bahrainthismonth.com | SEPTEMBER 2025 OPINION 65 Who Holds the Mirror? If managers won’t reflect honestly, perhaps the workplace culture can: 1. Amplify the Employee Voice – Trade unions, business associations/societies, social media platforms and communication groups exist precisely to give workers leverage and visibility. Encouraging safe channels for feedback helps break the silence and the cycle. 2. Conduct Champion Transparent Leadership Training – Inspired leadership isn’t inherited. Transformational, emotionally intelligent styles must replace the old dysfunctional autocratic norms (my way or the highway). Business culture is shifting – and managers must shift with it. 3. Normalise Honest Reflection – Encourage anonymous 360-degree reviews or leadership journaling and personal reflective writing. These tools force self-awareness rather than smug self-delusion. 4. Reward Humility – Leaders who ask: “How can I improve?” should earn praise – not suspicion. Commercial and business policies aligned with public transparency push in this direction – however, soft skills matter just as much as quotas. A Checklist for Managers: Do You Recognise Yourself? – Ask yourself as a manager: • Do colleagues complain – privately or openly – that you’re inflexible or micromanaging? • Are you making unscheduled changes or late – night calls that demoralise your team? • Do you focus blame outward when things go wrong rather than ask: “How did I contribute?” or “What could I have done better and more to prevent this?” • Are promotions and support given only to a clique – like loyalists – not based on merit? • Do you claim competence but never ask: “Am I doing this right?” • Is your lack of planning often the cause of your staff’s emergencies? • Do you include the right people in planned actions? (The true position of a person in a company or organisation is reflected not by what they are involved in, but by what they are excluded from). Bad managers aren’t always malicious. Often, they’re victims of their own blind confidence. In a traditionally hierarchical workplace culture, changed by multiculturalism, international management style and generational shifts all mean ignorance can be more damaging – because honest feedback is rare. The Dunning-Kruger effect is less a label than a warning: “You might be wrong – and not even know it.” Our workplaces, our teams and our economy deserve leaders who can – or will – look at themselves honestly. If you’re a manager reading this, consider it a mirror. And if you work for one, consider submitting that feedback. Only when we confront uncomfortable inconvenient truths about ourselves as managers can we change for the better. And isn’t that what good leadership is really about? Lead, follow or get out of the way… More on the Dunning-Kruger Effect (Scan):
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