A focus on goals rather than behaviour is creating workplace monsters

Rather than putting the time and effort into promoting self-control, many organisations continue to favour focusing on goals, irrespective of how they are achieved. The general obsession by some organisations with outputs, reports, and metrics, signals to employees that performance is paramount, whatever the cost.

This has led to some spectacular failures in organisations. For example in the ride-sharing business Uber, poor leadership modelled and encouraged poor self-control within the business. Volkswagen’s 2015 emission scandal offers another sobering example of what can happen when there is insufficient scrutiny on how performance targets are met.

Many of us are guilty of having momentary lapses in self-control. This can be anything from procrastinating on facebook instead of finishing a client report or losing our cool with a frustrating colleague. Research shows that poor self-control more generally leads to dysfunctional outcomes.

Our research highlights that destructive leaders lack self-control especially when anxious and the difficulty of tasks is high. Constructive leaders, on the other hand, have much more self-control and are much less easily overwhelmed. Read more

Chris Jackson et al. - The Conversation - 27 July 2017