Q&A: What makes an “accidental dictator” at work?

The professional world doesn’t have a shortage of micromanagers. Or Craig L. Pierce and Heman Park, teachers at the Penn State School of Labor and Employment Relations (LER), call them “accidental dictators.”

However, according to an article published in Journal Organizational Dynamics, co-authored by Brova Family, Brova Family published in Park Park, a professor of leadership and human resources and director of LER’s graduate programs, leaders don’t have to fall into that trap.

The journal’s readers are primarily made up of business leaders and HR experts. It’s like Pierce and Park want to shoot a chord.

“We are trying to create practical knowledge that people can read and practice that same day,” and “Share Leadership 2.0: Getting Inventory and Looking forward to it,” the new book Pierce will be released on April 24th by Chanlidg University Press.

Pierce and Park recently took time to discuss their findings.

How did the idea for the article come about? And what exactly is a “contingent dictator” in the workplace context?

Pierce: The opening case for the article is about a music industry executive who took a course on shared leadership at the Drucker School of Management. This was a class with many executives. She shared her frustration with me and her in person who didn’t want to make her own decisions and said, “Thank you for sharing, I think you’re the problem,” which was the origin that led to this article.

I have been teaching the concept of “smart person leadership trap” for 20 years, and it really resonates with many people. Essentially, that means you’re entangled in a leadership role because you’re smart and know what you’re doing, but you’ll carelessly end up establishing a pattern where people are coming for all the answers, and slowly sinking that you’ve created a dependency you don’t want. The way we taste it is for us to frame it because you are smart and that’s how you got caught up in this problem. And you are clever, so you can understand your way out of this problem. This makes it easier to access to practice your manager.

Park: Looking at the mandatory literature, leaders usually don’t delegate important decisions. They delegate small tasks to their subordinates, not so important. They don’t necessarily trust every individual in their group. In general, there is a kind of hesitation in delegating important decisions. It all aligns with the idea of ​​an accidental dictatorship.

When people become more prominent in organizations, they get more demands about their expertise and there is plenty of empirical evidence that people start to rely on them more. Such dependencies make them even more dictators. Even if you don’t want to be that person, once you enter a position of power, you become very goal-oriented. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but the downside is that they tend to ignore the advice of others. That approach may be successful for smart leaders in the first few years, but ultimately they reach their capabilities and are unable to move on to the next level. Most often, organizations try to promote leaders who are good at their work, but leaders need to be good at interpersonal relationships and collaboration.

What are some practical ways that leaders can avoid dictatorial traps?

Pierce: One of them is the concept of “enclosed empowerment.” People say empowerment is great, and that’s true, so you empower people. And they do something that will make you go, “Good sadness, why did they decide to do something like that?”

The concept of enclosed empowerment is to place guardrails where your subordinates’ empowerment is. Sometimes when people hear “I’m empowered,” they might think, “Now I can do whatever I want.” Well, that’s not something that most leaders imagine when empowering someone. Limited empowerment is to have a more purposefulness about the boundary conditions people have, to draw a circle around where someone is being empowered, and give some guidelines about it. If your ideas affect others, as a still empowered individual, you should still bounce your ideas from the leader. The same applies to the empowered groups. If you start to influence other groups, you need to bounce that idea off your leader.

Can you explain in detail the concepts of “shared vision” and “long-term perspective” discussed in the article?

Pearce: One of the key findings we identified about shared visions is that attracting people to the process of creating shared visions is even more important than the shared vision itself. People often assume that just because you are saying something, it is suddenly shared. That’s not true. It often needs to be repeated. And what makes it even stronger is attracting people to the process.

The idea of ​​a long-term perspective will only change the whole way you get closer to life. The biggest difference between people around the world is how you view time. When you start thinking about the long term, that doesn’t mean you’ve given up on short-term goals, but it helps you contemplate things in a deeper, more inclusive way. It makes you think more effectively about the short term. That’s core advice as everything else can happen.

Park: If your organization has a short-term perspective, the easiest way to choose a leader is to choose the people who are most successful in their current role. But do they promote individuals into leadership roles based solely on technical expertise? Or are you considering whether someone will demonstrate strong interpersonal skills and ability to effectively collaborate, even if it takes time?

That’s what leaders need to do. Leaders are not intended to handle everything themselves. They need to delegate decisions to highly competent team members in their roles. The problem is that when an organization is focused only in the short term, it is often the default to picking the “smartest” person in the room. It may work to some extent. However, in the long-term vision, the focus is on interpersonal abilities, those who can manage both tasks and relationships. What we are claiming is that this is key to maintaining the success of the organization. In the long run, it is clear that a co-culture will ultimately win.