19 hours ago
Some bosses thrive on humiliating employees
Some managers use shouting and humiliation as tools to enforce compliance or assert their authority. — Photography AnVr / Getty Images, via ETX Daily Up
You might think that abusive bosses act out of anger or stress. Think again. An American study reveals that some of them deliberately mistreat their teams to assert their authority or boost performance. And, contrary to what you might think, they feel no remorse.
From offices to construction sites, toxic management poisons many professional environments with behavior like shouting, humiliation, inappropriate comments and more.
However, a study conducted by researchers at the University of Georgia (UGA) is challenging our understanding of this phenomenon. This kind of abusive behavior does not always signal a loss of control, due to stress or tiredness, for example. Some managers use it as a carefully calculated strategy.
This insight came to Szu-Han Lin, professor of management at UGA's Terry College of Business, while watching 'Hell's Kitchen.' In this television show, two teams of chefs compete for a position as head chef in a restaurant.
This all takes place under the watchful eye and, above all, the harsh comments of British chef Gordon Ramsay. Over the course of the episodes, we see him yelling, humiliating, and sometimes even insulting the contestants. For hours on end. Millions of viewers watch this spectacle without batting an eye. Szu-Han Lin, however, saw it as a subject of study.
Her team interviewed 100 supervisors from various sectors, including construction, nursing, and retail. Then, in a second phase, 249 other managers were monitored daily for two weeks. The question was simple: why do you mistreat your employees? And how do you feel afterward?
When abuse becomes a management tool
Their answers are disturbing. Some supervisors openly admit to using shouting and humiliation as management tools to enforce compliance or assert their authority. And unlike those who crack under pressure, these managers feel no guilt. Worse still, they feel a sense of satisfaction. "If they engage in these behaviors with a goal in mind, like boosting compliance or preserving their identity as leaders, they're satisfying an emotional need," explains Szu-Han Lin in a news release.
This discovery challenges two decades of research on the subject. "We have been studying abusive behavior in the workplace for 20 years, and we have known it always has bad outcomes for performance and productivity," the researcher says. "But we also know that people keep doing it. I think we assumed that if managers engage in these behaviors, they'd feel bad, and it would always have a negative effect on them. But that's not the case."
For Szu-Han Lin, this new awareness must change the way managers are trained. "It's important for leaders to recognize they may have motivations for acting abusively to help them find better leadership tools," she explains. "You may want your followers to listen to you, or you may want to make sure you establish your role as a leader. That's fine, but there are other ways to achieve that."
Regardless of the motivations, managerial mistreatment remains counterproductive. It destroys motivation instead of stimulating it. "If you engage in abusive behaviors, it will always lead to negative outcomes. No one will be motivated at all," says Szu-Han Lin. A lesson that should give pause to anyone who thinks that authority goes hand in hand with brutality. – ETX Daily Up
