Stephen H Baum Leadership

Our first response addressed what seemed to be a time-sensitive and urgent question. This time we move to questions that can be grouped according to common themes. For example, questions about about your own behavior, about breaking out from the pack, about motivating others, about managing or being a female executive and about making transitions. 

So let’s look at what I call “masks” or as some of you called them “masked managers.” Next time I will also address single topic questions. 

“What traits are most common in quasi-dictators you have coached?” The CEOs I have coached are a mutually selected population and rarely true masks. We will get to true masks shortly. However, my clients already have accepted having a coach. Often they are afflicted with good traits taken to excess: impatience that can become anger or a temper tantrum; frustration with people who accept mediocrity or play victim; feelings of inadequacy in public or selling situations.  Fortunately they are what they seem. There is no pretense. They even admit their flaws. And they wish to moderate this behavior. So we work on emotional intelligence (managing their own and addressing others’), getting good on their feet – whatever is a path to self-discovery and improvement. And if these bosses have acted with good purpose and fairness, the best employees try to help these leaders by filling gaps and cover the bases. 

True masks are different. They have never had the experiences needed to be a good leader. And there is a flaw which they are covering up. Their behaviors are an attempt to compensate for these flaws.  The flaw may be confrontation avoidance (dancing around underperformance rather than “carefrontation,” rather deal with problems indirectly or behind the scenes); fear of failure (rather blame others); needing to prove themselves to someone (rather take credit at others’ expense and never accord credit); needing to be loved (rather than making hard decisions); needing to be treated as the king (rather beat others down than build them up).  

“Please define bluster.” Many of you have experienced a boss who uses intimidation and distraction as management tools. Never admitting to be part of the problem, the boss may raise his voice (even yell) and use profanity; include threats of demotion or job loss in the conversation; make demeaning remarks about you and others; remembering history different from what is factual. These are just cover for his own inability to lead. 

Some masks suffer from a character flaw, a lack of integrity. This is a fatal flaw. And it can ruin your career and your life if they demand that you act in an unethical manner or in violation of the law or accept fraudulent practices. If you suspect this is the case, you are unlikely alone in your intuition and can find safe ways to probe further. And you are right, my own choice would be to get out immediately. 

“How can you protect yourself from masks?” Ultimately, you can’t. Even if you keep an “audit trail” of events and your actions, masks can ignore the facts until it is too late for them and too late for you. And life is too short to put up with being miserable every day. 

Now don’t get me wrong. A boss who is very, very demanding can be a great boss if she or he makes good decisions and is fair to the rest of the employees. Some cultures are just not as nurturing as others but it is your choice to join, to stay, to leave. My counsel would be not to try to get all your life satisfactions at work. 

Now the commercial: you can find more Mask stories in Chapter 2 in the book along with ways to deal with them until you must find work elsewhere. 

As always, we welcome your comments and questions on our blogs and on comments made by others.