5 Habits of Bad Managers
Bad managers can make a good team bad, a bad team worse, and in either case will make you want to pull your hair out and scream into the void.
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This post was originally published at https://www.peterfraedrich.com/5-habits-of-bad-managers/
We’ve all been there, had those jobs, and worked for those people: bad managers. Bad managers can make a good team bad, a bad team worse, and in either case will make you want to pull your hair out and scream into the void. Trying to work with a bad manager is like trying to explain astrophysics to a poodle, you’re better off avoiding them and finding workarounds than trying to rely on them for anything. But what if I told you there are two kinds of bad managers? One kind are the ones that think they know everything and will never change, and the other are the ones who are bad because they don’t know any better, didn’t have any good examples to follow, or maybe just don’t know what being a good manager looks like. So today I would like to walk through the five habits of bad managers and provide some guidance on how to break those habits. Maybe we can rescue a few bad managers along the way.
Habit #1: Reacting With Emotion
Often the first sign you’re in for dealing with a bad manager is seeing how they react to situations or treat those whom they have some authority over. Yelling, screaming, name-calling, making threats, and other antisocial behavior is a sure sign that someone is letting their emotions take charge and is not reacting or speaking from a place of thoughtful consideration. Emotion-first behavior is detrimental to the morale and culture of an organization because it relies on spreading those emotions to others — most often those of fear and insecurity. Abuse of any kind, even verbal abuse, is never appropriate in a workplace environment and should never be tolerated. Just because someone is “intense” or “means well but has a rough attitude” is no excuse for belittling and bullying anyone, workplace or not.
The things that leaders say and do are important, and managers are leaders, whether they want to think of themselves as such or not. The words that we say as leaders should be measured and thoughtful and come from a…
