Maybe berating employees isn't so smart

For a leader, singling out the staff for censure looks like an attempt to shirk responsibility

US President Donald Trump is famous for his insults, so perhaps his habit of attacking subordinates should come as no surprise. He criticised Attorney General Jeff Sessions three days in a row last week, calling him “very weak,”blasting his conduct in the Russia investigation, and slamming him for not firing acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe — who also Trump attacked, insinuating that he was corrupt. Trump also referred to the investigation into his firing of the previous FBI director as a “witch hunt” led by some “very bad and conflicted people,” in an apparent dig at Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

Maybe there’s some hidden logic to Trump’s actions. But it’s almost never a good idea for a leader to publicly criticise his or her employees.
 

As a PR matter, this strategy is almost certain to backfire. People generally hold leaders accountable for what their organisations do. If a mistake happens on a chief executive’s watch, observers may fault that person for bad decision-making or for being out of the loop — but either way, they’ll expect the leader to take the blame. Singling out employees for censure looks like an attempt to shirk responsibility, and also appears petty and gauche. That only deepens the reputational damage to the leader and their organisation.

Take the case of Wells Fargo. In 2016, it emerged that the company had opened more than two million accounts that weren’t requested by customers. The bank’s chief executive, John Stumpf, publicly blamed his employees — who, according to US regulators, were trying to meet sales goals set by the bank — for bad behaviour. Wells Fargo fired 5,300 people for improper practices.

Predictably, trying to scapegoat individual staffers for a systemwide problem only made Stumpf look like a bad leader. He retired a month later.
 

Volkswagen’s American CEO learned this lesson the same way. In October 2015, in the midst of an environmental scandal, Michael Horn told Congress that “a couple of software engineers” in his company were responsible for installing equipment designed to cheat emissions tests. The company announced that Horn was leaving by “mutual agreement” five months later.

The only exception to this rule would be when an employee does something in his or her private life — such as committing a crime — that reflects poorly on his or her employer. Then, it would be appropriate for an organisation to condemn the behaviour and disavow the employee. 

Attacking employees also tends to backfire internally, according to Helio Fred Garcia, president of Logos Consulting Group. “Ineffective leaders publicly call out or humiliate their people, either in the workplace or in more public settings,” he says. “This predictably causes all employees to lose confidence and trust in the boss. 

As a result, he says, employees will be less loyal. This can hurt their productivity and lead them to act out — for example, by leaking information to the press. Overall, Garcia says, attacking employees creates a “culture of backstabbing and chaos”.