Paternalism in Organizations

It amazes me when one hears how collaborative an organization might be touting how it garners information up, down, and sideways before making an important organizational decision and then turn around and make a major policy change without input from those it affects the most. It is amazing this happens and the result is typically damage control to fix what went wrong. That wastes too much time. The reason to get input is to avoid conflict from both inside and outside the organization when a policy is implemented. It burns up way too many calories to do otherwise. The best advantage to get input from stakeholders (from within and without) is to get buy in and suggestions. All too often, management that is out of touch with those lower down the food chain within the organization and even clients or users of the products and/or services uses paternalistic thinking. In essence, the message that comes across is, “We are management. You are not. We know what’s good for you so accept this policy and deal with it.” There is a better way. In spite of all the good intentions by leadership, instituting change without input from all stakeholders is a recipe for future triage needed to fix what formerly wasn’t broken. This one can be considered Leadership Rule #2 right behind Leadership Rule #1 “Don’t chastise an employee in front of others.” Most importantly, paternalistic leadership and management is indicative of dysfunction at the top and trickles down. Like any other dysfunction within an organization leadership models behaviors toward others. The results can be debilitating to the organization and morale. If paternalistic leadership continues the end results are middle managers learning bad behaviors and an exodus of talented staff.