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Roula Khalaf, editor -in -chief of the FT, selects her favorite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Isabel Berwick is the FT work computer editor and author of “The Future-Strong Career”
What disconcerts me the most in the workplace in 2025 (in a competitive field) is the lasting prevalence of the styles of remote, negative and subordinate leadership. The delicate bosses have always been with us, of course, although I had imagined that they would start to moderate their behavior once the workers could call them online. Apparently not. Tiktker Ben Askinswhich has 850,000 subscribers, kills it with appalling stories of bad bosses from its viewers. It makes breathtaking content.
Although these behaviors force staff to act quickly and to achieve things (of course they do it!), In the long term, they cause anger, demotivation and mental health problems for affected people. A recent test in the New York Times, “America learns the bad lesson in Elon Musk’s success“, By the organizational psychologist Adam Grant, offers explanations and evidence – if you need it – of the reason why managers who exploit a culture of fear and criticism do not obtain good results. Even if you don’t care about “snowflake” staff, unleashing people is bad for business.
It is clear that the majority of business leaders occupy management positions for positive, even noble reasons. What makes some of these intelligent and remarkable humans adopt degrading behavior? The analysis of “what is below” gives us a chance to understand the problem, which is, as any therapist will tell us, the first step towards change.
In a 2017 article On the “excessive supervision” in the culture of the workplace, the authors Bennett Tepper, Lauren Simon and Hee Man Park find three factors which stimulate the dark behaviors of the bosses: “social learning”, which includes the family history of an individual as well as corporate culture standards; “Threat of identity”, which could include the treatment of difficult personnel and the chief’s own insecurity; And “self -regulating deficiency”, which I would summarize as “anger management problems”.
Unless you are dealing with a real narcissist (it’s a any other story), organizations owe their staff, as well as to their P & L, to act on the bosses of intimidation. Who holds managers and responsible leaders, in other words? Because there are common underlying causes of the bad behavior of bosses, it can be addressed. Coaching, continuous and constructive comments and honest self-reflection are the types of strategies that will help bosses to do better. (Or help them leave.)
We can and should have sympathy for bosses in 2025: to work everything is a game of “Whack-a-Mole” challenges, both local (how to deploy a generative AI, for example) and global (how to plan supply chains at a time of prices). You just have to drive anyone who is unleashed. But there must be a more constructive and profitable way to lead during the uncertain present and an even more volatile future.
The main thing for the heads of management to do now, according to the leadership expert and columnist for the Sydney Morning Herald, Kirstin Ferguson, is to become aware of what they don’t do it know. One of the sustainable problems faced by even thoughtful leaders is that they find themselves in limited information bubbles, often because the staff with useful things to contribute to too afraid to present a different point of view. This is particularly true when the boss is intimidating.
Ferguson believes that “traditional approaches to leadership – hierarchical decision -making and information control – are no longer sufficient. Complex problems require complex leadership solutions ”. While describing in her next book BlindSpotting: how to see what others are missingWe need leaders who are “open to having their own disputed prejudices and being willing to accept that their personal opinions do not reflect those of the people they direct”.
A relevant secondary note is that the bosses must monitor people who copy their interests and their hobbies, which can create a special type of sycophantic echo room. I learned this phenomenon of the leadership coach Kate Lye. As I reported in the newsletter It WorkingOne of his CEO customers was delighted to arrive in a new business to find a senior team that was all, like him, passionate cyclists. He realized late that it was not a happy chance: they played the new boss to become a service.
We cannot solve the leadership problems in the world in 700 words. But we can at least stop screaming and hear what colleagues have to say. Although preferably not while everyone is dressed, head to your feet in Lycra.