My experience has been that people who get results (or are perceived to get results) get promoted. Being domineering and/or manipulative plays helps to some degree. While that approach may not yield the best results, it may be enough to make the person in charge appear effective.
What I am sure of is that bosses who try to be everyone’s friend are a recipe for disaster. Bosses have to make hard decisions at times—not everyone will be happy with the outcome.
Just my two cents but this the way I see it, good or bad. Unfortunately, if those companies who choose to ignore the greatest asset and actually crap all over them, that asset moves to another company and the walls come tumbling down.
Unfortunately for me, I am at acompany now where I am well liked but there is a major department where I see the “just get results” attitude taking place at the expense of the subordinates who are being threatened and crap’d all over...just a matter of time before those walls break...Results look great now but I would say 50% of those crap’d on assets have their resumes out the door.
While being domineering and/or manipulative may not yield the best results, it certainly is enough to make the person in charge appear effective at my plant, RBG81.
One of my more perceptive coworkers pointed out, some time back, that most of what passes for “leadership” in our medium-sized factory is simply the willingness to force people to do stupid things, at the whim of the higher-ups.
For instance, we’ll run 24000 cases of product A today, 8000 of product B tonight, and then 3000 more of A again tomorrow, just because the computer schedule says so. When we jump thru such hoops, we’re probably earning a feather for our team leader’s cap, as the schedule hashing is probably covering up a a supply/delivery manager’s mistake.