Leadership By Humiliation?
November 18, 2005 by admin
Parents are — or should be — leaders in the family. But would any sane leader try to motivate an employee to change through humiliation?
Well, yes, unfortunately — both organizational leaders and parents-as-leaders sometimes get frustrated and desperate. I see it far too often. But using such tactics is about the lack of creativity and energy in the leader, not about finding a good solution.
While it may seem to work in the short run, humiliation and shame are poor motivators in the long run. Humiliating someone destroys the relationship you have with that person — child or employee. Finding ways to treat our family members and co-workers with dignity is basic to good leadership.
News article: Mom Makes Teen Stand on Street With Sign
How are people (like bosses) allowed to get away with humiliating employees/subordinates? As you indicated earlier, it could be a systems problem – there’s a brilliant article that examines leadership by using systems thinking, at http://www.changethis.com. It’s called "why your boss is programmed to be a dictator", (articles on changethis.com are called ‘manifestos’). This manifesto should be made required reading for anyone interested on the topic of leadership.
Interesting site, Mike. I’ve put it on my RSS reader to keep up with.
Humiliation techniques have gotten a bad rap mostly because of the touchy felly, don’t offend anyone society that we have become. It is HOW this method is applied that is the key not necessarily the method itself. This technique has been successfully used by our military, militaries throughout the world and militaries throughout history. Some of the best leaders we have today in the corporate world, political field, etc. were former members of the armed forces, meaning they were to some degree subjected to humiliation as a key training tool. Humiliation for the sake of being mean, or because you may be an ineffective leader is not the same thing as using it as strategic, methodical training tool.