Informing Your Path Forward
The Army is committed to stopping counterproductive leadership and promoting positive and inclusive work environments. However, moving forward to address counterproductive leadership can be difficult. How do you do so in an effective and constructive way that doesn’t lead to even more problems? Learn more by exploring the buttons below.
Making the Case for Taking Action
In accordance with U.S. law and Army regulations, Army leaders are responsible for taking measures to safeguard the morale, physical well-being, and general welfare of their fellow officers, enlisted Soldiers, and Civilians. All Army professionals who witness counterproductive leadership behaviors have a responsibility to address them, but how do you do so in an effective and constructive way that doesn’t lead to more problems? What assumptions do you have about what taking action will entail? Are they true? To help answer these questions, explore the potential pros and cons of taking action.
Inaction
- Cons: You may become a target even if you remain silent, the behaviors can worsen leading to negative effects (decreasing readiness, morale, etc.) for you and the unit, you may violate your personal values and the Army value of courage, and you may create resentment among your subordinates.
- Pros: You may avoid being a target, you remain loyal as a friend, you protect your Army career, and you avoid escalating an incident that is potentially minor.
Action
- Cons: The leader could double down on their behavior, the behaviors could be directed at you, and your career could face setbacks.
- Pros: The behaviors could decrease or stop, you stick to your values, and you learn how to handle these situations in the future.
Although addressing counterproductive leadership may be risky, there are many benefits to taking action and inaction often keeps you in the same situation.
Assess Contextual Factors
Moving forward and addressing counterproductive leadership can be difficult. There are some general factors to consider as you plan your approach.
General & Current Working Relationship
Before addressing the counterproductive leadership behavior, consider the general working relationship that you have with the individual. Reflect on your experiences working with this individual to date and any feedback he or she has provided to you. The type of relationship that you have will affect the strategy that you use.
Recognize that working relationship quality is not static. It may vary over time and differ depending on current projects or workload. Given this, it is also helpful to consider your current working relationship over the past weeks.
Current Power Base
Consider the power the leader currently has and that you have. Note that there are many bases of power (i.e., legitimate, reward, expert, referent, coercive, informational) and several degrees of exerting it. Some power bases come from your position (i.e., legitimate, reward, informational, coercive); other power bases come from you personally (i.e., expert, referent). Read more about power here. The leader’s power base as well as your own will influence how effective each strategy will be in your given situation.
Interpersonal Skills
Working with an individual who exhibits counterproductive leadership requires you to bring your best interpersonal skills to bear. Skills that may help you include skills related to setting boundaries, being assertive, handling and defusing conflict, recognizing and avoiding escalating emotions or behaviors, and identifying your own sources of personal power. Reflect on your capabilities and consider any interpersonal skills you need to refine. The following resources, which can be found on the Central Army Registry, can help you do so:
- Managing Conflict IMI and Managing Conflict Job Aid
- Dealing with Difficult People IMI
- Seeking and Delivering Face-to-Face Feedback IMI
- Navigating Contentious Conversations IMI
- The Leader as Follower IMI
- Leveraging Your Understanding of Others IMI
- Leader Development Improvement Guide (LDIG)
- FM 6-22
Army and Personal Values
Remind yourself of the seven Army values: Loyalty, Duty, Respect, Selfless Service, Honor, Integrity, and Personal Courage. Also, take time to consider your personal values. How does allowing counterproductive leadership to go unaddressed go against the Army’s or your personal values?
Techniques Already Attempted
Consider who has already attempted to address the behavior with the leader as well as how and when they did so. What type of working relationship, power base, and interpersonal skill level did this individual(s) have? What occurred as a result? What can you learn from these previous efforts?
Anticipate Potential Impacts
As with any action you take, there are potential first, second, and third order impacts to consider for both yourself and others. There are steps you can take to increase your chances of success when you do take action.
- Explore and Reflect: Throughout this topic, you’ll explore different techniques and reflect on how you might use them in different situations. Leverage the information gathered in your Situation-Actors-Behaviors-Impacts (SABI) analysis to plan for and mitigate potential unfavorable impacts you may encounter.
- Select and Commit: Based on your reflections, it can be helpful to hypothesize which techniques are most likely to be effective and then commit to testing them in small ways. It’s also important to consider what success looks like in a given situation. It may be as simple as getting the leader to stop yelling so they hear you out or standing up for a peer at least once in the next few meetings.
- Test and Learn: You can reduce risk and increase learning by testing new approaches and behaviors in small ways. This will allow you to learn what works and doesn’t work quickly and fine-tune your approach. As you plan your test, think about what to say, the factors to look for in the situation that might indicate it’s escalating or worsening, and how to respond if it does. Afterwards, reflect on how you did, what you learned, and how you can adjust for next time.
The key is to take prudent risks. By doing your “homework,” you’ll set yourself up to test new techniques over time that help address counterproductive leadership.