Sue Rutherford

In my personal experience, there are a range of tried and tested leadership and managerial tactics you can follow to just about guarantee that your team never reaches its full potential and consistently produces mediocre work.

Keep them in the dark
It is of the utmost importance that you never share your vision with your team. If you give them a glimpse of the direction you want your company to take or communicate any goals to your team, they will have something to unify their efforts and focus on. In fact, communication of any kind is strongly discouraged for the leader who only wants the bare minimum from people who work for him/her. Its best to keep them all guessing - don’t let them know what their purpose is or what their individual goals are. If they do happen to discover what the goals are, just move them.

Suppress your passion
Your average team needs you to remain bored. If you convey any level of enthusiasm to them you risk creating a buzz in the work environment. The last thing you want is excitement and zeal that may accidentally be transferred to other team members (or even worse, your customers.)

Make money a big issue
This is an important tactic for the leader who needs his team to under-perform on a consistent basis. Money should always be an issue and should be the only form of performance incentive used. If you pay your team below their worth and insist that they always have to beg for increases, you are right on track. In addition to this, it’s wise to never give ad hoc bonuses under any circumstances.

Police them
It’s imperative that you never display any kind of trust in your team members. They must be made to feel insignificant and dubious about their own abilities. The general idea here is to treat them like children who don’t know any better which is best achieved by not giving them any responsibility and telling them exactly how to do everything. Generating problems around trust issues may work in your favour by also leading to discord within the team and could potentially create political unrest, gossip and negative talk that always manages to break down even the strongest of teams.

Abhor failure
Your team must know that they can never, ever fail. If you implement a policy for zero tolerance of failure, you will succeed in squashing their curiosity, stunting their creativity and thus prevent them from learning anything from experience. If they do perhaps manage to fail at something, it is vital that you dwell on this and permit them to feel utterly ashamed of their efforts.

Hide their value from them
A useful strategy to ensure that your team remains in the average bracket is to never allow them to know that you think they are valuable at all. Don’t make them feel like they are an important part of your business plan or that you are in any way impressed with their work. You must undermine their self-confidence at every possible opportunity (public reprimands are an effective way to do this - don’t offer private counsel or advice) and make sure they are never encouraged by giving them credit, praise, surprise rewards, or words of congratulations or thanks.

Waste their time
An effective way to annoy your team and create the kind of tension that encourages poor performance is to waste their time. This technique will successfully convey your general lack of respect for them. The best way to do this is to organize numerous lengthy and pointless meetings with no specific agenda, for which you should always arrive late. Another idea is to arrange for worthless “team building” outings, organized by people who are completely unfamiliar with the personalities of your team. This is particularly effective if you have a high ratio of introverts on your team as it has the added bonus of creating undue stress for them and igniting sparks of resentment towards you. It goes without saying that these outings must be compulsory. You should also insist on them following tedious procedures and policies that add no value to your operation.

Discourage fun
Any form of fun within the working environment must be curtailed and you yourself should never be seen to be having any kind of fun in the work place. You should aim to keep the work setting dull and clinical so that it generates no interest or inspiration. Do discourage any and all attempts to celebrate birthdays or significant milestones and don’t laugh with them about anything. It’s best for you to never socialize with your team (and definitely no partaking of meals with them) they must know that work is a serious place and they should act accordingly at all times. There is absolutely no time for enjoyment in the mediocre team.

Inhibit learning
Training and education must be strongly opposed in the team that underperforms, along with all forms of curiosity. Make sure there are no books around that could teach them anything and prohibit them from exploring websites that could assist with developing their skills. Naturally, no opportunities to attend courses, conferences or workshops should be offered. This will also make sure that they don’t network with anyone outside the workplace and exchange ideas and knowledge. A useful complement to this tactic is to force them to use outdated technologies and resources in their day to day functions. If they never receive new equipment or explore new ideas, they won’t possibly get excited in the workplace or learn anything new.

Set the right example
Ultimately, your team is going to learn about how to operate from you. It follows then that in order to destabilize your team and get the worst out of them you should aim to exhibit most, if not all, of the following qualities:

• Act with no integrity
• Produce poor quality work
• Overpromise and under deliver
• Do the bare minimum
• Never challenge yourself
• Miss deadlines
• Display no interest in them as people
• Hide all signs of vulnerability
• Be unenthusiastic about your business
• Bad mouth your customers
• Ignore your own personal growth
• Take no heed of your health
• Talk all the time
• Clock watch
• Disregard your own successes
• Blame others for your mistakes
• Gossip about your team members
• Flaunt your arrogance

Leading a losing team is not rocket science but I do hope you’ve managed to glean some pointers as to how to de-motivate and fracture the group, no matter how talented the individuals that comprise your team are.

Author Bio:
Sue Rutherford is the founder, director and inspiration behind The Forge Web Creations.