Numerous studies have linked leadership behaviours with satisfaction. It suggests that a leader’s use of a more participative management style will result in higher levels of satisfaction among their employees.
It is on this premise that this article analyses the antecedents of petty leadership and the effects of pettiness on subordinates, with emphasis on the management, social-psychological, social work, and political science works of literature have yielded a host of constructs akin to the notion of petty leadership.
Which causes low self-esteem, unfounded fear, anxiety, self-doubt and lack of assurance, abysmal performance, little work unit cohesiveness, and leader endorsement, and high frustration, stress, resentment, demotivation, loss of creativity and innovation, helplessness, and work alienation among subordinates. These effects may trigger a vicious circle that sustains petty behaviour.
Pettiness affects all members of the organisation, all the way from the customers/clients, peers, subordinates, superiors, management board, and the general interpersonal climate of the workplace
So, let us analyse the interactions of individual predispositions and situational facilitators that enhances petty behaviour by leaders in your organisation.
Perhaps, the most intriguing issue is how each proposed antecedent is necessary or sufficient to prompt petty leadership. Each individual and situational factor can likely drive at least sporadic instances of pettiness. For example, a highly stressed manager snaps at a subordinate.
Thus, each antecedent is argued to constitute a primary effect. However, these main effects are likely to be relatively weak as the growing literature on interactionism suggests that no individual or situational factor alone is generally sufficient to sustain ongoing organisational behaviour, including petty behaviour.
Instead, continued pettiness may be a function of specific configurations of individual and situational factors.
There are, potentially, many such configurations. However, three seem particularly likely to predict petty behaviour.
– First, certain beliefs about the organisation and about subordinates may combine with the macro-level factor of institutionalised values and norms to provoke pettiness.
Managers who subscribe to a bureaucratic orientation would accept these beliefs in organisations and departments that value compliance with centralised decisions and standardised tasks.
This acceptance may translate into a higher tolerance for pettiness or petty behaviour. Sadly, it may even legitimise and normalise such behaviour.
– A second potential configuration involves beliefs about the self. Such beliefs perhaps compliment them about the organisation and subordinate–and the micro-level factor of power.
Read also: How to manage petty leaders in your organisation – 3
The acquisition and successful use of power may enhance self-perceptions, legitimise one’s position, and compensate for a perceived personal inability to influence others. However, behavioural experts posit that individuals differ in how they are psychologically constrained from exercising power in socially undesirable ways.
Individuals with low “power inhibition” are more apt to act with pettiness. I would argue that self-esteem is one critical variable that affects this felt inhibition. Based on the social identity theory, individuals with high self-esteem may be better able to buffer their personal identity from their social identity as powerholders and thus maintain some psychological distance from the seductive qualities of the latter.
Accordingly, consistent with research on human behaviour, individuals with low self-esteem are likely to find the seductive qualities of power particularly attractive and feel less constrained in their use of power. A typical example of a petty leader in this category is the one who defines himself mainly by his work.
– A third potential configuration involves preferences for action and the micro-level factor of stressors. As noted, managers tend to respond to stressors by behaving more dictatorially. This tendency may be exacerbated by a predisposition to directiveness and a low tolerance for ambiguity.
Regarding the former, individuals subject to stress tend to rely upon well-learned patterns of behaviour. To a certain extent, this particular pattern is functional and normatively expected during troubling times.
Regarding the latter, the lower the tolerance for ambiguity, the more likely that a given stressor will be perceived as a threat, and thus, the more likely that one will respond in a controlling manner.
These three proposed configurations are only a subset of the many possibilities. Given the absence of research on the issue, such interactionist arguments are clearly speculative.
So, what are the effects of petty leadership on subordinates in any organisation?
Pettiness affects all members of the organisation, all the way from the customers/clients, peers, subordinates, superiors, management board, and the general interpersonal climate of the workplace. However, the following discussion of effects is restricted to subordinates because:
They are hierarchically dependent and are thus a frequent target of pettiness and petty behaviours; The extent to which petty leaders display different behaviours to less dependent members of the workplace is unclear.
A review of the literature suggests five interdependent groups of effects of petty behaviour on subordinates: leader endorsement, frustration, stress, and reactance; Helplessness and work alienation; Self-esteem and performance, and Work unit cohesiveness.
Please lookout for a continuation of this article.
