Is Your Leadership Style Inspiring or Infuriating?
Jan 21, 2025
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Adam Galinsky, a Columbia Business School professor and author of "Inspire," dives into the dynamics of leadership. He discusses how different styles can either motivate or frustrate teams. Anxiety and anger often narrow leaders' perspectives, while insecurity can lead to counterproductive self-promotion. Galinsky emphasizes the power of generosity and gratitude in fostering a positive work environment, advocating for clear communication and empathy. He also shares insights on achieving personal balance through mindfulness, which can enhance leadership effectiveness.
The relationship between leaders and employees deeply influences mental health and workplace satisfaction, emphasizing the critical role of effective leadership.
Leadership behavior exists on a continuum from inspiring to infuriating, and conscious behavioral changes can enhance a leader's effectiveness and influence.
Deep dives
The Impact of Leadership on Mental Health
The relationship between employees and their managers significantly affects overall mental health and workplace satisfaction. Evidence suggests that a manager's influence on mental health is as pronounced as that of a spouse or partner, highlighting the importance of effective leadership. Some leaders inspire enthusiasm and encourage clear, attainable visions, while others may create a challenging or psychologically unsafe environment. This variability in leadership approaches can profoundly affect employees’ desire to engage with their jobs, emphasizing the need for leaders to cultivate their effectiveness.
The Continuum of Leadership Behavior
Leadership qualities exist on a continuum that ranges from inspiring to infuriating behaviors, which are mirror images of each other. Inspiring leaders exhibit characteristics like generosity, courage, and a clear vision, while their infuriating counterparts may display selfishness, cowardice, and a fixation on minutiae. The insights suggest that individuals are not inherently one or the other, and changes in behavior can shift a leader's position on this continuum. This optimistic perspective implies that improved leadership can be cultivated through conscious behavioral changes.
Anxiety's Dual Role in Leadership
Anxiety can sharpen focus on important tasks while also narrowing perspective-taking abilities, influencing a leader's effectiveness. When individuals are anxious, it can hinder their big-picture thinking and make them appear less visionary. However, harnessing that anxiety constructively can lead to heightened courage and intentional decision-making, especially if leaders can step back and assess the broader context. Employing personal mantras and rituals can aid leaders in managing their anxiety and maintaining a calm demeanor, fostering a more productive environment.
The Leader Amplification Effect
Leaders impact their teams significantly due to the leader amplification effect, where even minor actions and emotional states are magnified in a group setting. This phenomenon is rooted in the notion that anything a leader pays attention to gains more significance, amplifying their influence over their followers. As people look to leaders for cues and emotional guidance, their responses can set the tone for the larger organizational culture. Thus, leadership behavior should prioritize awareness of one's influence and the importance of cultivating a supportive and inspiring atmosphere for employees.
Have you ever had a boss who just infuriated you? Bosses and leaders often have the ability to make or break our experience at work. In this episode, host Morra Aarons-Mele speaks with Columbia Business School professor Adam Galinsky about the attributes that differentiate great leaders from terrible ones, and how leaders can have a outsized effect on others. His research also looks at attention and shows that anxiety and anger have the ability to narrow our viewpoints and hold us back; plus how talking ourselves up when we are insecure can actually backfire. Galinsky’s new book is Inspire: The Universal Path for Leading Yourself and Others.
Check out Galinksy’s book here: https://www.amazon.com/Inspire-Universal-Leading-Yourself-Others-ebook/dp/B0D3CCHW45?ref_=ast_author_mpb
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