Could a horrible boss make you a better leader?
A new University of Central Florida study suggests abuse and mistreatment by those at the top of an organization do not necessarily lead to abusive behavior by lower-level leaders. When offered leadership opportunities, prior victims of workplace abuse are more likely to treat their own subordinates better by learning from the bad behavior of their bosses.
UCF College of Business professors Shannon Taylor and Robert Folger, in collaboration with researchers at the University of Texas at El Paso, Suffolk University and Singapore Management University, recently published their findings in the Journal of Applied Psychology.
“Some employees who are abused by their bosses resolve not to repeat that pattern with their own subordinates and become exceptional leaders of their teams,” Taylor says. “Our study sheds light on a silver lining of sorts for people who are subjected to abuse at work. Some managers who experience this abuse can reframe their experience so it doesn’t reflect their behavior and actually makes them better leaders.”
“Some employees who are abused by their bosses resolve not to repeat that pattern with their own subordinates and become exceptional leaders of their teams.” — UCF professor Shannon Taylor
The study found those who relied on their morals and integrity to defy their manager’s abusive approach felt encouraged to prevent it from moving beyond their bosses.
Through multiple experiments over several years, the researchers examined the differences in attitude and behavior of supervisors who had been abused by superiors and those who had not and, in turn, how each group treated their employees. They found that abused supervisors who purposefully distanced themselves from their manager expressed respect and kindness toward their own employees, despite the poor treatment they received from their own boss.
To hear Taylor talk about the study click here.
“The lesson here isn’t to hire more abusive managers, of course, but to try to encourage people who have been abused, among other things, to say, ‘Look, I’m not like my boss,’” Taylor says. “You can take a stand—not just by reporting the bad behavior, but by actively rejecting this abusive leadership style.”
Taylor says he doesn’t expect workplace abuse to disappear, but he notes that companies are learning and trying to solve the problem through training and maintaining positive workplace climates.
Taylor joined UCF in 2012. He has a doctorate in organizational behavior from Louisiana State University and a bachelor’s degree in finance from Bradley University. His areas of research include ethical and unethical/abusive leadership, uncivil and counterproductive work behaviors, and time and temporal dynamics
Folger joined UCF in 2003. An author of 125 publications, Folger received his master’s degree and doctorate in social psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research interests include organizational justice, workplace violence and the evolutionary roots of human behavior.
