12 Habits Of Highly Offensive Managers

by Alan Matthews

Here are 12 things which, based on my own experience and countless conversations with people over the years, seem to be common characteristics of poor managers. I’m sure you’ll recognise them – and you will probably have your own to add to the list!

1. They mismanage their time, then drop work on you at the last minute, saying, ” It’s urgent ” and insisting you stay late to finish it because, ” It has to go out today “.

2. Or – they tell you something is urgent and you have to drop everything to do it, then you find it gathering dust on their desk a week later.

3. They go out without telling anyone where they’re going or when they’ll be back. They arrange a time and day to see you to sign some work off, then you find they’ve taken the day off.

4. On the other hand, if you leave work for a moment, they send you a stream of texts/messages/emails demanding to know where you are and asking stupid questions which you can’t answer because the information is at work – even though you told them weeks ago you would be out and you left clear instructions about everything you were working on before you left.

5. They ask people for ideas ( ” we’re a team ” ), then pass them off as their own ( if they work out )

6. Or – they blame everyone else for anything which goes wrong, even if it was their idea in the first place and everyone told them it wouldn’t work.

7. If they’re put under the slightest pressure from above, they pass it straight onto everyone else – because, ” we’re a team “.

8. They only delegate work they don’t want to do themselves and then they drop it on you without briefing you properly or giving you the support or resources you need to do the work.

9. Or – they delegate work to you, then send you constant emails checking that you’re doing it ( and that you’re doing it exactly the way they would have done it ).

10. They only ever give you feedback if you’ve done something wrong and then they shout at you in front of the whole team.

11. They organise meetings when there’s nothing to discuss, then waste your time passing on useless information which you don’t need or you could have got by reading an email. Then they tell you how important it is to ” communicate “.

12. Similarly, they send emails to vast lists of people, regardless of whether the information is relevant to them, because their time is far too valuable to waste it sorting out who actually needs to read the stuff they send out ( and, anyway, they don’t really understand how to use the email system ).

Oh, and I’ve just thought of another one – they like to spout phrases they’ve heard like,” there is no ‘I’ in team ” or, ” you need to work smarter, not harder ” as if they actually mean something.