7 Highly Effective Lessons I Learned from 3 Bad Managers

When you disrespect someone’s time, you’ll lose the respect they have for you

En route your career, you’ll come across many individuals whose actions directly affect you. Of all those people, perhaps, the person whose deeds will impact you the most will be your immediate manager.

Working with a good manager is a blessing. Yet, working with a bad one can’t be called a curse because every bad experience has in it a good lesson to learn. Observing bad managers has helped me learn many interesting lessons.

Lesson 1: When you disrespect someone’s time, you’ll lose the respect they have for you

Remember the old days when we used to go to the office five days a week? I had a co-worker back then who used to phone others whenever he wanted. He considered every doubt, idea, and issue as critical and never showed any remorse while invading people's time. Some of his peers, including me, quickly stopped picking his out-of-office hour calls. But, the ones who reported to him still continued to take his calls as they didn’t want an unpleasant boss. Months later, even his team picked up the habit of giving lame excuses for not picking the calls. On an unfortunate Friday evening, a server issue occurred that required an immediate fix. He himself wasn’t technical enough to fix it, so he had to call his team. No one attended the call for a good number of hours. With time, something that could have been handled as a small downtime turned into a major business problem. I still think about how similar this situation is to Aesop’s tale of the shepherd boy and the wolf.

Nowadays, with WFH, odd hour calls have become common. Experts point at it as one of the factors that fuelled the great resignation trend of 2021.

Out-of-office-hour calls aren’t the only way to disrespect time. Frequently canceling meetings at the last minute is equally bad.

It is an implicit way of telling that “I’m the boss, I’ll do whatever I like”. One of my old managers used to be that way. She used to cancel meetings just minutes before the planned start time at least a dozen times per week. She had three generic templates as cancel notes — ‘Oh, this was just a placeholder for X’, ‘I have a meeting with <senior executive’s name> today’ and ‘X can wait’. This behavior didn’t have any immediate consequences. Eventually, people just stopped taking her meetings seriously.

Blocking more than an hour, multiple times a week without any solid agenda nurtures demotivation.

Years ago, an organization I worked for decided to go through an agile transformation. I had worked in agile earlier and was excited that my new organization was picking it up. Each team was assigned an agile expert to help guide the employees who were not familiar with it. One agile expert ruined the opportunity by setting up frequent half-day workshops for the first quarter. In the next quarter, this was followed by long agile ceremonies claiming that everyone needs extra help to learn agile. Honestly, if your morning standup is 45 minutes every single day, you have already killed agile irrespective of what the excuse is.

Everyone’s time is important

Once in a while, it’s ok to call people at odd hours, cancel meetings at the last minute, or block multiple hours for brainstorming discussions. However, frequently taking away someone’s time for unproductive and unnecessary things degrades healthy relationships at work.

Lesson 2: Letting ego guide the delivery deadlines is a setup that welcomes failure

“I want this released a week before Easter,” he said two weeks after new year’s eve. A new feature, vague descriptions, but a clear deadline. Even with a lack of clarity at numerous places, it looked like a year’s worth of work. I suggested discussing with the team about the ‘when’ and making the ‘why’ more vivid. He insisted on the deadline, said he didn't care if ‘a few’ had to work longer hours, and walked away. Later, we came to know that he had promised the dates to senior executives for a temporary victory against his peer. While I stood there thinking about the most diplomatic way to handle this, my peer escalated the issue to seniors. Long story short, the feature was de-prioritized and things didn’t go well for that manager.

I came across a similar situation again, years later, in a different organization. This time I was more of a spectator as the issue was unfolding outside my team.

There were no escalations, instead, the other team was pushed to start the work despite the concerns raised about the delivery date. Halfway through the timeline, the work wasn’t even half-finished even though long hours were put in. This ignited blame games. Two guys left the job. The manager tried to re-write the narrative by claiming that the well-planned, deadline was not met because two people left. It backfired because, in their exit interviews with HR, the guys vividly pointed at the manager as their reason why they left.

Sometimes we all have to put in extra hours for the sake of a critical delivery and that’s ok.

But constantly “motivating” people under you to put in all their time for work without any valid reason or direction is unfair at many levels. This situation often arises cause the timeline wasn’t planned with tasks in mind. One way or the other, unrealistic deadlines would always backfire.

Lesson 3: When hiring, diversity should be considered, but never overlook the skills

“We already have two girls in the team” he replied in a mail when the recruiter had forwarded a new resume. “So ?”, I responded since I was in the mail chain. “We have met the gender diversity quota. Aren’t you and the other girl more than enough ?” he responded.

When a manager hires just for the sake of meeting the personal KPI of having a diverse team, the candidate's skills are often ignored

When that happens, even if the candidate is well skilled for the job, the manager might unconsciously believe that the new employee is not good enough. These subconscious thoughts can lead to unfair judgments while assigning important tasks, accepting ideas, doing appraisals, and considering promotions. Secondly, these acts might unintentionally make others feel that the new employee is inferior to them. All this put together will adversely affect the new employee in the long run.

Diversity strategy is supposed to be a guideline to make sure we consider a wider spectrum of people.

It’s okay to have only one girl on the team if you are unable to find enough candidates with the right skills. It’s great to have more girls than the suggested percentage if you discover ones with the right skillsets or ones who have the potential to learn them. Be it gender, race, or language, the more diverse the group is, there is more room for ideas arising from broader experiences and perspectives. A manager who doesn't truly understand this benefit will visualize diversity hires as just a compliance rule.

Lesson 4: Stealing the entire team’s credit for oneself is a quick route to demotivation

Pre-covid times. That day, nearly a hundred people were seated in the auditorium for the quarterly town hall meeting. They were chatting, laughing, checking phones, and saying ‘hi’s as they waited for the event to start. A senior manager was going to give a presentation about a recent success. Few of his team members were seated right in front of me. Ten minutes passed by, he was on stage and everyone’s attention was on him. He spoke about the project in a first-person tone - “I achieved this..”, “My thoughts were initially around”, “I was finally..”. When he finished everyone clapped as usual. The team didn’t look very happy. “Yeah he designed, developed, and tested the entire system alone” commented one of them in a low voice. The teammates smiled. “He will also maintain it alone from now on” added another. While I have no clue on what happened after that, he sure did kill the team’s spirit with a single talk. If he had simply used “we”, instead of “I”, things would have been different.

Motivating a team and maintaining that motivation are two superpowers of good managers.

They do this by setting a clear achievable vision, making the team understand the need, inspiring them to work for it, and appreciating their success.

On the other hand, when the manager starts putting “I” before “we”, it triggers demotivation.

Lesson 5: Not appreciating Sheldon-like traits is equivalent to turning one’s back to opportunities

Many extremely smart people have one or more of the Sheldon traits, at times easily noticeable, other times, not so much. Some people hate such traits for reasons still unknown to me. It’s ok to dislike someone, that’s purely a personal choice. However, shutting them down during meetings and ignoring their ideas can lead to missing big opportunities.

In my realm of work, one gets to see Sheldon every day. A few years ago, there was a guy at a consultancy whose favorite hobby seemed to be pointing out the mistakes made by his boss. At client meetings, we sometimes found them correcting each other in an unfriendly manner despite us, the clients, being in the call. We also heard that the boss often used to mock this guy when he wasn’t around. The smart guy eventually left the job, joined a rival firm, and helped launch a product that killed the sales of the old consultancy. His old colleagues say that the design idea that fuelled this change was initially tagged ‘weird’ and ‘unrealistic’ by his egoistic old manager.

A manager or leader is often not the smartest guy in the room. But, they should be smart enough to recognize and appreciate great ideas that might lead to breakthrough innovations.

To be able to recognize talents and ideas, they first need an inclusive mindset. Having an inclusive mindset stems from accepting everyone without stereotyping or judging.

Lesson 6: Once you delegate, move out of the way else you might end up micromanaging the team

Nobody likes being called a micromanager. Most bad managers seldom realize that they are micromanaging. Years ago, a friend of mine pointed out to her manager that she was being micromanaged. It initially didn’t go well. Her manager disagreed and argued. Days later, the manager acknowledged the problem and apologized to her. From then on, her manager started listening to the team more. They went on an offsite where the vision and mission were discussed again. The team was asked if they needed help and many issues came to the surface. One by one the manager tackled the issues that were raised. The team started respecting their manager more and the manager’s trust in the team improved. This does not happen very often. Usually, when someone points out micromanagement, it just gets worse. Instead of acknowledging the issue and trying to resolve it, bad managers turn themselves into a stronger radar system. In most cases, it starts with the task assignment

Two things are mandatory when it comes to task assignments — clear requirements and trust.

Obviously, in any job, the manager needs to know the progress of the work. Having a periodic catch-up is good for that as long that period isn’t in hours.

Lesson 7: Throwing in too many buzzwords without understanding them will eventually sink the ship

Another common trait that was observed in those bad managers was the lack of understanding of the technology or the process that happens in their team. Managers don’t have to be experts at the kind of work that their team does. But they shouldn't be completely ignorant either. It helps heaps if they know what’s happening on a high level. Just knowing the buzzwords won’t aid in keeping the ship afloat for long.

When I’m meetings where buzzwords are thrown around far too often, I feel frustrated and sorry at the same time

The frustration roots from realizing that the meeting is going nowhere. I feel sorry for them cause they end up saying odd things due to ignorance. There is an old saying that you can’t blame someone for their ignorance. Sometimes, I wonder if that holds true in today’s world of knowledge abundance. Is lack of resources or lack of interest the reason for ignorance? Is a little reading and watching a handful of videos too much to ask? I don’t know. There are numerous simplified tech courses out there intended just for leaders and managers who don’t want to go too deep. Googling is all it takes to open the gate to the multiverse of resources.

Final Thoughts

Worklife is like a rollercoaster ride with ups and downs. The people that we come across during this ride bring with them a combination of good and bad habits, talents, and perspectives. The ratio of the entities in each person varies. I believe in observing and learning from all of them. Some observations had lead to questioning myself if I own habits that seem bad on others. Some make me happy while others make me realize that there are horizons of improvement that I never knew existed.

I have worked under and with numerous managers in different organizations and three specific individuals were hard to forget due to the inefficiency and negativity they influenced in their teams. While it wasn’t great to work with or under them, I am happy about the lessons learned en route. In a nutshell, these lessons are about respecting time, setting realistic deadlines, hiring for diversity while considering skills, appreciating the team, recognizing great ideas, avoiding micromanagement, and being aware of the technology and processes that the team works on.

If you found this useful, do support by joining Medium membership program or by clicking the follow button or by offering coffee ☕️ Thanks in advance 🙂