13 Characteristics Of Bad Bosses

Bad behavior towards employee

If you're a manager, you've probably experienced the sensation of people not liking you -- but does that mean you are a bad boss? Not necessarily. Your goal, after all, is to implement the company's vision on the front-lines of the battle. If you're going to be, as one famous manager once quipped, "The Decider," people will resent you, no doubt. But as a boss you also have to do your job, and we all know that sometimes means doing things your subordinates don't like. So let us help you out. Here are 13 ways of knowing whether you're a bad boss: 

1. People are afraid of you. In some workplaces, managers are feared even by employees who don't know them - because their reputations precede them. If this is you, there's a high probability that you suck: no ifs, ands, or buts about it. 

2. You micromanage. Good managers manage, bad managers micromanage. If you're not able to persuade or convince people of a vision and instead regularly have to crack a whip to achieve results, either the team is rotten to the core or you have failed to properly motivate. (These ideas are not necessarily mutually exclusive). True discipline, as the saying goes, must come through liberty. If you fear that your team doesn't function without you looking over their shoulders, the problem may not be them: Maybe it's you. 

 3. Stress controls you; you don't control stress. There is some truth to the saying that there are no stressful situations, only stressful reactions to situations. Nevertheless, it's normal for all of us to react somehow to stress and for our emotions to manifest themselves. The difference between a good manager and a bad manager, however, is that a bad manager sends signals that the stressful circumstances are controlling him or her and not the inverse. This isn't to say that a good manager need exude the emotional output of a Scandinavian fisherman; instead, good managers maintain control and don't allow stress to dictate their behavior. Bad managers do the opposite. 

4. You create real and perceived distance between yourself and your team. Humans detest hierarchies and those at the bottom resent being reminded of their place within them. The best managers sit with their teams in a symbolic gesture of solidarity and their behavior demonstrates genuine solidarity. The worst managers sit in solitary offices, usually with doors closed, and behave accordingly. 

5. You're unavailable. A celebrated CEO once told me, "A good manager does his work at home. (S)he should never bring his/her work to the office." What he was getting at was that good managers are available to their reports at a moment's notice. If you're unavailable and inaccessible to your reports then you suck, regardless of how much you are appreciated by your superiors. 

 6. You don't know your reports. A good proxy question to ask yourself about a report is: "If he/she could have any job in the world, what would it be?" Knowing this answer means you understand the person's passions, dreams and ambitions. If you can't answer that, in England they'd call you a "hoover." 

7. You have no investment your reports' futures. Even if your report isn't working out and you have to remove him/her from the position, your primary concern should be for the person's well being. If someone is unhappy, it's usually bad for the team and bad for the individual; letting the individual go is likely in his or her best interest. If you find yourself simply wishing someone off your team because they're an obstacle to achieve your goals, you should probably question whether or not what the problem is a result of a skill-set mismatch, personality conflict or proper motivation. Only two of those three are solvable. 

 8. You manage down more than you manage up. Front-line managers often have the unfortunate task of mediating the tension between senior management's wishes and the demands of the front-line employees. Senior level managers operate on the assumption that they know better because they have access to more information. Front-line employees often feel they know better because they deal with the products and clients on a regular basis and receive feedback in real-time. Average managers simply take what's passed down to them and implement at all cost. Good managers collect data, build arguments and attempt to influence the decision makers. In addition, good managers find clever means by which to represent their team's interests as the best interests of the senior managers. If you find yourself as a facilitator of one-way communication, it may be that you're not stepping up to the challenge. 

9. You don't deliver tough messages. One way to avoid being a bad boss is to try to be loved, but being loved is not the same as being respected. Good managers deliver tough messages -- but they do so within the context of a relationship built on trust. Without trust, tough messages are in the worst case misinterpreted as open hostility and in the best case, simply ignored. When delivered with trust, tough messages have a higher likelihood of hitting the mark. 

10. You throw others under the bus. If you're a manager, the buck must stop with you. Whether you're explaining why your sales team didn't hit its targets, or you're justifying a decision by upper-management to change an incentive plan, the best managers accept responsibility for what happens on their watch. In the short term, it may bring relief to blame people or circumstances for your short-comings, but in the long run, avoiding responsibility will hurt your credibility on both ends of the totem poll. If the idea of accepting responsibility terrifies you, remember that how you react to a crisis is often more telling than the fact that the crisis occurred. Reacting to mishaps is the good manager's chance to shine. 

11. You don't read about management. Your MBA is not a black-belt, and your education is never finished. Good management is an art in which a teacher never stops being a student. No matter how long you've been in the game, your skill-set still needs to be constantly refined and your assumptions need to be questioned. 

12. You genuinely seek feedback. And you create a culture where giving that feedback to you is acceptable, even encouraged. A senior Google executive once said, "Feedback is a gift: sometimes it is a gift we're fortunate to give, and other times it's a gift we're fortunate to receive." You don't have to accept all feedback at face value, but if you haven't been made to feel uncomfortable through introspection lately, you may be a Hootie and the Blowfish Album away from being pure suckage. 

 13. You eschew vulnerability. Managers send signals about how willing they are to connect, and they are most open when they allow themselves to be vulnerable. Vulnerability, it should be noted, does not equate self-doubt or a lack of confidence. Instead, vulnerability is exposing the most basic elements of the human condition. If you're not allowing yourself to be vulnerable, then you're preventing the formation of connections with those who work closest to you. Bad managers abhor vulnerability for fear of appearing weak, while good managers use vulnerability as a tool to build trust and meaningful relationships. Managing a sales team is not the same as managing a boiler room; good management is necessarily context dependent. Nevertheless, one final truism is that bad managers (enforcers) have reports who work for them, while good managers (enablers) work for their reports. The question now becomes what type of manager are you? 

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