Flaws of the Ineffective Manager

Employee perspective on ineffective management:
Here is an example list, developed by a group of managers, showing what ineffective or bad managers do:

- They don't listen;
- They don't know how to delegate or offload;
- They show no interest in you;
- They don't respect you;
- They give negative feedback to a third person;
- They don't congratulate you when they should;
- They criticize you in front of others;
- They use your ideas and take the credit;
- They always take control;
- They bully you;
- They don't give you the necessary tools to do your job;
- They don't inform you;
- They don't set clear objectives;
- They show favoritism (one rule for one person and another for others);
- They are inflexible and not open-minded.

Interestingly, when asked: among these actions (in the worst-case scenario and having sworn to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth), which ones could you not do? The good and bad manager are one and the same person, you or I. As Thomas Carlyle said: "The ideal is within you, and so are the obstacles."

So, it's not about becoming an effective manager by trying to follow any model dictated from the outside, but about discovering the effective manager within you. What you can do is continuously improve, find more and more opportunities to act as an effective manager and less and less often in the opposite direction.

Posted on September 22, 2008

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