Top 10 Behaviors of Insecure Leaders
Fear begins at the top and flows down through organizations.
Insecure teams are led by insecure leaders.
You’re forced to be inconsistent, when you’re driven by the opinions of others.
Top 10 behaviors of insecure leaders:
- Grudge-holding. Forgiveness requires courage.
- Self-blaming. Insecurity may cause leaders to blame themselves for the delinquency of others. The difference between self-blame and responsibility is corrective action.
- Excuse-making. Insecurity prevents them from holding others accountable to their commitments.
- Joking. Insecure leaders make light of serious issues.
- Attacking and defending. Insecure leaders attack back. Rather than defending their team, they defend themselves.
- Nit-picking. Nit-pickers are unhappy insecure people who never truly celebrate.
- Meddling and Micro-managing. Nit-pickers come in after the fact. Meddlers intrude during the fact.
- Image-protecting. It’s all about what others think when you’re insecure.
- Fear mongering. The use of fear to motivate is an insecure leader’s method of motivation.
- Over-explaining. Insecurity makes leaders talk too much.
Boldness:
Bold action springs from either confidence or fear.
Strength drives confident leaders. Dread drives the insecure.
10 ways to model confidence:
Build confidence by modeling confidence.
- Invite alternatives when you think you know. Insecurity needs predictability. Contrary to some opinions, confidence isn’t about having all the answers.
- Believe in your ability to learn when you don’t know.
- Practice good manners.
- Exercise emotional steadiness. Stay calm.
- Listen and make decisions.
- Apologize.
- Trust people to figure things out. Stay available but make space for others to solve problems. Too much help propagates insecurity.
- Spend time thinking and planning for the future.
- Prepare for contingencies.
- Honor your own mistakes by sharing what you’re learning.
Confident people go further than fearful. Successful leaders inspire boldness by instilling confidence.
What are some indications of insecurity in leaders?
What are some marks of confident leaders?
Dan it’s true insecurity even affects decision making process because they are controlled freaks and keep fingers or poke their nose in due or in undue matters.
They keep few guys in every department to understand what is going against them with big WHY and not more interested in good things.
Innovative methods are other hurdles and do belive in their own 18th centuries stale ideas.
Their all words are command for all.
Contribution is key for team management but this word prevail obnoxiously for ALL in such kind of leadership traits.
You have suggested many ways to instill confidence in teams or how to correct yourself. It’s worth.
But………
Such posts are waste of time for them.
Even god is thinking what do I do for such great useless creatures ……………
Vinay
While there is value in #6: Apologize, be cautious. Own it and apologize when necessary; but, don’t over apologize. Over apologizing not only diminishes the value of your “sorry” but it also makes you look insecure and weak.
For me, the question is how, in a leadership role, does one stay diplomatic without conceding fault or blame? I’m guessing that is part of the insecurity side. This is something I do struggle with, even outside a work capacity. So I am interested in learning how to build on what confidence I have without developing over confidence or becoming authoritarian
>>> Leadership Freak 2016-05-18 11:01 AM >>>
Dan Rockwell posted: “Fear begins at the top and flows down through organizations. Insecure teams are led by insecure leaders. You’re forced to be inconsistent, when you’re driven by the opinions of others. Top 10 behaviors of insecure leaders: Grudge-holdi”
#7 caught my eye in the ‘modeling confidence’ list: “Trust people to figure things out. Stay available but make space for others to solve problems. Too much help propagates insecurity.” Much like the wait time after asking responses to a question (lots of experience in the classroom; always seems like an eternity when it’s less that a minute for sure), when you’re an actual boss or just someone who believes they know what to do, giving enough time for the team to figure things out seems like an eternity as well. Also, being out of sight keeps the team away from feeling there’s an often unspecified time limit – reducing apprehension and stress. Trusting them to get things completed may initially take a little longer in fact. But impact of being trusted will pay huge dividends!!!
What are some indications of insecurity in leaders?
That they know they’re always one mistake away from being fired. This is especially prevalent in organisations where time to think is considered a luxury.
A “leader” who consistently manifest the first ten listed is not leadership material. They would fall into the maintenance category. Give them something to do that requires no trail and error or a learning curve and they will do well. Put them in the forefront and you will have chaos and confusion. I would rather follow a leader who can think on his/her feet, react and regroup if need be, than one who will refuse to make a move forward and try and prohibit anyone else from doing so. Give me a visionary ready to move on and I’m on board 100%