What’s Beneath Negative Leaderhip Behaviors

Imagine a leader who creates a negative environment for those around them. A leader who demonstrates low emotional intelligence skills. A leader who is known to explode, yelling at others. A leader who appears closed off, who doesn’t connect well with their team or build cross-functional relationships. A leader who has been perceived as lacking leadership skills. 

You might call such a leader a “bad” or even a “terrible” leader. Unfortunately, these perceptions of leaders might miss what’s beneath the behaviors.

As I shared recently, the results of my third and most recent vitality study uncovered that vitality, having an abundance of energy, is the secret to leaders operating from their full leadership potential.

I have discovered an often overlooked reason behind negative leadership behaviors. One explanation behind leaders who display negative leadership behaviors lies at the opposite end of the vitality spectrum: burnout, being depleted of energy. Leaders who are drained don’t have the energy to consistently display positive leadership behaviors. At best, my research showed depleted leaders are perceived as mediocre. At worst, as bad leaders.

An important distinction is the difference between drained leaders and toxic leaders. As I’ve shared previously, there is a form of toxic leadership, called vitality vampires, that literally sucks the positive energetic resources from others. Toxic leaders are highly vital and actually get more energy from depleting others. Drained leaders, on the other hand, do not refill their energy by negatively impacting others.

Eight opposing themes of leadership performance behaviors occur when leaders are highly vital versus depleted of energy. Leaders who are drained can display the following negative leadership behaviors with negative impacts consistently:

1.       Transferring Negative Relational Energy to Others

2.       Being Closed Off

3.       Creating Negative Environments

4.       Discouraging Others

5.       Being Disengaged

6.       Having Low Capacity

7.       Being Myopic

8.       Being Exclusive

The 8 Leadership Behaviors of Drained Leaders:

What does it look like when leaders are drained? How do leaders negatively impact others? We’ll explore in detail with quotes from CEOs.

1. Transferring negative relational energy to others

How leaders display the behavior: Negative relational energy is the transference of negative energy from one person to another. Leaders who transfer negative energy are perceived as “negative energizers” in the workplace, as opposed to “positive energizers,” who are leaders who transfer positive energy.

Negative impacts: When leaders transfer negative energy to others, it can deplete the recipient’s energy, if the recipient doesn’t protect themselves and their own energy. It creates a negative ripple effect, causing others to experience more negative emotions.

2. Being Closed Off

How leaders display the behavior: In contrast to leaders who showed curiosity when highly vital, leaders who are drained become more closed off, are short and abrupt in their communication, are less curious of others, lack patience and are unable to listen actively to others. Being closed off was the most frequent way leaders in my study disclosed how being drained affects their leadership, with 60% expressing so.

Negative impacts: One leader stated: “When I’m emotionally drained or spent, it’s much more about the facts. Let’s do what we need to get through this discussion and meeting. And there’s a whole different level of energy that I bring to the discussion.” While leaders may get the information they ask for in the meeting, by being closed off, there is so much missed potential to create high quality connections and deepen trust.

3. Creating Negative environments

How leaders display the behavior: Depleted leaders create a negative environment through being irritable, visibility stressed, lacking gratitude, using sarcasm, expressing more negative emotions, and showing negative facial expressions and body language.

Negative Impacts: When leaders build a negative environment, they adversely influence their team: by decreasing whatever positive environment the team has developed and increasing a negative environment.

4. Discouraging Others

How leaders display the behavior: Leaders are more likely to discourage others when they themselves are exhausted. Being drained of vitality leads to an overall lack of awareness, less capacity for emotional intelligence, less careful in communication, and less tolerance for mistakes.

Negative Impacts:  As one leader explained, she has “no extra space for EQ, even if I intellectually know it’s there, I don’t have time. I don’t have time for your feelings. I’ve got way too many of them on my own and I’m just too tired. And can’t you see that we just need to get things done.” When leaders don’t have the capacity to demonstrate emotional intelligence, it can leave their team feeling discouraged and potentially disengaged.

5. Being Disengaged

How Leaders Display the Behavior: When leaders are depleted, they feel disengaged, have an overall lack of enjoyment for their job, and tend to be quieter or more isolated from others.

Negative Impacts: As one leader explained: “I could be drained of my energy by something that’s external from the business. That might make me distracted or not necessarily engaged.” The consequences, unfortunately, go beyond being distracted. Given that a leader’s emotions are contagious, a leader’s disengagement can adversely influence others’ emotions.

6. Having low Capacity

How Leaders Display the Behavior: When leaders lack vitality, it contributes to delayed decision making, less work capacity, less ability to accomplish work, and being more distracted.

Negative Impacts: Leaders have less capacity to make sound and timely decisions. As one CEO expressed: “What happens with me is I feel like I don’t have the focus that I need to make sound decisions. I tend to also take longer to make a decision because I feel I haven’t really done my work on something. And then, sometimes you lose your motivation.”

Having lower capacity creates a dilemma: exhausted leaders can feel overwhelmed with everything on their list, but unfortunately, when they lack vitality, they’ll experience a decrease in the mental stamina needed to focus on accomplishing their work.

7. Being Myopic

How leaders display the behavior: Leaders low in vitality lacked visionary leadership, were less creative, and were less likely to be able to see the broader perspective.

Negative Impacts: One CEO shared: “You lose the broader perspective that keeps things balanced.” Displaying a narrow-minded point of view, being short sighted, and having less capacity for creativity, are the opposite qualities needed to foster innovation, visionary thinking and long-term strategic planning.

8. Being Exclusive

How leaders display the behavior: When leaders are drained, they were less inclusive, less collaborative, and demonstrated more inconsistent leadership behaviors.

Negative impacts:  As one leader described, “It’s the time I am the least flexible. And in some ways, it’s probably the least inclusive version of me and the heaviest handed.” By displaying inconsistent leadership behaviors and excluding others, leaders decrease trust and psychological safety within their teams.

How to Support Leaders Displaying Negative Leadership Behaviors:

Throwing more leadership development or EQ programs at exhausted leaders isn’t enough to improve leadership performance on its own. Solutions must start by addressing the central problem such leaders face: the energy deficiency. To be most impactful, its essential proposed solutions begin with the foundation of promoting your wellbeing and consistently filling your energy.

While there could be a leadership skill gap, it’s critical to focus on replenishing the leader’s vitality first. Once leaders build their vitality, then concentrating on leadership skill development will further boost leadership performance.   

What can leaders lacking vitality do to support themselves?

• If you realize you have shown any of these behaviors when depleted, what’s most important is to be kind and compassionate towards yourself. We tend to be overly harsh on ourselves, feeling shame, guilt and regret, because we are behaving in a way misaligned with our authentic self. Awareness is the first step towards making change. 

• When you are operating with an energy deficiency, you must start by refilling it. Start in small ways to consistently promote your wellbeing. This is where you’ll get your main source of energy and vitality. List what brings you energy in these three categories: physical, psychological, emotional. Start by adding one new small positive habit to your daily life. What’s one thing you could add to your life consistently that would help you replenish your energy?

• Reflect on how you could get support. What support do you need? How could others support you as you focus on replenishing your energy? What’s one way you could get more support?   

What can others do to support leaders lacking vitality?

If you notice a leader seems overwhelmed or has been displaying some of the negative behaviors recently, the best support you can provide is to be curious, show empathy, and demonstrate active listening skills. This also applies if a leader shares that they are feeling burned out. Take the time to discuss privately. Ask simple, open-ended, curious questions, providing them the space to reflect and respond. Start with a question such as: how are you feeling?

Don’t try to solve for or give advice to the other person. It’s unhelpful to give solutions, such as: “oh, you need to try this program I just tried.”

Through understanding that the lack of vitality is one reason behind negative leadership behaviors, we can focus our attention on what’s foundational for leaders to express positive leadership behaviors: cultivating their vitality.