When some people take the controls at a company, they do it with such gusto and self-confidence that it can be interpreted as disruptive, difficult, radical, challenging, angry, or even downright nasty. Sometimes blustery executives can get away with this and make true breakthroughs — Steve Jobs, for example, was reportedly intimidating and mean to some of his staff, was quick to change directions and tear up teams, but under his stewardship Apple created some of the most important technologies driving our modern world.
But new research questions the value of these leadership tactics, and sets out certain key criteria that have to be met for it to be effective. The report may encourage a shift in how you act around your employees.
The researchers, from the European School of Management and Technology in Berlin, compared a radical leadership style to the physical process of annealing. If it’s been a while since you took physics class, annealing is when you heat up certain materials to a critical temperature, at which structural changes happen that relieve stresses, get rid of some defects and often make the resulting blend more workable.
This is a neat analogy for the kind of shake-it-up, piss-people-off, burn-it-down management style that some leaders follow to remake a company, or remorselessly push it forward from innovation to new innovation. In the paper, the research team says difficult, radical leaders feel they need to “light a fire” under colleagues.
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But their investigation found that managers who act like this may be more likely to damage companies, rather than pushing them on to greater success.
For this kind of tough, combustible management style to work, scientists found leaders need a “robust status,” bring “emotional energy” and operate inside a broader workplace environment that has a balance of resources and certainty. Essentially, this means disruptive leaders need the continuous support of their staff, even if they’re seen as difficult. They need to be conscious of what they’re doing and able to cope with tensions they create, and they need to have the time, space and a clear incentive to behave the way they do.
As science news outlet Phys.org notes, these leaders also should follow a clear playbook.
First comes “heating,” where current company, department, or team routines and patterns are questioned and even disrupted to the point new options for achieving the same business goals present themselves. Then there’s a special cooling-off window, where new patterns are solidified into habits, relationships and decisions are stabilized, and stress levels are lowered.
It’s this second phase that’s key, the scientists found: not every organization emerges renewed from this process. And for it to really work out, staff have to buy into the temporary uncertainty and must believe the leader’s vision for the future—which requires high leadership communication skills. If these criteria aren’t met properly, then the team’s research suggests that “annealing will likely do more harm than good.”
You may have read this far and felt that the paper is so much pseudoscience, essentially an academic word salad about management tactics.
But there are key lessons for your company and your leadership style. It starts with thinking twice about trying a radical, upsetting-the-apple-cart overhaul of your company if you find your business at a crisis point. Unless you’re careful, you could actually damage your organization more by trying some of the brutal tactics that CEOs like Jobs got away with — like referring to a particular piece of work, in public, as “dog sh**.“
Alternative management styles are often touted by experts, but a good counterexample of the radical annealing style was presented in a report in March. Here experts noted that great leaders tend to carefully inspire hope, intelligently build compassion and trust into an organization from the top down, and act a stable influence.
In highly uncertain times, thanks to layoffs, a poor job market, and the destabilizing impact of AI, leadership stability may be perhaps the best way to reassure your staff, the report says. And it couldn’t be further away from “annealing.”