There’s only one thing worse than an abusive boss, and that’s a boss who thinks he can make up for bad behavior by putting on his charm the next day. That’s the key finding of a new study by researchers at Stevens Institute of Technology, which shows that employee morale and job performance decline dramatically when leaders swing unpredictably between good and bad behavior.
“We already know that abusive leadership has serious consequences for workers, but now we are seeing that leaders who oscillate between abusive and ethical leadership cause even more harm to employees,” says Dr. Haoying Xu, leader of the study. author and assistant professor of management at the Stevens School of Business. “It turns out that returning to an ethical leadership style doesn’t magically erase the impact of previous bad behavior and, in some circumstances, can actually make things worse.”
The research, published in the Journal of Applied Psychologyused surveys and field experiments to examine the impact of “Jekyll-and-Hyde” leadership on more than 650 full-time employees based in the United States and Europe. Dr. Xu’s team confirmed that workers struggled when their supervisors were abusive, but found an even greater negative impact when supervisors alternated unpredictably between abusive and ethical leadership styles.
“If you’re constantly guessing which boss will show up, the good cop or the bad cop, you end up emotionally exhausted, demoralized, and unable to work at your full potential,” explains Dr. Xu.
The new research also shows for the first time that “Jekyll-and-Hyde” leadership can take a serious toll even when employees are not directly affected by a leader’s intermittent bad behavior. When a supervisor’s own boss alternated between abusive and ethical leadership, the study found, it created additional uncertainty and eroded employees’ confidence in the supervisor’s abilities.
“In today’s workplaces, employees are highly attuned to their supervisors’ relationships with senior leaders,” says Dr. Xu. “If that relationship becomes unpredictable, or is marked by repeated episodes of good and bad behavior, it can cause real problems for the entire team.”
For organizations, the research offers some important new insights, particularly the fact that leaders who seek to atone for intermittent bad behavior are often causing real harm to their employees. “Organizations tend to intervene when bosses are consistently abusive, but are more tolerant of leaders whose abusive behavior only manifests itself occasionally,” says Dr. Xu. “However, with this study we have shown that intermittent bad behavior can actually be further toxic for organizations.”
To counter Jekyll and Hyde leadership, Dr. Xu says, organizations should pay attention to employees who express concerns and hold leaders accountable for sporadic abusive behavior. Anger management training is also worth considering for leaders who show signs of volatility. “This type of intermittent abusive leadership tends to be impulsive,” says Dr. Xu. “That means there is room to reduce or eliminate it by helping leaders control their temper and improve their impulse control.”
In future research, Dr. Xu hopes to explore how employees respond to and learn from Jekyll-and-Hyde leadership, and how a leader’s periodic abusive behavior impacts individual behavior and team dynamics. “There are some indications that this type of leadership could be contagious, as the volatility of one leader encourages volatility in others,” he says.
There is also some interesting early evidence that employees could learn from and emulate a leader’s bad behavior. further that replicate their good behavior. “If that’s the case, then it would be another great reason for organizations to take Jekyll and Hyde leadership seriously,” warns Dr. Xu.