Organizations sometimes practice an unconscious hypocrisy, preaching a people-focused leadership style while rewarding managers solely on the basis of financial and operating results. This causes managers to focus more on the bottom-line results than on the process of obtaining them. Often this leads to a number of counterproductive outcomes, such as managers’ resorting to demanding, autocratic, or punitive leadership in order to get short-term results. Of course, the long-term consequences of this type of leadership are horrific, including alienating good employees and driving them away.
A “results are all that counts” approach to leadership is especially prone to arise in companies that frequently rotate managers from one job to another. Because the negative effects of their behavior do not show up until they have left, autocratic managers are often not held accountable for the long-term impact of their management style. Furthermore, all too often, new managers who follow them end up failing as a result of inheriting the bad situation created by their predecessors.
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