If you’ve ever had a bad boss (and we’ve all had a bad boss at some time or another—ask me about my manager who used to corner me and try to argue scriptures with me), you’ve seen some awful management.
But, do their actions qualify as the worst way to manage people? Here are the nine worst ways to manage people. See how many you’ve experienced.
Pit People against Each Other
I’m not talking about a sales contest to encourage high performance.
I’m talking about playing favorites, gossiping, telling one person one thing and telling another a completely different thing.
It makes your employees hate each other and fight for your praise. It may make you feel good in the moment, but it’s destructive.
To keep reading, click here: The 9 Worst Ways to Manage People
I just escaped a manager guilty of most of those practices.
Congratulations on getting out!
Oh man the one I hate the most is the “let’s make a crazy rule and punish the whole building because one person who has never even been talked to about something did x.”
It’s bad enough when they punish the whole building for someone who is on a PIP over it, but most of the time they don’t even attempt to deal with the person.
And the scary part is I bet most people reading your column have had most of these bosses in the past.
I hate that with a passion.
So, Suzanne, I see you’ve been talking to a couple of my former managers.
Yes! I certainly have.
“Not everyone can be trusted to work from home, so no one can work from home”. Ugh. When it’s snowy and icy, I have to make an almost 50 mile round trip to the office, so my butt is in a seat, to log into a computer system 1400 miles away to do my work. I could do this safely from my house! “Every day at quitting time, you’re out of here like you were shot in the a**.” Yep. No cost of living increases, no merit increases, telling me that I make enough money, and other people need to be brought up to a higher pay level because…well…they are new but lower performers, but they have bills to pay, so yes, I put in my 8 hours and leave. Oh, and keep calling the entire staff into your office to discuss performance issues that one or two people have, who never think it’s them, and waste our time over and over like we’re in grade school.
Yes, I work for one of these managers. I am trying to not work for one of these managers. This is the year!
What I find incredible is that the boss of these bosses never seems to be aware of the destructive nature of their behavior. One would think that if a particular department experiences extraordinary turnover when other departments are stable, it would be a red flag that something is rotten in Denmark (or in accounting, as it was in my case). Yet it never occurred to senior management to look into the root cause.