Uniqueness Incompetence and Leadership
Those who cannot honour their employees in their uniqueness usually wish to have all the admiration for themselves: Employees are working on a presentation and the boss then puts his own name on the slides and presents them! Management positions are highly attractive to a manager, who does not himself know who he is and for what he might be loved. He replaces the missing identity – a prominent role instead of an anchored self-image, based upon perception. The lack of empathy which goes alongside this (those who are not in touch with their own feelings, cannot jive with others), leads to serious deficits in carrying out their role.
The employees split into ‘yes-people’ and the rest. They hide their own competence to avoid triggering the envy of the manager, i.e. they allow themselves to be exploited in the hope of a later reward. As they do not get situation-appropriate support, mistakes, reduced performance and loss of reality occur (“Oh, you’ll manage it!”).
It is important for counsellors to take even the milder forms of such phenomena seriously and explore which inner distress lies at the root of the manager’s behaviour.