To explain a little more fully the concepts described in the previous article (What Drives Good and Poor Use of Power?), let’s take a deeper look at the Intimidating vs Approachable scale of the DPI, considering first the internal drivers of the Intimidating Manager.

The Intimidating Manager’s primary dilemmas

Below are listed five examples of possible “if …, then …” statements that might constitute the primary dilemmas that an Intimidating Manager is dealing with day to day. An individual Intimidating Manager may identify with one or more of them, and it is unlikely that they will equally identify with all of them.

Assumptions that might be active in an Intimidating Manager include:

• If I don’t speak (and especially tell), then I might not be heard and lose significance.
• If I don’t tell others what to do, then we will fail.
• If I don’t tell people where they went wrong, then they will make too many mistakes, and we will fail.
• If I don’t keep things moving, then we will lose momentum and fail.
• If others don’t sense my frustration, then they won’t take our situation seriously and act with sufficient urgency, and we will fail.

When a manager is holding one or more of these assumptions, they become the day-to-day survival dilemmas that must be navigated. What is NOT said in these statements is that the scenario of failing, or losing significance, is experienced as deeply threatening by the manager.

This list is intended to support those managers who are experienced as intimidating by making visible some beliefs that usually remain invisible. The manager, upon seeing this list, will likely be able to identify further, more personalised “if …, then …” statements that describe even more accurately their own survival dilemmas.

The FTD Triad of the Intimidating Manager

Negative feelings are generated by the survival dilemmas and tend to reinforce them. Below are listed five clusters of negative feelings which the Intimidating Manager might experience. The Intimidating Manager might experience a mix of these feelings. The important thing here is that the Intimidating Manager deepens their awareness about which negative feelings they tend to favour.

• Frustration, exasperation, irritation, defensiveness, fury, aggression, resentment.
• Humiliation, self-consciousness, jealousy, embarrassment, discomfort, feeling “not normal”.
• Worry, anxiety, victimisation, overwhelm, imposter syndrome, feeling taken advantage of, angst.
• Sadness, feeling lacking (inadequacy), guilt, isolation, hurt, shame, unworthiness.
• Resignation, defeat, aloofness, numbness, feeling left out, feeling lost, loneliness, malaise.

What are the recurring thinking patterns of the Intimidating Manager? Before listing the self-aggrandising lines of thinking, let’s recall that this thinking is often largely unconscious. Seeing these phrases and questions written can, however, trigger sufficient awareness in the Intimidating Manager to catch them, interrupt them, and disable their shaping effect on behaviour. I should add here that, in my experience, the more usual thinking pattern for the Intimidating Manager is the self-aggrandising pattern (as distinct from the self-diminishing lines of thinking). Examples of the self-aggrandising thinking of the Intimidating Manager include:

• “There is so much I have to tell people!”
• “I better step in here, the conversation is lagging, and I am the boss after all.”
• “It is OK that I get openly frustrated. Others should know how I feel. I recover quickly anyway.”
• “Why are most people so SLOW?”

I have found that when providing these prompts to managers who are experienced as intimidating, they can identify at least one or more of these statements which reflects their thinking. Often, they can add to this list with their own more specific and personalised thinking patterns.

Behaviours of the Intimidating Manager

The following behaviours – patterns of doing – of the Intimidating Manager are triggered by the feeling and thinking patterns listed above. As mentioned earlier, the poor power use behaviours of the Intimidating Manager are a short-term strategy employed to help them feel better.

Below are examples of the day-to-day behaviours that an Intimidating Manager might exhibit. Please remember, this list of behaviours is representative only. These are examples of behaviour that an intimidating manager might exhibit, and the list is not exhaustive.

• Jumping in with thoughts and ideas too quickly.
• Over talking.
• Being unaware of who has or has not spoken in meetings, and therefore not actively managing the sharing of air time.
• Shutting down questions or discussions when they don’t like what is being said.
• Losing their temper, getting annoyed or sarcastic.
• Visibly showing annoyance by rolling their eyes, sighing loudly or making a snide comment.

Looking at the survival dilemmas of the Intimidating Manager, and the associated persistent angst or anxiety created by them, plus the self-aggrandising thought patterns unconsciously chosen by these managers, it easy to understand how an Intimidating Manager might behave in ways that others find plainly uncomfortable. It is as if they have little or no choice but to take up too much air space, overdo telling, make criticisms their primary mode of feedback, and far too freely and openly express their frustrations. Remember, these behaviours have been chosen, albeit unconsciously, as a means of creating relief from anxiety generated by survival dilemmas.

Do you recognise a tendency toward these behaviours in managers in your leadership team? Do you recognise them in yourself? Migration toward the good use of power on the Intimidating v Approachable scale is always achievable. And we explore that in the next article – The internal drivers of the Approachable Manager.

Dr. Paul Donovan