Effects of INCONSISTENT management

Consistency in the workplace helps employees feel secure about their work responsibilities and workplace demands. Consistent management builds trust, respect and credibility and will encourage a rational and reliable behavior. 

Inconsistent managers are a nightmare. 

It is always very hard to work with such people because you never know where they stand and they cannot be trusted. They appear at times to be physically present when their brain has left the building. Sometimes they show empathy sometimes they act as small dictators.

Other than a tremendous annoyance, does leader's inconsistency really cause harm?

YES!

Inconsistent management can damage the morale, self-esteem and productivity of the employees and even impact the overall success of an organization. The potential impact on performance is considerable.   

Let’s take for example inconsistency in commitments.

One of the most demotivating and exhausting aspects within teams at workplace is the wasted time, attention and effort on initiatives or projects that are great and important for a few weeks or a few months and then ignored as leaders move onto the next “hot” idea. If you have committed to a course of action, be consistent and follow-up, seeing it to its end.

Managers who are not consistent in their decision making and behavior will create fear and uncertainty throughout the team.

A manager has always the attention of his team members and he needs to show the same positive and consistent face them.  Of course, we are all humans and not all mornings are nice and shiny. However, self-control is absolutely necessary in order to avoid outbursts of anger, mixed messages, or other destructive and morale-sapping leadership behavior.

How do employees naturally react to inconsistent management?

They don’t trust their manager anymore. They will doubt any advice, guidance or promises and they will act accordingly.

They will start skipping hierarchical levels and go to those managers that are consistent and reliable.

They will approve, but not agree. Most employees are afraid of conflict especially with their managers and therefore, they will never tell their manager directly that they don’t understand a decision or that their manager is acting out of character on a certain occasion. They will simply nod and smile and go back to their office thinking “Here we go again. Another nonsense and useless decision.”

They will have a very slow reaction to the guidelines and requests of the manager. All of their time and energy will be spent talking about or complaining about their manager and about his irregular moods or missteps and work won’t get done.

Consistency makes very often the difference between failure and success. Even the best business plans will fail without a dedication to consistency.  

Problems should never come alone

When signing a work contract the bargain is that the employee will fulfill certain responsibilities mentioned in the job description against a certain amount of money - the salary. However, fulfilling those specific responsibilities it's just the basic part of the contract. 

Employees are expected to act in the interest of the company, to work with others in order to reach company's goals, to use their knowledge and energy not only to solve specific work related issues but also to help improving the existing systems, processes, procedures so that the company's goals will be achieved.

Every time a work related situation needs to be solved and you can't solve it on your own or it's not in your competency to decide about what needs to be done, you naturaly go to your manager. You expect guidance from him and most of the times you expect a solution. 


Regardless of the job title, industry or type of qualification, when it comes to problem solving, any manager would like to see the same thing from their employees: involvement and initiative in problem solving. That’s why for every problem that you bring to our manager you should also have a possible solution, a point of view, a suggestion or anything that you thought about when trying to solve the problem. 

What would you do if you were in the shoes of your manager? What makes you think so? What are the arguments that could support such a decision?

Only after answering these questions you should go to your manager, present him the situation, what you see as a solution and what your arguments are. Your solution might be wrong but that's OK as long you have arguments to support it and you learn from this experience. By doing this exercise you will get better and in time you will be able to find on your own the best solutions. 

This proactive engagement in problem solving not only shows your commitment but also your courage to express your opinions and stand for them, your ability to find solutions and make decisions. You can ask your managers to decide about certain matters or to advise you. However, it’s always a bad idea to expect from them to entirely solve your problems without your input on that. 

Even if you are at the very beginning on a new position or in a new company you can still do your best to understand the problem so that you present it as good as possible and if the experience will allow you, maybe to come up with an idea on how to solve it. If you think the solution you found it's not that good, you should still tell our manager about it and explain your concerns. Let him know that you have put effort and tried to solve the problem before taking the easy way and asking him. 
On the long term, this way of working has many benefits and will definitely put you among the people that have higher chances of being promoted.