Dear Colleagues,
Three years ago, Phil Decker and I began researching self-handicapping in business. Self-handicapping is a "before the event" impression management strategy that serves to deflect accountability and keeps leaders from learning and growing. In a fast-paced world this can lead to serious obstacles to leadership. Practically, a self-handicap can be an excuse, reduced effort, or an self-created obstacle – all serving to externalize the fault/repercussions for a potential failure. Employees witness this daily from their leaders – not confronting employees, poor hiring strategies, and being a control freak – all avoidance of personal accountability. These all lead to disengaged employees, low morale, and ultimately, negative business and leadership outcomes. Self-handicapping has very little to do with solving problems, helping others, or furthering the mission of the team or organization. Self-handicapping-whether excuses or self-defeating behavior-is not solution building; it is to protect the individual by managing impressions. But, the obstacles emanating from a stifled, disengaged workforce have far more impact and importance than a leader saving face or avoiding accountability through self-handicapping.
To help leaders and college students overcome their self-handicapping, we wrote a book, "Self-Handicapping Leadership: The Nine Behaviors Holding Back Employees, Managers, and Companies, and How to Overcome Them". A few "early-adopters" have already incorporated it into their leadership and management university courses -- with great success. We believe that this success is due to the practical nature of the content - students will learn to recognize and admit their own self-handicapping behaviors and practice better ways of operating. Because of the great feedback we received, we want to pass this information on to you and your students. We all so have a complete array of supplemental materials to use in class and we invite researchers to explore self-handicapping by providing a complete bibliography and other materials for this purpose.
For more about self-handicapping, visit our LinkedIn Group Page, Facebook Page, or Amazon. We also look forward to seeing you at our PDW for The 76th Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management on August 6 from 12:30-2:30.
Jordan Mitchell, Ph.D
Assistant Professor
Healthcare Administration
Texas Medical Center
University of Houston Clear Lake
2151 W Holcombe Blvd.
Houston, Texas 77024-0301
281-212-1714 office
mitchellj@uhcl.edu