Seek treatment early instead of harassing innocent employees

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The retired Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams recently confirmed telling his daughter words to the effect that he sometimes shouted at her in anger and frustration because he “could not shout at the Archbishop of Nigeria”. For a man who headed the entire Anglican community, that was a major public confession that ought to lead more leaders to carefully examine their leadership style.

What the man of God was essentially saying was that he sometimes displaced his anger from the real object of his frustration, in his case the innocent daughter. The poor girl must have felt frustrated at being shouted at by an otherwise loving father, unable to tell the Nigerian cleric what he thought of him and his views.

It is a common observation that a managing director of a company that is doing badly will often displace his anger towards his staff much as you and the Archbishop now seem to be doing.

A few years ago, an MD fired his chief of finance for producing “rotten financial reports” that showed declining profits. We came across the MD through his wife who had run away from home, developed symptoms of peptic ulcer disease, and whose blood pressure was out of control. When seen in hospital she was depressed.

In addition to a wife who was now sick and staying with friends, the man had several other problems, including a court case in the Industrial Court filed by the chief of finance, but he also had to deal with a company that was doing badly. The employees were behaving very much like yours, in showing lack of motivation, and showing resistance to his ideas.

The board had called for a special meeting to discuss the declining performance, and at the back of his mind, the MD knew the meeting would determine his fate. Like the Archbishop, he was unable to tell the board what he thought of the chairman and his style of leadership and his anger turned to his wife, employees and children.

In his view, none of these people could do anything right. The wife had suddenly become fat, ugly, careless, lazy and rude. Not a single day passed without a complaint about the state of his shirts, suits, shoes or even the way his car was washed.

The food had become unacceptable, always served cold, was not nutritious and the cook who served them dinner had smelly shoes and did not shave his beard properly. He told his wife that she was the cause of his unhappiness which led him to the bottle.

The children were worse. They did not respect him, were doing badly in school and were always going out on weekends in bad company. The employees were poorly motivated, were restless and argued with him.

None showed evidence of commitment to the company and he was sure some were leaking company secrets to the competition. The board chairman, the wife, the children or even the leader of the workers union might have passed on some information about him to some of his friends at the club. People had stopped calling him, avoided him at the club and none seemed to have anything to say to him. Paranoia was setting in the stress he was under.

He ate lunch alone, sat at the counter at the club drinking on his own and spent most time alone. Things came to a head when his girlfriend complained of his mean ways, made worse by declining sexual performance.

Ruined contacts

Like you, he was a hot tempered perfectionist whose reign of terror had ruined almost all his social and business contacts. When we saw his wife in hospital, and she tearfully explained how her husband had deteriorated over the preceding few years, it became clear that two things were going on.

Firstly, we were dealing with a man with a clinically recognisable depressive illness, and secondly that he had features of an obsessional (perfectionist) personality.

The former was easy to treat but the latter, being a personality trait, did not require treatment. Happily, after treatment they are back together and rather happy.