Bad leadership can be highly inspirational. It inspires anger, mutiny, frustration, confusion, abandonment, resentment or just plain old apathy. All of which, negatively affect your business.

Use the 6 Ps below to see if you have any of the highly inspirational traits. And find out alternative mindsets for change.

Patronizing

When leaders patronize their team they are sending an implicit message that they don’t believe the team knows what they are doing. It is a message of superiority on the part of the leader. It’s saying “I’m smarter than all of you”.

Patronizing your team chokes the flow of ideas and communication. No one likes being spoken to in this way. It makes you feel like a child and generates resentment. Do this long enough and folks will stop ‘having your back’. That can expose the leader’s blind spots in public and sometimes embarrassing ways.

Smart leaders will use tone, words and body language that encourages dialog and ideas.

Pontificator

A close relative of the “Patronizer” is the pontificator. A pontificator expresses themselves in such a way as to convey that they are always right. And usually, they do it in an overly long-winded dialog. They may allow conversation and listen to other ideas. But at the end of the discussion they make it clear through their speeches that they are the ones who are correct.

This too, is a habit that limits real communication. It makes people zone out. It encourages your team to go through the motions. It undermines team effectiveness. Why bother fighting for a great idea when you have to be brow beaten with long winded diatribes about why your idea is not as good as the pontificator’s idea? People will give up.

Observant leaders will carefully structure their words. You as the leader may be right. If so, then communicate clearly why. Succinctly list reasons or constraints that eliminate other ideas or courses of action. Invite dialog. Explore counter arguments. You may well be right. Or you way well learn something new.

Platitudes

Leaders with nothing substantive to say often resort to platitudes. These statements are worn out cliche’s that have little or no value in the business context in which they are said. They are said so much they are meaningless.

Phrases such as “It is what it is“, or “You never know what might happen” are worthless. Jeff Haden has more great ones in this article.

Resorting to platitudes during a time when real debate, discussion, and collaboration is needed on hard issues will evaporate the confidence of your team in you as a leader.

Effective leaders don’t waste others time with meaningless phrases that serve only to derail substantive discussions. They speak clearly and concisely directly to issues, allowing their team to fully participate.

Petulant

So what happens when you don’t get what you want?

Maybe the software release is going to be late. Maybe you didn’t get the contract. Maybe marketing rejected your ideas on the new website.  Maybe the CEO rejected your product plan.

Do you react in anger? Do you throw a fit? Do you lash out in rage on unsuspecting subordinates when they had nothing to do with the issue?

If you react like this, you are a petulant leader. Think of a three-year-old not getting the toy they want, falling down kicking and screaming. Yeah, you’re an adult version of that.

Having a public negative reaction undermines confidence in your leadership and will cause employees think twice before bringing bad news to you. The bad leadership behavior clogs up the communication pipeline.

Good leaders understand that things don’t always go your way. They react professionally and use these times as learning opportunities. They focus on what improvements they can make when bad things occur.

Pretender

The pretender always seems to have done great things…somewhere else. They can regale you with stories of great business prowess from yesteryear. They are always they one who saved the day, rescued the sale, figured out the bug. They always have accomplishments that no one else has heard of. Pretenders spend more time in the neighborhood of make believe than they do making people believe in whatever they are doing.

The pretender knows the jargon but comes up short on execution and results. Excuses yes, accomplishments, not really. Pretenders are impressive at first glance but with any probing, you see quickly how shallow they are. And pretenders are highly skilled at pointing the finger of blame somewhere else. They wear Teflon jackets.

Fred Brooks said it well in The Mythical Man Month:

“In practice, actual (as opposed to formal) authority is acquired from the very momentum of accomplishment”

Pretenders may have titular authority, but true influence comes from results. Eventually, the pretenders have to move over for those who actually get things done.

Authentic leaders inspire more devotion because their words and actions reconcile.

Parsimonious

These are the leaders that will choke every last cent out of an organization. No toilet paper is cheap enough. No coffee is too watery tasting. No office supply cabinet is too bare for their tastes. Spending the tiniest amount of money, even on absolute necessities, is like pulling wisdom teeth without anesthesia.

Certainly, keeping a judicious eye on expenses is prudent and desirable. But if getting you to spend any money is harder than prying food from the hands of a starving man you are misguided. If you cling to every cent and are so maniacal about costs that you won’t buy sugar packets for the coffee machine you are missing the bigger picture.

There is a balance between expense control and putting out a few bucks to improve the business or treat the employees from time to time.

Balanced leaders know a little spent here and there can go a long way to adding fun,  improving morale and generally making people enjoy the environment more. All of which are shown to improve productivity and engagement. Happy employees are proven to take care of customers  far more effectively than their sad sack counterparts.

So What?

If any of these behavioral attributes ring true for you, the first step to change is admitting you have a problem. If you have leadership tendencies from this list know you can change your habits. These traits may not in singular cases cause you big problems but they all subtly undermine your leadership and effectiveness if the behavior is engaged in on a regular basis.

If you are an employee and see these attributes consistently in your leader or leadership team then it may be time to polish up that LinkedIn profile.

Maybe this was what Grandma was talking about with the admonishment to “mind your P’s and Q’s”.