Cronos Syndrome in the company: what is it?

Cronos syndrome refers to when a manager or boss has an authoritarian mentality and clings to power and control over the other people in their charge. There can be many reasons for this happening, but let’s see how this syndrome affects organizations.

How does Cronos syndrome affect a company?

Working environment

Cronos syndrome affects, first and foremost, the work environment. When a person who is in charge of others behaves in an authoritarian way, without giving up any kind of responsibility and tries to control all the movements of others, it creates a climate of insecurity and of mistrust. In this way, the people around you will feel that you are someone who can punish them if they make a mistake and even fire them. This constant stress does not favor a good work environment or allow people to give the best of themselves.

This situation can be due to many factors, such as the mistrust of that manager towards their team or the need for control that some people have to prevent errors from occurring.

Less time for more important tasks

In these cases, it would be best to work on that distrust and that need for control, not only by the team of people in our charge, but also by ourselves. A good leader should not mistrust their team, but lean on it. In this way, he could relieve himself of the “obligation” to constantly control others and could devote himself to other tasks or functions that would be more useful and rewarding from a professional point of view.

For example, an accounting manager who is waiting for each of their accountants to post invoices correctly does not have time to dedicate to tasks such as annual closings or cost analysis, which are much more rewarding tasks than being on top of someone else’s work.

Negative impact on company culture

If this situation is repeated with several people or is prolonged over time, it affects the company culture. It will be understood that the work methodology includes stress, mistrust, constant control and supervision by managers. This can be spread among the people who have teams in charge, because if we see that a superior does it in a certain way, they tend to copy that methodology.

At the end of this chain, we will have a company with employees who are insecure, restless, who work under stress and who do not give their best version because they feel intimidated or fear being punished if they make a mistake.

How to get out of Chronos syndrome

The best way to prevent this situation in our company is to train our leaders, give them tools to build trust with their teams. The best to do this is communication: a clear, direct and transparent method of communication generates trust both from the leaders towards their teams and vice versa. Collaboration is also another method that helps build trust. Working side by side with other people allows us to get to know them both professionally and personally, and knowing how the other person does things helps us to trust their judgment and method.