Good Cop/Bad Cop Leaders, Vibes and Strategic Decision-Making, and Styles of Procastination

Cognicent | 30, April, 2025 | Newsletter

Welcome to the April edition of our Insight Articles!

This edition examines insights into leadership and productivity. From why switching between ‘good cop’ and ‘bad cop’ (or adopting a Jekyll-and-Hyde approach) as a leader is damaging to teams, to how the vibe of a meeting room can affect stategic decision-making, to the styles of procrastination and how you can reclaim productivity, these studies each offer valuable takeaways for both personal and professional growth.

While we all know that an abusive boss is detrimental to morale and performance (at least we hope we all do), recent research has found that what can be worse is an abusive boss who switches between supportive and poor behaviour. Stevens Institute of Technology conducted a study exploring abusive leadership. Researchers compared it to a Jekyll-and-Hyde approach that bounced unpredictably between the two behaviour styles. What they found was:

1. Inconsistent leadership is more harmful than consistent abuse. Employees subjected to leadership that alternates between supportive and harmful behaviours experience greater emotional exhaustion and decreased job performance compared to those under consistently abusive leaders.

2. Supportive acts don’t offset prior abuse. Contrary to expectations, supportive behaviour following abusive actions doesn’t mitigate the negative effects. Instead, it can exacerbate emotional distress, as employees struggle with the unpredictability of their leader’s behaviour. This means that leaders who look to make up for their previous poor behaviour with bouts of being nice are doing more harm than good.

3. The uncertainty stemming from not knowing which version of the leader will appear (i.e., supportive, or abusive) leads to significant emotional fatigue and demoralisation among employees.

4. If a leader’s leader demonstrates unpredictable behaviour, this has a flow-on effect on the entire team – you don’t need to be directly involved with the Jekyll-and-Hyde leader for it to have negative impacts.

Consider:

Do you swing between supportive and poor behaviour?

Do you use overly nice behaviour to try and make up for not handling a situation well?

Article Reference:

Haoying (Howie) Xu, Sean T. Hannah, Zhen Wang, Sherry E. Moss, John J. Sumanth, Meng Song. Jekyll and Hyde leadership: Examining the direct and vicarious experiences of abusive and ethical leadership through a justice variability lens. Journal of Applied Psychology, 2024; DOI: 10.1037/apl0001251

Most of us know what we are talking about when we discuss the vibe of a space (or atmosphere). It is the energy it holds that we typically judge as feeling a particular way. Maybe it is the fun vibe of a bar, the romantic vibe of a restaurant, or the sombre vibe of a hospital waiting room. According to recent research by the City University in London, whatever the vibe is, it matters – especially when it comes to meetings. This is because the vibe of a room affects how people make sense of issues together, particularly when workshopping strategy.

The key findings of the study are as follows:

1.The vibe matters. The feeling in a room—things like people’s body language, tone of voice, and interactions—shapes not just how discussions happen but also what ideas are formed and acted on.

2. A pensive, tentative vibe led to exploring problems with cautious adjustments.

3. A buoyant, enthusiastic vibe led to the generation of new ideas and innovation.

4. A tense and dismissive vibe in meetings saw more arguments and greater difficulty in agreeing on ways forward.

5. If enough “dissonant moments” happen — like a worried glance, an awkward silence, or a tense comment — they can tip the room into a different vibe, changing how the group thinks and behaves. This shift can happen quickly.

Why is this important?

This study highlights that if you’re leading or participating in strategy meetings (or any important discussions), you need to be aware of not just what is said, but also how it feels to be in the room. Being attuned to the atmosphere can make you better at steering conversations and decisions.

Consider the atmosphere in your meeting rooms during strategic decision-making:

Is the vibe tense or is it curious?

Are the words being used and the body language being demonstrated enabling your team to make productive, strategic decisions?

Article Reference:

Eric Knight, Jaco Lok, Paula Jarzabkowski, Matthias Wenzel. Sensing the Room: The Role of Atmosphere in Collective Sensemaking. Academy of Management Journal, 2024; DOI: 10.5465/amj.2021.1389

We are all likely guilty of succumbing to the deliberate deferral of a task, a process known as procrastination. Whether it is cleaning the house or meeting a work deadline, it happens and it can be detrimental to our productivity along with our mental health. But why do we opt for that extra episode of the series we are binge-watching instead of completing the tasks that we said we would do? Well, neuroscience has helped us to understand why we do it with some practical adjustments we can make to manage our style of procrastination. Researchers have found we procrastinate in three ways:

Discounting the Future

What it is: People tend to value immediate rewards more than future ones, even if the future reward is better.

Example: You know prepping your meals for the week will save stress later, but scrolling Instagram right now feels nicer.

Why it leads to procrastination: The benefit of acting now doesn’t feel as urgent as the comfort of delaying.

Changing Priorities

What it is: Your priorities flip over time – something that felt urgent yesterday may feel less urgent today.

Example: You’ve been meaning to book a skin check to get that mole looked at for ages. You know that sorting it now would be wise. But, every time you think about it, you decide to do it “tomorrow” because today’s just a bit too busy.

Why it leads to procrastination: You keep pushing tasks back because your internal “urgency meter” keeps shifting.

Waiting for Inspiration

What it is: You delay a task while hoping something more exciting or important will come up.

Example: You avoid writing that boring proposal in case a more ‘inspiring’ project comes your way.

Why it leads to procrastination: You’re holding out for a task that feels more meaningful or rewarding.

So how can we manage procastination more effectively? It starts with self-awareness:

1. If you are a sucker for instant gratification, set short-term rewards or break tasks into small steps so rewards come sooner.

2. If you keep kicking a task down the road, set time-bound objectives. Use tools like calendar bookings or accountability partners to lock in your intentions before your priorities shift. Assigning a task to a set time can also help (e.g., at 10 am I will work on the proposal for 45 minutes).

3. If you struggle with boring or uninspiring tasks, find or invent a personal purpose behind the task by tying it to a bigger goal. Alternatively, you could try gamifying it by setting mini-challenges or rewards to inject fun.

Consider:

Which of the above procrastination styles might you engage in the most? Could you try testing out one of the above strategies the next time procrastination kicks in?

Article Reference:

Chebolu, Sahiti; Dayan, Peter. Optimal and sub-optimal temporal decisions can explain procrastination in a real-world task. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 2024, Volume 46 DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/69zhd

We hope that you have a safe, well and productive rest of your week.

– The Cognicent Team