How Your Behavior Makes Your Team Fail

While executive compensation and stock transactions are highly scrutinized, day-to-day leadership behavior is significantly less so. In fact, I have observed well-respected leaders in Fortune 500s, biotech start-ups, and non-profits regularly demeaning team members in service of “performance.” The idealistic me would like to believe that this shouldn’t be tolerated; the realistic me recognizes that with power comes a level of immunity to basic expectations of civility.

But here’s the problem – your behavior is literally setting your team up for failure.

The brain science is clear. In the face of a threat, the amygdala sends out a distress signal that activates the sympathetic nervous system and sends adrenaline surging through your body. The pre-frontal cortex, the center for executive functioning, aka good decisions, loses control of the machinery. So just when your team members need their best brain, it has been taken over by the instinctive “kill or be killed” mode.

Chronic stress, when the sympathetic nervous system doesn’t have a chance to release control, stimulates cortisol production. Excess cortisol can harm cells in the hippocampus and cause the brain to shrink. Yes, repeated stress can reduce the size of your employees’ brains. And that does not help them think strategically, operate with agility, or come up with innovative solutions. It physically shuts them down.

This kind of stress is the gift that keeps on giving. The typical Board of Directors puts tremendous pressure on organizational leaders to perform. Those executives pass that pressure on to their direct reports, who then send it along down the chain. Before long, the entire organization is a fire-fighting pressure cooker.

And if that weren’t enough, chronic stress is a leading cause of heart disease, diabetes, and other illnesses, which are estimated to cost US companies $300 billion annually in health costs, absenteeism, and poor performance.

Stress is and always will be a reality of the workplace. But leaders can either amplify the stress or tamp it down based on their own levels of reactivity. Members of the pack look to the leader to determine how to interpret stimuli. Being constantly reactive sends a message to the team that something is wrong, they’re not safe, and it’s time to panic.

Self-management is a core competency of leadership. It requires regulating your own time, energy, and emotions in service of the system around you. When you observe self-regulated leaders, you notice behaviors such as these:

  • Maintains an even tone of voice, even in tough situations
  • Ask questions and genuinely listens to the answers
  • Relies on the wisdom and experience of their teams rather than making command and control decisions
  • Maintains full attention on the task or conversation at hand

We often confuse outbursts and tantrums with passion and performance. The data suggest otherwise. If you want the best out of those very expensive humans you hired, you’ll need to keep your own behavior in check.