The article "The Authoritarian Boss" is a guide about the negative effects that authoritarian bosses cause to companies. Suggestions are also given on how to proceed in such situations.
One of the most harmful factors for the working environment in a company is having authoritarian bosses, since they contribute to creating a negative working environment that is fed by narrow communication channels, orders that are given to direct automata (orders that must be followed by the fear of receiving a sanction) and little or no recognition.
Needless to say, this type of boss is the worst partner that a human resources area can count on. One of their typical behaviors is to ask the human resources manager to improve the work environment, when he or she is the cause of his own debacle, that is to say the arsonist asks to extinguish the fire when it has originated it.
One of the worst consequences of this management style (I consider that we cannot speak of leadership when referring to an authoritarian boss) is the contagion effect, understood by contagion when a boss or manager has other bosses as subordinates and these bosses in turn they have a certain number of subordinates, who are often the ones who receive sanctions, public humiliations and other types of extremely harmful behavior, which is why they end up showing the strongest effects of stress typical of this type of situation.
Among the most serious consequences of this type of environment we have that the rate of staff turnover increases, initiative and creativity are almost completely canceled or lost, the negative effect of informing groups is contributed to and in general the amount increases of dissatisfied collaborators. In medium and large companies, even part of this group of dissatisfied collaborators can go on to become a potential saboteur, transforming themselves into a collaborator who manifests their dissatisfaction through the generation of damages to the company.
At this stage it is important to answer a question that becomes neuralgic, how do I prevent these authoritarian bosses from entering my organization? We must first develop very solid recruitment and selection processes based on clear strategic planning and human resource management by competencies, being recommended that the development of these processes is in the hands of experts, if we do not have one, it is suggested that we hire it.
A second question that we must answer and no less important is what can I do if I already have an authoritarian boss in my organization? The first alternative is to use feedback, focusing not on the person, but on the behaviors that need to be changed or improved, while proposing plausible alternatives to be carried out and what are frequently examined through an evaluation (for these cases a 360º type evaluation is suggested). However, before applying this useful tool, it is necessary to have the commitment of the boss, because if there is no will to change, little can be achieved.
Finally we have that if after applying the necessary tools and strengthening the development of the weakest competencies, we do not have a change in attitude, then we will find ourselves in a situation of incompatibility, that is, the competencies of the boss, as well as his managerial style they do not match the competencies (we understand that we are including the leadership competencies) that the company requires. If we are already sure that we provide all the opportunities that were within our reach and that we support the process of change, without obtaining the results that we expected, then it is time to think about a strategy of change in the position, for which we can choose to promoting a subordinate who stands out for their performance or recruiting and selecting a professional from outside the company.I reiterate that before reaching this stage it is necessary to have clearly and frontally communicated the problem (feedback) and then to have supported the search for a solution.
