A leaked video of an online meeting between members of the Reform-led Kent county council showed shocking exchanges. There was shouting, swearing and repeated interruptions. At one point, council leader Linden Kemkaran mutes another member of the council.

Councillors Paul Thomas, Oliver Bradshaw, Bill Barret and Maxine Fothergrill have been suspended pending an investigation over their conduct. Reform has, at the same time, defended the aggressive exchanges on the call as evidence of robust argument and a sign that Kent councillors are taking their responsibilities seriously.

Kent county council has 50 Reform members, giving it a huge majority. Kent has therefore been seen as a test case for whether Reform can run administrations. Kemkaran makes this explicit during the leaked call, reminding fellow council members that party leader Nigel Farage sees their council as “the flagship council” and a “shop window” for how Reform operates councils.

But as a psychologist who studies power, interaction and online meeting dynamics, I see the Reform meeting as a case study in something else – poor leadership, a lack of team trust and collaboration. It suggests an absence of the psychological safety needed to effectively run a council or any other organisation.

During the meeting in question, Kemkaran defended her style by saying: “Because I am not a dictator or an autocrat … I like to hear what everybody thinks. However, when it comes to making the really big decisions … sometimes I will make a decision that might not be liked by everybody in the group but I’m afraid you’re just going to have to fucking suck it up, ok?”

The use of the word “however” here is telling. It is a conversational tactic that claims to value the contributions of others but then immediately signals that ultimate control resides with the chair.

This is an especially corrosive type of chairing that is associated with trying to wield power over others. It gives the appearance of open input while preserving hierarchy and dominance. The result is disillusionment, disengagement and conflict rather than genuine contribution.

As the chair and councillors clashed, the council meeting descended into shouting, repeated interruptions and eventually a councillor’s voice literally being cut off with the mute button.

Several council members have been suspended over the leaked call.

When we use platforms like Zoom, various technological tools enable us to improve digital meetings. We can manage processes and protect people from disruption when they are speaking. But in the Kent meeting, the mute function was used as a power move – to silence a dissenting voice, reinforce control and prevent dialogue.

Both Kemkaran and Thomas noted on the call that “it would’ve been easier [to meet] in person.” But in organisations, toxic practices rarely start online, they just get expressed there.

We don’t yet know what the four suspended councillors are being investigated for but if a team culture is built on dominance, control, disrespect or authoritarianism, the online meeting becomes a amplifier of existing issues.

Gendered leadership styles and unexpected flips

The more problematic chairing styles that can be seen in the council meeting – directive, punitive, controlling – share some similarities with stereotypical masculine models of leadership: high dominance, low collaboration, controlling decision‐making.

Research has also shown how these ideas about gendered leadership play out in how we understand women’s leadership, which is often seen to be more aligned with participative or democratic styles.

This matters because here we have Kemkaran, a woman chair who adopted a highly directive and controlling style. She is visibly adopting (and perhaps over‑compensating into) a style traditionally associated with masculine dominance.

That flip is significant: the “strong leadership” script (loudness, command, the ability to shout down dissent) remains coded as masculine. When someone (especially a woman) inhabits that script badly, it encourages not only internal discord but more negative social judgement.

Our research on gender equitable interactions online suggests productive meetings are associated with assertiveness without aggression or abuse. Disagreement should be managed with respect and structure, rather than shouting or controlling interruptions.

Functional organisations generally also make it clear that there is zero tolerance for disrespect: behaviour such as swearing, interrupting, silencing via tech or chair prerogative should be flagged, addressed and prevented. This is the case regardless of the participants’ rank.

Leaders who switch between directive clarity (setting the agenda, managing time, making decisions) and genuine participatory engagement (inviting dissent, structuring inclusion) rather than defaulting to dominance or passivity generally seem to preside over better meetings.

These are not “soft skills”, they are essential leadership competencies. When they’re missing, you get what we saw in Kent – high levels of conflict rather than collaboration.

How people run their meetings matters to organisational trust, public reputation and internal performance. When chairs use aggression and dominance under the guise of “strong leadership”, they erode trust, invite conflict, diminish performance.

The signal to those they work with is that power is more important than values. Little wonder, then, that councillors became so visibly concerned with how the chaos they were descending into would reflect poorly on Reform’s reputation now that it controls so many councils in England.

Controlling dissent by weaponising technological meeting features like the mute function are not signs of strength. They are signals of failure.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Lisa Lazard, The Open University

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Lisa Lazard receives funding from CHANSE - Collaboration of Humanities and Social Sciences in Europe.