Leaders are motivators not manipulators. Being a manipulating leader means that you lead people to do what is best for you. On the other hand, motivating them means you are doing what is best for them in the first place.

Great leaders always have a singular position but many perspectives because they understand that singularity of perspective is polarising. When leaders seek a singular perspective – their perspective – they are unwillingly devaluing their followers.

One of the greatest books I ever read when I was a young kid is “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie. Recently I came across this thought-provoking article in the Regent Business Review entitled “How to Lose Friends and Infuriate People” by Michael Zigarelli.

How to Lose Friends and Infuriate People A Manager’s Guide

1. When an employee is in your office to talk with you, don’t hesitate to answer your phone.
2. Take a week to respond to requests and queries from your employees. Heck, take two.
3. Criticize people in public. Don’t worry whether the criticism is direct or tacit. It’ll have the same effect.
4. Permit inequities and conflict to persist. Remember that you’re too important to deal with employees’ petty tiffs.
5. Be stingy with your thank you’s. After all, they just make people feel like you should be paying them more money.
6. Pay people less than they’re worth. Give raises based on factors they cannot influence or, for more fun, based on their performance relative to one another.
7. Don’t smile when you say hello to employees. Better yet, don’t even say hello. A third option: if you must say hello, follow up with a “how ya doing?” and then look away before they answer.
8. Ask people to do work outside of their job description.
9. Interpret all suggestions for improvement as personal attacks on your leadership.
10. Do your subordinates’ jobs for them, since you can’t trust them to do it right. If that’s not attractive to you, though, dump your work on them instead.
11. Give people the illusion of empowerment. Tell them they have control over a process, and hold them accountable for the results, but then micro-manage the process to meet your pre-determined ends.
12. Take credit for the good work your people do (and blame your department’s problems on their laziness and ineptitude).
13. Hold lots of meetings and make sure they have an unfocused agenda. Allow the conversation to meander aimlessly, permitting one tangential comment to give license to the next. Never cut off a rambling participant and if anyone has a good idea, compel that person to assume responsibility for a new committee to pursue the idea. End each meeting with no action items.
14. When scheduled to meet with an employee or with a group of employees, be late. Sometimes very late. Hey, they meeting can’t start without you, right?
15. Never, never forget that you are superior to your employees and never doubt that you are absolutely right. In doing so, you’ll be guaranteed to skillfully apply all of the above secrets of success.

Michael Zigarelli, Regent Business Review, May 2003

Of the 15 practices written by Zigarelli 11 of them have a direct connotation on the malpractice of leaders devaluating their followers.

Is this a leader’s blind spot? Oh, yes. As leaders, we have always learned to work on our strengths or sweet spots. What about our blind spots? Even if we create our blind spots through our behaviours unwillingly, we still need to put intentional efforts to become aware of them. Then we can work on how to neutralize them. In other words, moving from losing friends and infuriating people to winning friends and influencing people.

The journey to greatness starts with not only becoming aware of our sweet spots but also identifying our blind spots and intentionally working to change them.

If you haven’t read “How to Win Friends and Influence People” I highly recommend it! If you don’t have the time to read the full book, readingrahics.com  summarizes top business and personal developments books into powerful infographics and short audio.  (Please note that The Success Core may collect a share of sales from readingraphics.com)