Leadership Gone Wrong

Lars Nielsen (00:02.815) Hang on. Welcome back to Cultures from Hell. Today we're diving into a topic that affects businesses, teams and entire organizations. Leadership gone wrong. What happens when leaders make crucial mistakes? How does poor leadership impact company culture, productivity and even employee well-being? Joining me today, as always, is my co-host, Pauline. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (00:11.342) I love it! Lars Nielsen (00:35.157) co-founder of the Culture Code Foundation and an expert in workplace culture. Paulina, welcome. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (00:43.95) Thank you so much, Lars. I love the new intro. It's a lot of fun. Lars Nielsen (00:49.371) Yes. Even though it is a very serious topic we're always talking about, we agreed that doing this podcast, it also has to be fun for us, right? Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (01:00.15) It has to be fun for us and also it shouldn't be just a blatant rant when the two of us get together right so it's about the positivity and the good things that can come out of culture and leadership if you do it right. So it's more about going out there sharing tips and tricks on how to do things better than they currently are. Lars Nielsen (01:06.047) No. Lars Nielsen (01:23.387) Exactly. So let's dive into today's topic about failed leadership. But before we dive into like specific samples, because I know that you brought some examples, at least one example for today's topic, let's define what we mean by leadership gone wrong. What are some of the most common mistakes leaders can make? Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (01:53.39) I think there are tons of mistakes. And maybe let's take a step back and look at why those mistakes can arise at the end of the day. Because what I've seen both in my personal career and also in my business life in terms of the customers that I've worked with is that leaders usually don't get trained to be leaders. And it is such a crucial skill. You would not let any other job be done by a person who doesn't know how to do it, right? And you would not just push them into the cold water and just say, figure all of this shit out by yourself. You just wouldn't do it. Why do it with leadership? Leaders have such a huge level on employee wellbeing on mental health of their employees. Studies actually say that your direct manager has more impact on your mental health than your therapist. I mean, let that sink in for a second here, right? So, and if you as a leader are not aware of the kind of responsibility you bear when you are in a leading position, then you shouldn't be in that position at all. So, so coming back to where I started, from my perspective, most leaders either lack training or they lack self-reflection or they have a lot of insecurities. And they, they tend to, to then lead to either being too controlling or to being too lax with their employees. and both of the, both of those. leadership styles are harmful both for your people and for the business outcomes, right? Lars Nielsen (03:46.559) When you talk about the responsibilities that leaders have, and I completely agree with you on anything you're saying, you also kind of put a lot of, again, we have said this before that English is not your mother tongue or my mother tongue. So I'm very sorry if I phrased this the wrong way. You put a lot of strain on the shoulders, a lot of responsibilities on the shoulders to take care of these people. Don't you think that sometimes it's also maybe that these leaders are not well educated or well informed on how to be great leaders? Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (04:16.718) Yes. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (04:25.358) 100%. 100%. That's exactly where I'm coming from, And it is not, I mean... Obviously every lead out there can do things for their own education, right? But it definitely is the responsibility of any organization to make sure that their leaders are educated and trained and consistently. So because let's face it, no one can just do a leadership training for two days and then be a super duper great leader. All of a sudden it takes time to build habits to, to actually. bring this to life and make mistakes and learn again and go back and forth. Like in my leadership tenure, I've been a people leader for more than 11 years and I've done multiple leadership trainings over this period of time. And I've done a lot of private coaching myself. I've also looked at sparring with other leaders. I've looked into, sorry, my voice. I'm joking up here and i've had mentors etc etc because i just. Really truly intrinsically believe that i have the opportunity to become a better leader everyday. But in order to do so i need to self reflect and need to analyze what i'm doing wrong and what i could do better and how i could show up better for my people and that is probably. What one super important lesson as well don't just look to people above you or on your same level talk to your team about it. think the most important leadership lessons that I've learned actually came from my team members when they had the guts and the stamina to show up and say Paulina this is just not good enough. I expect more from you I need this from you. I don't need this from you right. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (06:27.982) And, um, so this is, this has probably been my, greatest source of, of wisdom. And I can only recommend to any leader out there, integrate this into your leadership routines. Ask those, ask three questions regularly. Um, maybe every, every six months ask you to maybe even more often if you're young, if you're a fresh leader, ask them, what do you need more from me? What do you need less of? from me and what can I do to make you more effective? That's a gold mine of information just right there. And if you are able to put your ego aside and swallow the hurt, and believe me, I've been there. When one of my account executives told me Paulina, this is just not good enough for me. You know who I'm talking about. And that was really painful for me in the, first beginning. And then I asked, but I stopped, I stopped there. I stopped myself there and went into questioning him instead and asked like, okay, so what exactly is it that you need? And then I learned so much and I've become such next level of leader because of that feedback. So don't waste that gold mine of information. Lars Nielsen (07:52.565) And I think a very important part of what you were saying there is as a leader, you need to be able to put your ego aside. Because if you want people to be honest and upfront with everything, and like you say, that is a goldmine of information that you're getting, then you also as a leader have to put that ego aside because the people that are working for you, you are their leader. So they will be attacking you if... you're asking for feedback, right? To some extent at least. So you need to put that ego aside and be willing to get that feedback. But that will make your team better. You'll have happier colleagues. And also I think as leader, you can learn a lot about yourself on how you can adapt to the situation, right? Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (08:25.236) So. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (08:43.732) Absolutely. it's, and I'm not just saying put your ego aside for those moments when you gather feedback from your team, put your ego side full stop because your leadership is not about you. It's about your team. It's about how, what they need to be at their best, what they need to be as effective as they possibly can be and what they need to really thrive in their environment and grow and potentially even outgrow you. So. Lars Nielsen (08:50.992) huh. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (09:13.684) ego and leadership from my experience and my perspective just don't go together. Lars Nielsen (09:22.133) great points. So Paulina, for someone, I know, okay, let me rephrase that. If we have listeners out there who are sitting, listening to this podcast and they are thinking like, I think I'm pretty okay with my leader and the job I'm having and so on. But they kind of have a suspicious on like, do I have bad leadership? but they can't see kind of the red flags or the warning signs. What are the warning signs that they have to look out for to recognize bad leadership? Not that they have to dig too much about. don't want people to say, I have to have bad leadership out here. But what is some of the warning signs people should be looking out for? Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (10:01.184) Yeah. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (10:06.691) No. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (10:11.534) Amazing question, Lars. And obviously there are amazing leaders out there and there are a lot of people who have really good direct managers in front of them. In all honesty though, the likelihood that you have a bad leader because they are not consistently trained is quite high. So, and there are, think a lot of red flags that are quite common and also quite easy to spot, which is like. favoritism or micromanagement or lack of empathy, I think that's pretty easy to spot. For example, if you share with your manager that you've had a setback in any form or sort of a form like losing a loved one, divorce or whatnot, and there's just no empathetic reaction to it. That's a pretty clear sign and I think that's also pretty easy to What are very common signs of bad leadership that I see but that are usually more overlooked because they are harder to detect is on the one hand, sorry. It's early Friday. Sounds about right, Lars. So sorry again, let me rephrase. So a very common red flag that I've seen and experienced, but that is hard to detect is inconsistency. So when your leader basically tells people different things, like different people, different things. Lars Nielsen (11:33.346) It's early Friday morning when we're recording this, Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (12:00.168) Or if they ask for a specific behavior from you and then displays completely different behavior for themselves. That is something that I find very, very dangerous because you cannot 100 % rely on them. And you will, you will always be in this kind of limbo state with them because you don't know how to trust them or if what they say today will still be valid tomorrow. And that is something that I've seen a lot. And another, another side that is hard, harder to see if you're not used to it from my perspective is if your manager spends more time with different departments or other leaders and less than, than they do with their actual team, that is a huge warning sign because I would hazard a guess that leaders like that are either overwhelmed with their own role or They just don't care enough to focus their time on what matters most for their job, which is their team. Lars Nielsen (13:05.511) And I noticed one word that you said, and I just know it's such a trigger word for me. That's micromanagement. I hate it with a passion. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (13:14.828) No, yeah. I think everybody does. Honestly. I have never met anyone who was like, I really loved it when my manager was looking over my shoulder every day and made sure that I crossed the cross the T's and dotted the I's. think everybody hates it. Lars Nielsen (13:34.745) Do you think that micromanagement... I might be biased here or saying something that is viewed through my eyes here. For me, micromanagement is something I more often see in... I wouldn't say elderly people. I would more say like people that might have a very old leadership style. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (14:02.445) Yeah. Lars Nielsen (14:02.997) Whereas people that are more like young at heart or youngish in leadership style, don't tend to do it. That's my experience at least. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (14:14.01) that's actually a good point. I have seen micromanagement in very unexperienced leaders too. So very young, young people who pro and usually in situations where they were promoted into quite a high leadership role without any prior leadership experience whatsoever. Or, and then then that's exactly the point where, where the insecurity comes into play again. Lars Nielsen (14:23.967) Okay. Lars Nielsen (14:37.897) Mm-hmm. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (14:43.916) where they've realized that they are way out of their depth either in terms of realizing they are just not good at leading people, which is totally fine, right? Not everybody has to be good at leading people. Or if they've realized that their team is so much better on the operational side of things than they ever were, which is also fine from my perspective, right? I don't believe that a leader has to be the best in the job. The leader has to be the best in asking the right questions to make sure that you can learn the mindset of improving your own performance every day. And it's your job as a leader to move obstacles out of the way. So you don't necessarily have to be the best on the job per se. But a lot of insecure people that then become promoted into leadership roles, realizing that their direct reports are better on the subject matter than you are, become even more insecure. And then the only solution they see is to micromanage the fuck out of their people. Because that gives them a little bit of control. That's at the end of the day, micromanagement is about regaining control that you feel you've lost. Lars Nielsen (16:14.217) And I think that you and I both come from a sales background, And I think that a lot of time in sales, and I'm only speaking out of my experience, so I don't know if it's applicable to other departments as well, is you see a tendency to bump up the highest performing seller. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (16:18.21) Yes. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (16:36.034) Yes, absolutely. Lars Nielsen (16:37.171) And say like, this guy or this girl, this person is really good at selling like outperforming everybody. We have to make them a leader, but that doesn't make them a great leader. And like you're saying, they get bumped up. They're used to having great success and everybody liking them. And then now you're kind of the boss and maybe people don't like you as much anymore. And your go-to is to go back to what you know, which is great selling. and then you want everybody to do the same thing as you have been doing and you start micromanaging everybody. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (17:11.948) Yeah. Yeah. And again, that comes down to insecurity, right? And not being trained well enough, because if you, if you do realize that you are not as good as you'd like to be in a, leadership position, you'll try to control as much as you possibly can. And especially in a sales role, you know, what has worked for you really well to become a really good seller. And you think if everybody just did the exact same things that you did. Lars Nielsen (17:16.873) Mm-hmm. Exactly. Lars Nielsen (17:34.677) Mm-hmm. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (17:40.206) they will be just as successful and then you will be successful as well. And that is one of the things that I see a lot, especially in sales, but not only in sales, is if you only reward leaders for the success on the subject matter and not also on the success as a leader, you get a disbalance, a huge disbalance. Lars Nielsen (17:43.775) Yes. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (18:09.43) I always promote very strongly to also to make part of a manager's bonus on their effectiveness as a leader. And that you can do by, example, by doing upwards feedback or by assessing how well they represent the company values, et cetera, et cetera. There are opportunities to measure leadership effectiveness and not just how well they hit the quota. Lars Nielsen (18:33.097) Mm-hmm. Lars Nielsen (18:37.865) So Paulina, we have come to the part of today's episode where I want to throw somebody under the bus. So speaking about bad leadership and so on, are there industries, and that's who I want to throw on the bus, are there industries where these issues are more common in your experience, or does it happen everywhere? Of course it happens everywhere, but are there industries where it stands out more? Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (18:48.878) Cool. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (19:07.912) I mean, you know that I've worked in, I've worked in the automotive industry. I've worked in a fast moving consumer goods. I've worked in AI startups. I've worked in FinTech. So I've seen probably quite a big range of different industries. And I wouldn't necessarily say it has that you see different effects in different industries, but I would say you see different effects depending on the size or the age of a company. So in high scaling startups, for example, you will see a lot more of what you just mentioned, young people getting promoted because they are really good at their subject matter job and then leaving them alone without any training or sparring. And this gets worse, the more competitive the environment. is that the company moves in, right? So, and if you, if you have those super unexperienced leaders that you don't train, and again, I want to be really, really clear. If you are an unexperienced leader, it is not your responsibility. It is your company's responsibility to make sure that you succeed in this role. Okay. So this is no attacking young, unexperienced leaders. I love everyone out there who. dares to step up to this role and this responsibility. And I just hope so much that companies learn from this and really start making sure that they help their people succeed. Because if you don't, either your new managers will burn out or you will see a total drop in team morale. It's just what it is, right? Maybe even see both. Lars Nielsen (21:03.765) I think it's a very good point, you're saying there, because it might come out as we are attacking everybody and saying, oh, everybody's a bad leader, or if you're young and inexperienced, you're a bad leader. But again, like you're saying, it is not your responsibility. It's your company's responsibility. It's them that, in most cases at least, that have failed to not dress you up for the role that you have accepted. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (21:28.664) Yes. And again, yes, it's your company's responsibility. Yet I also don't want to say you are powerless, right? So obviously even as a young leader, you can look for help somewhere else. So for example, a good friend of mine that I work with in another role, she was a super fresh, unexperienced leader. She was promoted because she was really good at her job. Lars Nielsen (21:38.953) No, no, no, of course not. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (21:58.746) And she didn't receive any training from the company. And she, she saw me working. I already had more than eight years of leadership experience under my belt at the time. And she came up to me she was like, Paulina, can we do some sparring? Can you help me with this? I'm not getting any training. I've asked for a year to get training from the, the, from the business. I'm not getting it. Can you help me? I was like, sure. Of course I will. And then we sat down once a week for an hour and a half. And I would just teach her my basic leadership, like tips and tricks. And you could see her sore, her energy exploded, her joy exploded. She had so much more fun in her role as a manager, just because she understood how she could handle specific situations. And that I don't, this is not like praising me, right? It's about, I loved. that she approached me. I love that she took the responsibility to say, I need to be better at this. I need to be better for my team. And so she went out, went, ventured out there and looked for help and asked for help. And that is all on her. And I admired that immensely. And she made it happen. I mean, even I gave her the tips, but she turned, she turned around and actually put them into action. Right? So all the work was basically on her. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (23:25.174) And yeah, but, but, didn't fully fully answer your last question, right? So we talked about the highest, highest, like the startups and scale-ups, but when it, when it comes to more experienced or more settled companies, what I've seen is that the lack of self-awareness and self-reflection becomes a bigger problem, especially when you have been a leader for a long, long time and you're convinced you know how it's done. Lars Nielsen (23:25.311) Holy. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (23:53.912) You've been doing it for a couple of years. You're like a pro and there's nothing else for you to learn. And I think I've said this at the beginning, there is always something new that you can learn. And therefore I want to make this point again, if leadership performance is not measured or based on company-wide leadership standards, things can easily unravel for individual leaders or for the entire business. Make sense? Lars Nielsen (24:26.703) perfect things and thank you very much. Like we said in the beginning that we always like to kind of share like either personal stories, stories that people send to us or at least give some examples of what we talking about just to give some concrete feedback on the topic that we are talking about. So can you share a personal or a story that you know of? as an example of leadership failure that led to valuable lessons. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (25:01.198) Yes, happy to. there's one basic disclaimer I want to do here as well. So from my perspective, middle management is always in a specific, specifically hard place because they will experience pressure from above and from below. So I don't also want to look at stories from ICs. I also want to look at stories from middle managers and even high managers because can learn from everyone. This story is the classic story of a middle manager. It's a friend of mine who worked in a big company in a leadership role himself. He tried really hard to do the right things. Especially with two quite difficult team members, difficult in terms of the performance wasn't right. And he had to try to improve their performance within a limited timeframe. And he gave them very candid and constructive feedback. He coached them and also kept his own manager in the loop about their development. Right. So he did basically everything right that you're supposed to do. And then he went on vacation. And when he came back, he found out that his manager. without any prior announcement or any prior warning had fired those two team members while he was on vacation. Lars Nielsen (26:33.962) Wahoo! Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (26:35.522) So he comes back to a reduced team that is an absolute shock and believes that he had been a coward and just not been man enough to have the hard conversation with his own team members and rely on his boss to do the dirty work for him. What if... Lars Nielsen (26:58.261) Yeah, and it seems like he just went on vacation while the dirty laundry was taking out right. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (27:05.143) And I mean, I know this guy really well, so I know that he's not shitting me on this. I absolutely believe the story and I find it so absurd because in one fell swoop, his manager destroyed the entire trust that he had built with his team for months. And while sending the signal, I don't trust you, your ability to turn around people, do your own job well. And he just he just couldn't recover from that. I mean, how do you rebuild this kind of lost trust with your team? If your team members believe that you are a coward and you don't you don't deserve to be listened to or that no matter what you even if you try to help them succeed, he might still be running his mouth again about you and To his manager and then the manager decides to to make a decision on his own right so it was just from his manager. Catastrophic reaction to the situation. At the end of the day my friend actually ended up quitting his job. And then he did a lot of soul searching and self reflection again we're at this beautiful stage of reflect yourself because he could he could have also just been like fuck this. He was an asshole. He just destroyed my life, whatnot. But instead he turned around and he was like, okay, what did I actually learn from the situation? And so, two things that he has learned is when he enters a new team, he now has very kind of conversations with them from the get-go, like on day one, telling them what his expectations are, how he's going to deal with difficult situations and that he'll have the difficult conversations with them, always personally. And then he lives that obviously, right? So he doesn't just say that, that he's going to do it, but he makes sure that he has very candid, difficult conversations with his team members from the beginning so that they always know where they're at. So he places even more importance on building this foundational trust with them from the beginning. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (29:31.112) And he also develops very clear, if he does have struggling team members, he develops really clear development plans for these and discusses. the milestones and the uptakes that he expects to see in his team members upfront with his managers and the thresholds after which he will actually action any other, yeah, like for example, any firings that he might actually from it. And he discusses that upfront with his manager and just keeps them in the loop and just also also gets their buy-in on this and he's say he basically goes in there and says, okay, this is my idea. This is what I'm going to do. If that fails, then I'm going to do B and Z and if that fails, I'm going to do D. Are you fine with that? Are you aligned with that? Is that a way forward that we can agree on? And so he's very, very clear in his communication, both to his own manager and his teams. And that has worked wonders for him so far. Lars Nielsen (30:43.465) What an insane story. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (30:46.862) I bring up the big guns right at the beginning, right? Lars Nielsen (30:51.047) Yeah. And Paulina, you know me again. You and I, have done each other for a couple of years now. Can you imagine what would happen if I was the person in that position? I came back from holiday and my manager has fired some of my team members. I would, I would explode. Yes. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (31:07.386) I would go... I would go berserk. I would go so berserk. would be... I can't even imagine. This manager broke so many things with one move. Complete nuts. Lars Nielsen (31:26.997) Pauline, we are coming to an end for today's episode. But for the listeners who are in, let's say, in a leadership position or an aspiring leader, where should they start if they want to improve their leadership or want to prepare for leadership? Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (31:45.976) hands down the self-reflection. I've mentioned it again and again throughout this episode. I think this is the most important continuous tool that you should use, including your team's feedback on your leadership style. And then make sure that you, I know this is hard and I know that getting a promotion offered to you to become a leader. is always tempting. And I don't know a lot of people who would say no to that. But make sure, especially if you're an organization where you've probably, where you might've seen that leaders are not skilled up or trained up, make sure that before you accept the leadership role, that there is a clear training plan in place. And that training plan can just be having weekly sparring sessions and coaching sessions with your own manager on how to become a good leader. If they are a good leader, otherwise that won't really help you. But, so that is something that I would, I would be very, very keen on if I started in a new role myself, like in my first leadership role to make sure that there is something in place there and then keep, keep on self reflecting, keep on looking for mentors, asking for help from, from other leaders and showing the vulnerability too. Right. mean, so many things come down to vulnerability. If you do share with other leaders that you don't know how to solve this specific situation, then they might be able to help you out on that. Of course, that requires trust for those people. know that. And if you're lucky, if you're really lucky, like I've been in my last role, you might also have a people partner that is amazing as a spire partner. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (33:50.734) At this point, want to send a lot of love to you, Almog. That was my people partner in my last position and he was the best. We had amazing, inspiring sessions. We could discuss everything and anything and we would find beautiful solutions together for really hard situations. So there are always resources in your environment, either in your current job or from former jobs or in your circle of friends that you can use to work on your leadership skills without an official training. Lars Nielsen (34:36.469) Perfect. So to sum up leadership mistakes, can have lasting consequences on your team, but it can also be very powerful learning moments. then kind of the key takeaways from today's episode is self reflection, communication, trust, and adaptability. You say the word, I can't say it. yes, thank you very much. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (35:01.92) Adept-adept-ability. Lars Nielsen (35:06.293) You Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (35:06.774) Absolutely. Absolutely. Adaptability, accountability, super, super important tools, and, and skills that you should have. And I want to, I want to end this episode maybe with, with also the words leadership is such a beautiful, beautiful thing. If you do it right, you get to connect with people, you get to help people thrive. You get help people develop, grow. grow outside the comfort zone, get to influence. If you do it really well, you get to influence their entire future careers. That is such a beautiful thing. Yes. And I started the episode with, with saying you have huge responsibility, which you do, but you also have the beauty of seeing all of that come to fruition. Lars Nielsen (35:45.407) It's very powerful position to be in. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (36:02.666) and see other people thrive. And I personally find that extremely rewarding to see and feel that impact that you can have. Lars Nielsen (36:14.037) Mm-hmm. Perfect. Paulina, on that note, let's end this second episode of Cultures from Hell. Before we completely cut off and tune out, please inform the listeners where can they reach out to you if they have any questions or want to share a story. And let's just emphasize everybody that shares a story with us are 100 % anonymous. We are not going to mention any persons or any company names or anything in the podcast unless you want to participate in the podcast and share your story. Then of course you are more than welcome to do that. But please, where can they find you? Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (36:57.762) And just to be very clear, even if you come on the podcast, we're happy to share your personal name, but we will keep your company's name anonymous in any case. Lars Nielsen (37:08.457) Yes. Where can I find you Paulina? That was the question. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (37:12.782) sorry. You can find me on LinkedIn. You can find my company on LinkedIn, the Culture Code Foundation. And you can also find me on Instagram under the handle Skeptical Paulina, because I am skeptical of many, things. So yeah, feel free to reach out, DM me. We'll be happy to have you on the show. Lars Nielsen (37:39.647) And of course, we are going to put a link in the show notes for everybody. Then just click if they want that. For everybody listening out there, please give this podcast a follow. Give it a rating on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you're listening. And we are looking forward to talk to you in the next episode. Thank you very much, Paulina. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (38:02.498) Thank you, Lars. See you soon.