Employees face challenges when supervisors alternate between positive and negative behaviors.
Having a boss who shifts from abusive to charming and back again can be even more detrimental than having a consistently abusive boss. This is a major conclusion from a recent study conducted by researchers at Stevens Institute of Technology, revealing that employees’ morale and job performance significantly decline when leaders unpredictably oscillate between good and bad conduct.
“We already know that abusive leadership severely affects employees — but this research shows that leaders who unpredictably switch between abusive and ethical behaviors have an even more damaging effect on workers,” explains Dr. Haoying Xu, the study’s lead author and assistant professor of management at the Stevens School of Business. “Reverting to a more ethical leadership style does not erase the negative impacts of previous bad behavior — in some cases, it may worsen the situation.”
The findings, published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, utilized surveys and field experiments to analyze the effects of “Jekyll-and-Hyde” leadership on over 650 full-time employees in the United States and Europe. Dr. Xu’s team confirmed that employees faced difficulties when their supervisors were abusive and noted an even greater detrimental effect when supervisors unpredictably alternated between abusive and ethical leadership.
“When you’re unsure whether your boss will be the good or bad version, it leads to emotional exhaustion, a drop in morale, and diminished work performance,” Dr. Xu warns.
This study also identified for the first time that “Jekyll-and-Hyde” leadership adversely affects employees, even if they are not directly subjected to the leader’s fluctuating behavior. When a supervisor’s own manager displayed unpredictable leadership, it generated uncertainty and undermined employees’ trust in their supervisor’s abilities, according to the study.
“Employees today are highly aware of how their supervisors interact with higher-ups,” Dr. Xu notes. “If that relationship becomes erratic or features frequent shifts between positive and negative behavior, it can lead to significant issues for the entire team.”
The implications of this study provide crucial insights for organizations — particularly regarding how leaders who try to compensate for their sporadic bad behavior can still harm their employees. “Companies often step in when bosses are perpetually abusive, but they are more lenient towards leaders whose mistreatment is sporadic,” Dr. Xu points out. “However, our research indicates that these intermittent negative actions can be even more harmful for organizations.”
To address the issues of Jekyll-and-Hyde leadership, Dr. Xu advises organizations to pay close attention to employees who express concerns and to hold leaders accountable for any inconsistent abusive behavior. Additionally, anger management training could be beneficial for leaders who exhibit erratic behavior. “This type of sporadic abusive leadership tends to be impulsive,” Dr. Xu explains. “This implies opportunities exist to lessen or eradicate it by assisting leaders in controlling their tempers and improving impulse regulation.”
In future investigations, Dr. Xu aims to study how employees react to and learn from leaders with unpredictable behavior, and how such sporadic abuses affect individual actions and team dynamics. “There’s a possibility that this leadership style could be contagious, where a leader’s instability encourages instability in others,” he remarks.
There is also some fascinating early evidence suggesting that employees might adopt a leader’s negative behaviors more than they would their positive ones. “If true, this would further underline the necessity for organizations to consider the implications of Jekyll-and-Hyde leadership seriously,” Dr. Xu cautions.
