Ripple Effects Of Bad Leadership: Impact On Organizations And Employees

Skills and knowledge required to determine and manage project scope

Strategic leadership states to the potential of a manager or the strategic vision for the organization or any one part of the organization to encourage or reach goal of an organization. A strategic leader plans and organizes all the activities of the organization and manages employees.  One of the main objectives of a strategic leader is to aim and develop an environment for employees in whom they are able to forecast needs of the organization some of the traits that a strategic manager should have are: loyalty, being updated of new technologies, self-motivation, good communication skills and etc. this essay is a study of how bad leadership can have a ripple effect A bad strategic leadership can highly impact the organization in a lot of ways. One of the first things is the lack of direction; poor leaders usually have lack of ability to give directions to the team cause of their own lack of vision, if there is lack of communication between the leader and the employees, in such cases an employee is not able to understand the their responsibilities and this can result in frustrations on both ends, as a leader it is important to have a sense of responsibility towards an organization and the employees. Apart from this it can highly impact the employee’s morale. A bad leadership can make the employees feel highly misdirected and negative about the company and their jobs and the poor communication is the cause of this issue. A poor leadership can also result in poor financial results for the company. A bad leadership always highly impacts the financial results and goal achievements of a company, to have good productivity and efficiency in a company the employees should be dedicated to their work but in case of bad leadership there is no one to motivate the employees to perform well or to look after their training and other development opportunities and hence a bad leadership leads negative impact on the company at all levels. This essay is going to show how bad leadership can have ripple impacts; bad leadership not only impacts the organization but also employees and the country, this essay is a brief study of bad leadership impact and recommendations to identify bad leaders to safe the organization from loss in future (Helms,& Nixon, 2010).

A poor leader not only impacts the organization but also the employees, poor leaders can have a high amount of negative impact on the employees as well, poor leaders does not value communication with the employees, a poor leader does not spend time with the employees or respond toothier messages , listening to other is a very low priority for a  bad leader and they do not care about the staff opinions  and this affect the performance of the employees in an organization, a bad leader  can fail in making the employees understand an organization’s expectation from them and this thing can frustrate employees and impacts their ability to complete task. Poor leaders can sometimes bully the employees which can lead to firing the employees these leaders can be negative as they do not know how to motivate others and they can share their negative opinions about the company or an organization.

Strategic leadership: Traits and Responsibilities

Michael Horn, the CEO of Volkswagen America stated that all the problems that happed in the organization were due to a couple of engineers who implemented the software. It was further seen that the reason behind this was because the engineering team of the organization were not able to meet emission regulations and they thought that the software was a better “remedy” to solve the problem. Horn said that this was thought as a corporate decision and that is the reason no board meeting was held to get this approved.

Poor leadership leads to lack of vision, without any direction the employees have no aim, as they do not understand the aims and specific goal of a company. The productivity of the company is impacted the most as there is lack of direction towards the common goal. Bad leadership also leads to frustration in employees which also leads to dissatisfaction in employees. Poor leadership is one of the main issue that causes gap between strategy and execution. Most of the bad leaders cause a very huge gap in the strategy making process apart from this it also impacts the communication between various departments of an organization

Poor leadership is one of the main causes of culture mediocrity; poor leadership impacts the improvement of employees among a group, in the cases of bad leadership the employees performance remains same until any action is taken by the manager and in such cases the employee is left wondering if the progress made noticeable or not and this impacts the whole chain of command in the organization and this also becomes a trend in the organization which eventually leads to higher cost, low quality of work, high amount of customers complaints . It also causes turnover of good and talented employees. Usually employees in this situations give up very soon directly impacting the organization 

A lack of leadership as major impact on the employees, the first thing is failure in providing clear direction , in order to get good performance from an employee it is important to give employees instructions  of what  things they have to do or the goal they have to achieve in an organization. A bad leader never see employees as people as it is a leaders responsibility to see an employees work. When a manger does not trust there team it causes frustrate and demotivation among employees which affects the organizations productivity. A bad leader does not have an ability to listen and if the three would be no one to listen to the employees than this thing creates lack of communication between the employees and the managers.

Negative Impacts of Bad Leadership on Organizations

A bad manager does not have the ability to fix things as urgent as possible; a good leader always tries to fix the issues and problems of the organization as quickly as possible, but a bad manager keeps ignoring the work for as long as they can which also leads to customer’s dissatisfaction.

There is a ripple effect of bad leadership; bad leadership is something which can destroy a good functioning of an organization at a very high speed, and the destruction can happen very easily. Some of the things which are very important for a business to work is the people who buy and the people who work the second thing which is important is the foundation of the business on which the business is build, the third and the most important thing is trust which keeps everything together in a business.

In a ripple effect, the first thing, which is affected by bad leadership, is the trust the first and foremost thing on which a business Is built, trust is thing that hold up all the other things in an organization. Trust between the organization and employees, trust between the customers and the organization and so on. Unfortunately when trust falls out it knocks down the another one.

The second thing, which is affected after trust, is the communication and teamwork usually bad leader encourages things such as gossiping, political games and backstabbing in an organization, which destroys the relationship between the employees. Next thing which is affected is moral and motivation of the employees. Due to lack of communication the employees fail to learn the goals of an organization and hence fail to perform which affects their morale, a bad leader never takes care of the work done by the employees and hence fails to motivate the employees to work for the organization; all these issues demotivate the employees.

One such example of bad leadership is : Lehman brothers, they started there company in 1849 with a business in dry goods and it was started in Alabama, the first public offerings of lay man took place in 1899 and the company started with investment banking activities . For the next 50 years Lehman became an investor for half of the America’s largest enterprises and this mad the investors one of the 4 top investors. Lehman was a company which uses to focus on taking responsible investment decisions 0that benefited all the firms’ stakeholders. The trouble in the company started in 1980, which was due to massive de-regulations which were from the US government.

Case Study: Bad Leadership in Volkswagen America

In 1983, Lewis Glucksman became the new CEO of Lehman brothers. And he made departure from the firms previous way of thinking, Glucksman was a former trader and he butted heads with the bankers who use to run the firm in a traditional manner. Glucksman’s aggressive style of running the business made the firm suffer some major consequences. After that, Lehman chose another leader for the firm named Dick Flud, Flud Who led to a rapid expansion of the firm, and with the expansion the revenue of the firm also increased. After this Lehman grew on a large scale and was always seen as too good to fail. During the period of growth, Lehman did those things which were not even beneficial for the firm and thus during this time it booked for a lot of profits and it invested in subprime mortgages, the firm was initially reinvesting and mortgaging the people’s money again and again  which leg the  firm to collapse.

It can be seen that bad leadership has ripple effects and so was in the case of Lehman brothers’ .the bankruptcy did not only have impact on the stakeholders but also affected the economy of United States. And this was a turning point America which is also known as the great recession. And a result of which the nation suffered from financial crises.

Another example of bad leadership is Enron, Jeffery skilling was the chief executive of the company, he developed a team of executives, who by using the accounting loopholes, managed to hide billions of dollars in debt from the failed projects and deals. Andrew Fastow the financial officer of the firm misled Enron’s board of directors, on the high risk accounting practices and also made the directors of the firm to ignore al, the financial practices.  The firm rewarded their efforts and paid the top 140 employees $680 million in2001 before the collapse of the firm. Enron use to share worth of $90.75 but it dropped to $0.67 immediately after the scandal was reveled and the leader Andrew Fastow of the firm was charged with fraud.

There are certain traits that a bad leader has, if we study them before it can save the organization from any kind of loss in the coming future,  one of the first thing is poor integrity which means a  leader is Good, he would always know how to use different range of leadership styles depending on the situations. The simple thing is that it is not necessary that all employees get motivated by the same factors and approach, and there is no thing such as “one-size-fits-all” kind of approach that will work in every situation or on every employee.  Good leaders always have an ability to recognize these things; on the other hand poor leaders get stuck in different situations by using the same kind of approach in every situation. If a leader is stubborn and adapts to the changes very slowly or is not able to adapt according to the changes and situations they are likely to be a poor leader. Another thing which can help in recognizing bad leaders is very Little Vision for the Future, job of a leader is to always plan for the future in advance as proven by Elon Musk’s vision of the future. Bad leaders are someone who has not plan for future and If an organization has a bad leader, then they will not focus on the future and will never have a clear plan to improve and progress (Miffling, 2006; Usoro,2010). 

Negative Impacts of Bad Leadership on Employees

Next this is the Lack of Accountability; the best leaders’ always take responsibility when things go wrong in an organization and also give credit to the employees when things go right. Employees always want a leader who understands that the employees are working hard and also who gives them credit for their work, when they perform well. Some leaders are unable to shoulder this responsibility and instead they put blame on others and take all the credit on themselves. And these things highly impact the employees and the organization, and this also demotivates the employees. Another thing which is Important for a leader to have is: Great communication skills as it is by far on of the most important traits for a leader to have. (Schillig, 2010; Griffin, 2001)

 It doesn’t matter if a leader makes good and an effective a plan, if they do not have good communication skills or are not able to communicate that plan to their employees there is no use of it. Good leaders should have good listening skills as well. If a leader is does not have ability to communicate and listening. They are not considered to be very effective leader. Leadership has a power to both make and break any business and Because of this, it is important to focus on t=all these factors, in order to recognize good leaders in an organization.

Some of the world’s bad leaders

Bad leadership can cost a lot more to the organization, staff turnover costs, there is several research’s that shows that the staff turnover can range from 16% of the salary to 213% for leaders.  When employees leave a certain company which has is at good market place, in such cases the firms have to go through a lot of damage, and one of the main reasons of leaving a firm is always because of bad leadership. Another thing is employee engagement; a lot of studies show that majority of the staffs in an organization are disengaged and a study showed that in US this figure is around 30%. A leader’s first job is to see the employee’s engagement and if an organization have bad leader then this thing can’t be taken care of which impacts the function of an organization (Lipman, 2008; Eric, 2012).

Apart from this is the cost of failure, statistics show that around 60% fail due to new product launches all of these things can be avoided if there is good leadership in an organization, hence it can be see that bad leadership can impact the organization (Wilding, 2011).

Ripple Effects of Bad Leadership: Trust and Communication

There are many differences between a good and a bad leader which can help an organization to identify the bad leaders:

When a good leader is placed in any company, it is felt in the whole organization. When there is a good leadership in the organization, the culture of the organization is not forced instead it is developed. In such organizations Communication is done on daily basis and there are open conversations in the organization. Everyone in the organization understands the vision and goals of the organization, and everyone knows their input and ways in which they can be improved. Employees are motivated and they have a feeling that they are an important part of the organization and also that every job matters in the company matters. (Robert, 2009) On the other hand, if there is Bad leadership in an organization, it can be felt also be can be felt in the whole organization but not in a good way (Fielder, 2010). Corporate culture becomes a very meaningless term where leaders exist but employees face frustration.  In the organization there is a lack of clear communication between the leaders and the employees. This results in politics and competitiveness within the organization. Employees are taught play dirty against coworkers. The result of bad leadership leads to low morale in employees, high turnover of employees, and a decreased ability to have any sustainable success (Allio,2007).

According to a research bad leadership practices cost an organization an amount equal to7% of their total annual sales. It has also seen that 32% of an organization’s turnover can be avoided through a good leader who has better leadership skills. A Better leadership can generate around 3-4 percent improvement in the customer satisfaction scores and 1.5 percent increase in the revenue of growth (Mathews & Levy, 2017).

In a study which was done by Gallup’s in 2013, it was seen that in a workplace there are  just thirty percent of the total employees who are actively committed to the job they are doing  and around fifty percent of employees put their time in their work on the other hand the remaining twenty percent do not focus on the work and are always disconnected from the organization’s work, these kind of employees always counterproductive ways which also negatively manipulates their coworkers, which includes things such as  missing days on the job and  not treating the customers in a good manner and also driving customers away through poor service (Baker, 2014). From the study it has been seen that twenty percent of group alone costs the U.S. economy around half a trillion dollars each year.  And one of the major causes of this is Poor leadership (Schyns & Hansbrough, 2010; Tepper, 2010).   

Case Study: Bad Leadership in Lehman Brothers

A research have shown findings from more than a dozen studies conducted in the leading companies found that current leadership is costing all the American companies more than half of their human potential.  It is seen that if there is improvement in leadership it can alone lead to double worker productivity (Bass, 2010).

 In the given graphs, it can been seen that there is a straight-line and correlation between all the levels of employee engagement, and the measure of all the overall effectiveness of their mangers, leaders or the supervisors. Therefore, at the end it can be seen that if there is low end of the satisfaction then the engagement, and commitment levels of employees are affected at the end, the best leader is supervising an organization then the happiest, most engaged, and most committed employees will be there (Samson, 2012).

(Gullup, 2013)

Leaders are often promoted based on their job and technical skills and not on their leadership potential (Bass, 2009; Pasnan & Blankon, 2011). Managers or the Supervisors don’t receive formal training on how to lead others or how to be supervisor. They do not recognize or have knowledge that the skills that make them successful as a worker are the skills that can even make them fail as a leader. The day they become a leader, there accountability changes to 180 degree. After that they are no longer evaluated on what they do personally; there are only people that report their success of    a list of common issues come into notice when the supervisors and managers  have lack of leadership skills  such as: Conflict, Communication Issues, Difficult Employees, low employee morale, Resistance to Change, problems managing peers, Lack of Responsibility & No Initiative, Low Motivation, poor relationships ,Rotten Attitudes, When the  supervisors and managers are good leaders, they hurt the organization’s  profits and productivity such as: Reduced profits, Decreased Productivity, Turnover, Employees Quit but Don’t Leave, Increased Mistakes / Waste, Poor Safety / Increased Accidents, Poor Employee Engagement, Wasted Time and Opportunities and Departmental Conflict

There are certain things, which can help in identifying if the organization is able to work properly or not, there should be constant open communication, where the employees are allowed to give feedbacks.  Other than this is one of the top management skills needed to run a successful organization is staying organized. To keep a positive environment in the organization there should be some policies under which every employee should be treated everyone, regardless of their level (Akpala,2009; Anne, 2006).An organization should create an environment where the organization is centered and focuses on trust and honesty. There should be transparency in which the organization should openly share the company’s information (Schaubroeck,2009).  Instead of blaming others, the organization should take responsibility while turning failures into opportunities for growth. The worst thing bad managers can do is create a negative environment. Finally, ensure that employees feel comfortable discussing their compensation and other work-related issues they aren’t satisfied with (Schillig, 2008). A transparent culture encourages teamwork, and establishes a mutual respect and trust among all organizational levels. After every meeting done by the employees there should be a list of agendas send to the employees so that the meeting can stay on track. At the end of every meeting the employees should be asked for feedback this gives the employees a voice so they can offer advice on how to improve the efficiency of meetings (Goldmann,2006). Effective leadership and management is something which every organization prioritize, and it also contributes to the national and regional development of the country. The possibilities and limitations of leaders must be understood so that the workers are satisfied and they work properly in an organization. It is very important for an organization to have a good leader in order to achieve all the organizational goals (Higgs, 2003; Mitchell, 2007). 

Case Study: Bad Leadership in Enron

Conclusion

In this essay it can be seen that Leadership shortfalls will continue to prove to be one of the greatest differentiator between high-performance organizations and all the other organizations. Improving leaders is one of the top priorities for any organization. All the organization is in a need of leaders who are skilled and effective. Bad leadership is something which can spoil the functioning of the organization and can also lead to failing of an organization. Leadership is something that a business grow through if an organization does not have good leadership skills, it can lead to employee turnover, as one of the major impact of bad leadership target the employees, bad leaders don not usually have any skills, they cannot communicate well with the employees they have no plan for the future of the organization, they have no sense of responsibility toward the employees and the organization, a bad leader may does not have the farsightedness to see the organizational  challenges. This leader’s lack of ability has a very negative impact on the whole team.  And in the end this results in a dysfunctional team where no organizational goals are achieved. In this essay it has been seen that poor leadership is related to business failure and employee’s turnover which also leads to workplace stress this essay first shows the discussion of what poor leadership is about and its ripple effects, the essay also discusses example of various companies which failed massively due to bad leadership, companies such as Lehman brothers, Enron, Volkswagen and etc. Lehman brothers is one of those companies which not only went bankrupt but also impacted the country and this all was due to bad leadership in the organization  Good Leader are those who Share information with the employees in order to increase their confidence and to motivate them. Good leaders have good listening skills and ideas of their own. Leaders encourage its employees to do quality work on the other side bad leaders are not able to identify new ways to solve problems in different situation. Hence it is important for an organization to choose a leader carefully as bad leaders can cause major damage to the organization which can also lead to bankruptcy of a firm or organization. Hence it is concluded that leaders who are abusive have a negative impact on the health and well-being of their employees as well as the organization as it effects the overall environment of the organization. 

References

Akpala A. (2009). Principles of Management, A Nigerian Approach. Logos: Fourth dimension Publisher Ltd

Allio, R. (2007). Bad leaders: How they get that way and what to do about them. Strategy And Leadership, 35(3)

Anne, B. (2006). Leadership: An Introduction to Fundamental Concepts and Styles. New York: Springer

Baker, M. (2014). Marketing strategy and management. London: Palgrave

Bass, B. (2009). Stogdill’s Handbook of Leadership: theory, Research and Managerial Applications. New York: Free Press.

Bass, B. (2010). Leadership and performance. New York: Free Press

Eric, S. (2012). Marketing strategy. Journal of Historical Research in Marketing, 4(1).

Fielder, F. (2010). A Theory of Leadership Effectives, McGraw-Hill, New York.

Goldmann, A. (2006). High toxicity leadership- Borderline personality disorder and the dysfunctional organization. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 21(8)

Griffin R. (2001). Management: Boston Houghton

Helms, M., & Nixon, J.(2010).Management. Journal of Strategy and Management, 3(3).

Higgs, J. (2003). How can we make sense of leadership in the 21st century?. Leadership and Organisational Development Journal, 24(5)

Lipman, J. (2008). The allure of toxic leaders: Why we follow destructive bosses and corrupt politicians–and how we can survive them. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Mathews, S., & Levy, M. (2017). Marketing. Sydney: McGraw-Hill Education

 Miffling. I (2006). Management Theory: Principles and Practice. Calabar: Merb Publishers

Milisavljevic, M. (2013). Marketing. Value oriented strategic marketing, 44(4)

Mitchell, M. (2007). Abusive supervision and workplace deviance and the moderating effects of negative reciprocity beliefs. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92(1)

Pasnan, A., & Blankon, K. (2011). Marketing Channel and Strategy. Journal of Marketing, 45(3)

Robert, B. (2009). The toxic triangle: Destructive leaders, susceptible followers and conductive environments. The Leadership Quarterly, 18(1)

Samson, D. (2012). Management. South Melbourne: Cengage Learning

 Schaubroeck, J. (2009). Destructive leader traits and the neutralizing influence of an “enriched” job. The Leadership Quarterly, 18(1)

Schillig, J. (2008). From ineffectiveness to destruction: A qualitative study on the meaning of negative leadership. Leadership and Organizational Development Journal, 5(1)

 Schillig, J. (2010): Leaders Romantic Conceptions of Leadership. Applied Psychology: An International Review, 56(4)

Schyns, B. & Hansbrough,T. (2010). When leadership goes wrong. Destructive leadership, mistakes, and ethical failures. Charlotte: Information Age Publications

Tepper, J. (2010). Consequences of abusive supervision. Academy of Management Journal, 43 (2)

Usoro, I. (2010). Management: Concepts. London, Plano Publication

Wilding, J. (2011). Management. Current Medical Literature, 28(2)

Order an Essay Now & Get These Features For Free:

Turnitin Report

Formatting

Title Page

Citation

Outline

Place an Order