Rescuers are bad managers with kind intentions.
The stereotypical bad boss is an insensitive bully. Word soon gets round about them. Harder to spot is another bad boss, the Rescuer.
These are compassionate people with a burning desire to help others. But instead of encouraging people to grow in confidence and self-efficacy, they attempt to rescue them – even when they don’t want to be rescued.
Their behaviours are well-intentioned but lead to an unhealthy culture of underperformance, resentment and dependency.
Here’s how they stifle people instead of enabling them:
- They dislike straight-talking, so avoid difficult conversations and honest feedback.
- Bad news gets sugar-coated, making people delusional about their capabilities. Individuals risk being passed over for promotion because other leaders in the business don’t rate them, or of being shocked by a poor appraisal from a future manager.
- They don’t allow people space to make mistakes and feel the pain of failure, restricting their resilience, creativity and problem-solving skills.
- They cling on to responsibility, creating bottlenecks and smothering people who are ready for more.
- When people come to them with a problem, they feel responsible for solving it, rather than coaching them to come up with a solution themselves.
- They load extra work on their most competent team members rather than tackling under-performers.
- They advocate too hard for their teams instead of addressing the causes of organisational resourcing or workflow problems. This creates silos and divisions with other areas of the business.
- Their decision making is people-centred rather strategic: they keep people in the wrong jobs and avoid harsh decisions because of what people might think.
If you’ve got a popular manager who scores highly but loses their experienced team members, then you may have a rescuer on your hands. You may even have a Manager of the Year here because your performance systems rewards them. Individuals who aren’t used to healthy feedback themselves don’t want to hurt their nice manager’s feelings with an honest score.
Rescuers need to meet their needs in a different way. Good coaching can raise awareness, restore healthy self-esteem and address co-dependency. Managing people is a difficult responsibility; good managers are trained not born. Do you invest in strategic leadership training, but still have managers who can’t deliver feedback or build accountability? That’s your productivity and performance problem right there: insufficient grass-roots management capability.
My leadership programmes are tailored for all levels to fix this, providing immediately usable skills. Please get in touch.
Read more about management mistakes in Chapter 18 of The Crazy Busy Cure: Control Freaks, Superstars and Mother Hens. Contact me if you want to gift The Crazy Busy Cure to your colleagues or clients. For orders of over ten books we can offer a 40% discount to £6.59 each. Much more sustainable than a chocolate egg.