Covert manipulative leaders

Leaders are called to inspire, encourage and influence their people.

- FRANCIS J. KONG

Many in my Level Up Leadership seminars get it. But others don't.

They take this to mean that leaders should manipulate, deceive, exploit and dupe their people into doing what they want.

While we frown upon this nasty attitude and character flaw, we may have to realize that covert manipulators do not always recognize what they are doing.

Seth Gillihan is a psychologist who specializes in cognitive behavioral therapy. In an intriguing post on Psychology Today, he defines covert manipulation as "subtle ways of trying to influence what other people think, feel and do."

He writes that many of us engage in covert manipulation without realizing it. It can become "habitual and automatic, almost outside conscious awareness." We can also be good at convincing ourselves that our manipulative behavior serves some worthy purpose.

For example, when we tell a potential customer that their new hairstyle makes them look 10 years younger, we're just trying to make someone feel good, not hoping to win a juicy business deal.

Of course, a certain amount of manipulation may be just part of doing business.

For example, when Paul Allen and Bill Gates learned that the first affordable personal computer, the Altair 8800, was about to come out, they told the company they had gotten the then-popular Basic programming language to run on the machine — even though they hadn't written a line of code and didn't even have access to an Altair 8800.