws, I ran into him at a restaurant and he offered us cocaine."

Here are the results from a recent Working Wounded Blog/ABCNEWS.com online ballot:
Which describes your feelings about corporate training programs?

Bob Rosner is a best-selling author, an internationally syndicated columnist, popular speaker and a recent addition to the community of bloggers. He welcomes your comments at bob@workingwounded.com.

This work is the opinion of the columnist and in no way reflects the opinion of ABC News.