Leadership and Self Esteem – Part 3

Self-esteem derives from our childhood experiences as discussed previously. Our negative childhood experiences as we might perceive them act to depress or lower our self-esteem and positive childhood experiences act to increase or strengthen our self esteem. For example, if as a child, one or both of our parents are continually yelling at us to do something, or not to do it, while from their point of view they are trying to protect us or encourage us, the reality is that we may perceive that as a negative experience rather than a positive one. We in turn suppress the behaviour being complained about, or accentuate behaviour being praised. In either case, our normal and perhaps more sensible reactions are skewed. An example of this might be that our own child is growing up, goes to school and does very well in all of his or her subjects. However, because they haven’t done well in one subject, we concentrate on, or accentuate, the one that he or she hasn’t done well in. We might say, “… well you haven’t done so well in this one, we need to do some work on this one, you must do better in this …”. What we do by concentrating on this subject is negate all the positive aspects of this child’s school work. This does not increase the child’s self esteem, but actually lowers it, because we are accentuating only the negative.

That’s not to say we shouldn’t discuss the negatives; we should, but in the context of the positives.

If we don’t, when the child is older, and in some management role, they will then say things like, “I might have got five positives from my boss, but this one negative, that’s it, my time’s up here”! Equally, when we are required to speak to staff about some negative event or behaviour, we normally are reluctant to do so in a direct way because we know that that would hurt us if we were in their position and it becomes part of our hurt. Consequently, we may have a tendency not to tell this staff member about the issue because we feel that it would hurt or destroy them. Hence, we find other ways of “telling” them. Often these can be so “round‑about” or so disguised that the person being told has little, if any, idea that he has been told about anything. For example, haven’t you had the experience in an organisation when someone says, “but I counselled you about this”, and the other person reacts by saying, “no you didn’t, you had a discussion with me, but you never counselled me about anything”. Plainly there are lessons in this for those of you who are parents, as well as managers. There are also implications for any performance management system, since, in trying to give honest feedback to the staff member, the result can actually be influenced by the manager’s own negative experiences. If they feel so negative or are saddened or affected by particular negative experiences of the past, and if they meet these in the workplace and a staff member has some negative issue which needs to be dealt with, they won’t be able to say what they intended to that person.

The same inaction can also result from positive experiences. If someone has a lot of positive inputs into the organisation, their manager may say: “well, that’s what they get paid for – so I’m not going to say anything”. Since the manager is not used to receiving positive feedback, they feel they shouldn’t give other people positive feedback. Unfortunately, that’s how human beings are, but remember that you don’t have to be that way!

I have talked about how an individual can recognise their own low or high self esteem and take action accordingly. But given that self- esteem is so fundamental to individual effectiveness and therefore to organisational effectiveness, it does seem to us that sometimes a more universal or mass approach to improving self-esteem needs to be contemplated. This raises the question as to whether self-esteem can be taught, for example in a class room situation, to relatively large numbers of people. My view is that it cannot be taught in this way. To be effective, self-esteem has to be taught on a one-to-one basis.

This is a time-consuming, labour-intensive approach; however, it is undoubtedly the only effective way. We have all seen people go on good-sounding, well-intentioned, expensive management courses, where they learn new and exciting skills and techniques which they can’t wait to apply, only to return to the workplace and forget everything or are “forced” to forget everything, because there is no support in the organisation, in terms of how it behaves or works. As the person also lacks the self esteem to counter the inevitable cultural pressures which he or she will be exposed to, they quickly revert back to their old behaviour prior to the training program. Such training programs do nothing to build self esteem.

One of the major issues associated with low self-esteem is territoriality. Most members of the animal kingdom have a sense of territoriality, for example, lions, chimpanzees and gorillas in the wild. People, too, have a sense of territoriality. For example, you may have a manager in a particular area who, when other managers of the same level intrude or come close to entering that person’s area, develops an immediate feeling of threat. Apart from being an animal instinct type reaction, it also has to do with a sense of threat that they will be shown up as lacking in some way. This is clearly another example of how low self esteem can manifest itself.

This does not mean that the incumbent is incompetent. It means that the incumbent perhaps needs to be more open to receiving potentially valuable information. This is a good example for managers who wish to “cross-fertilise” across their patch. Even though the manager has a particular responsibility and accountability for an area, part of their accountability could be that they invite another senior manager in the organisation to purposely come into their area to look at what they are doing, and then actively seek comments or contributions about what they are doing and what they should be doing. The invited manager coming in will usually be able to see things that the incumbent manager cannot see.

This could be a reciprocal arrangement across the organisation that would have a number of benefits. It would increase the self esteem of all managers. It would create a culture of managers not feeling threatened; in other words, territoriality would be removed. It would create something of a matrix organisation where, while individual managers have responsibility and accountability, there is a way where other managers in that organisation can also contribute or cross fertilise and give new ideas, as a way of maximising organisational and individual learning and helping the organisation to go on developing. In fact, this also leads to an increased level of organisational self-esteem.

The concept of organisational self-esteem is not something that I have touched on to this stage, but it does exist and it manifests itself in a similar way to individual self-esteem. Organisational self-esteem is not simply an amalgam or an average of the self-esteem of all individuals in the organisation; it is more complex than that. It is the net sum of how an organisation behaves within itself, how it behaves to the external community and how it behaves to its stakeholders, including its customers or clients. An indicator of an organisation’s level of self esteem is when the media or a customer or client criticises the organisation. Watch how the organisation deals with this internally and what the external appearance is. Is the organisation defensive, protective or submissive? Is it acknowledging? Is it assertive? What external reactions does it display? If the response is acknowledging and assertive, one can generally say the organisation has good self-esteem. If it is defensive and/or aggressive in its reaction, then we can say the organisation has low self-esteem.

Sometimes we think we can measure organisational self-esteem through the number of awards an organisation might receive, such as for its annual reports. This is not always a good indicator of self- esteem. This is not to say that an organisation that has received many awards for its annual reports is necessarily a bad or a good organisation. It’s just that it is not always a good indicator of good self-esteem in an organisation. Another better indicator is the number of complaints received and the number of complaints resolved. Few complaints received is an indicator of good self esteem because it means that the customer service part of the organisation is functioning appropriately and relating well to its clients or stakeholders, with customer service staff feeling able or, to use the jargon, “empowered” to resolve difficult, new or complex issues as and when they arise, without feeling the need to seek approval for their actions.

I should perhaps qualify the previous comments about numbers of complaints by emphasising that it is not the number of complaints which is so important but the fact that they are readily resolved which implies good organisational self esteem. The fact that there are complaints, or any other term you wish to use, about an organisation, suggests that there may be some issue in terms of the organisation’s self esteem at that particular level, which is where the number may assume some significance. The connection between complaints and an aspect of organisational self-esteem may at first not be clear. The point is that staff feel that they can resolve issues at their level and are not obliged to have their bosses become involved – they know that they can fix a problem without needing approval from a more senior person. This knowledge and ability gives staff great satisfaction and a heightened sense of pride, in both themselves and the organisation.