How Effective Are Managers With Controlling Personalities?
Would it surprise you if I said that managers with controlling personalities are their own worst enemies? Here’s why. The controlling personality is motivated by fear and also motivates through domination and fear. What impact does this have on such a manager? Well the tendency to control or over control one’s environment is most often driven by the fear of re-experiencing deeply embedded feelings of failure, inadequacy, loss, and the fear of rejection to name a few. The controlling manager’s way of compensating for and distracting themselves from such feelings is to control others around them. Such control gives them a temporary lift in their mood, self confidence, self esteem, self worth, energy and so on. The key word however here is “temporary”. As soon as the “lift” has gone then they’re right back where they were before having to do battle again to ward off the eruption of those unconsciously held feelings again. So clearly this makes such individuals very rigid in their approach
