Instant Egomaniac: Just Add Promotion

constructonomics

What is it with promotions and workplace authority that makes people think they should be sitting at the right hand of God above. I think it has something to do with the emphasis we place on career success in this country. It would be interesting to study the behaviour of managers in countries with less career pressure to see how they differ from managers in this country. Good luck getting a grant for that one.


In construction, everybody is an egomaniac to begin with, so you can only imagine what happens when you promote someone who is already a legend in their own mind. You get a larger than life superhero who is going to shoulder this company and take them to the top of the mountain. It isn't too pretty.


The kind of ironic thing is that there is significant research and discussion about what makes a good manager and much of this discussion argues that the personality types that perform the best as managers are much more humble, empathetic, and caring than one may expect. These "soft" skill are quite contrary to hard skills that were probably required to get a promotion in the first place. This, in my opinion, is where truly talented people can adapt to the changing environment and perform well in a role quite different from the one they had become so comfortably successful. Education of managment technigues also helps. But there are also those(even with education), who cannot adapt properly and flap around like a sea bass that just jumped in the boat.


Jim Collins, the author of Good to Great, claims that this fascination with a larger than life, rock-star leader is detrimental to successful organizational performance and, through extensive research, has found that an appropriate model of leadership is directly responsible for strong organizational performance.


Bob Vanourek, developed a "7 dimension Core Leadership Model", and the number one dimension is that the leader must possess a "healthy personal core". Fist-pounding, tyrannt, egomaniacs, are certainly far from healthy.


Jeff Arnold recently posted an article called "Leaders Look Bad" on his Zen Leadership Blog. He talks about how strong leaders are not afraid of admitting fault, mistakes, or lack of knowledge even at the risk of looking incompetent to co-workers and subordinates.


Unfortunately, conventional wisdom and to some degree the working environment encourages us to inflate our egos slightly promotion. Perhaps our ego ain't our amigo and we should try keep it in check.

Cdat

It all depends on the personality of the person who is promoted. Some times a 'please' will go a long way with a female or another person but then again, some people have to be yelled at. The best one can do in a leadership position is to be able to know when to act and how to act.