Theories in Action
At Olé, it seems as though task oriented leadership is a better fit for this environment. However, Declan exemplifies this to the extreme – so much so that I’m not sure it’s effective. Employees do what Declan asks immediately but out of fear because he is not afraid to call someone out in from of everyone. This creates an environment where people are afraid to mess up and not complete what they’re asked to but they also aren’t jumping to do more than the bare minimum. This seems to be connected to the type of leadership style Declan embodies. He will be the first to tell you that he doesn’t develop relationships with the families of the athletes that come through Olé because then it becomes political and you allow the players to get game time based on the relationship with the families rather than their ability. He sees relationships as a weakness to being successful. I think there is some truth to his belief, however, he goes too far in my opinion. It seems like he tries to make people dislike him. This could also have to do with social skills.
The way he treats the people in the organization is pretty bad. Somehow, he still demands respect from everyone within the organization and I’m not sure how he’s able to maintain that. The mother of a girl on my team said that during a training session he commented on how big her daughter was. One of her teammates looked at him and said that her mom was right behind him, in which he replied, “well, is her mom blind?” He cares about results and puts no effort into keeping people happy.
This is effective to get the tasks he wants done but hurts the rest of the organization – there is an extremely high turnover rate which causes other staff to have to train new employees in over and over again. This makes longterm progress difficult, it seems.
I can see how he (and you) recognize that relationships with athletes families could lead to compromising situations/decisions, however, I think your assessment of his ‘anti-relationship’ stance could be detrimental if applied broadly to everything (e.g. the organization, his colleagues, etc.). Do I recall you talking about another leader within the organization who was more relationship conscious? If so, it seems the two of them might complement each other to some extent. If not – if I am imagining you talking about a more relationship oriented colleague – forgive me. Good to recognize that this behavior contributes to staff departures and turnover, which is costly for an organization both in terms of human capital and financial cost and does indeed impede implementation of long term goals, growth, progress.