Identify the Bad Manager Who is Hampering Your Organization’s Success

If, in spite of having all the right strategies and policies in place, your company is suffering losses and, even worse, the skilled employees are leaving your organization, you need to shift your focus towards the managers of your organization. The success of an organization is highly dependent on its managers but, unfortunately, not all managers are manager material. Employee management is an art and not every professional promoted to the position of manager can master this art. Ineffective managers can severely damage your organization’s productivity and performance, and create unnecessary stress in ways that never directly point towards the manager. A recent survey suggested that 70% of employees leave the organization voluntarily due to a bad manager.

Once you identify the bad managers of your organization, your priority task should be to get rid of him and hire an efficient one. However,  simple it may sound but this ‘identification’ is often the hardest part of the entire process. The competition is cut throat out there and you really can’t afford to waste your time and efforts with lousy managers. Although every manager is different in his own way, there are a few common traits that you can look for to identify an ineffective manager.

1. Micromanagement

Micromanagement is one of the worst management techniques which cripples the team in more than one way. Holding a microscope over every task generates more problems than solutions. Ineffective managers are often involved in micromanagement, creating a barrier to creativity and innovation and weakening the trust factor in the organization. A bad manager is always nitpicking about every aspect of the assigned tasks.

2. Emotional Instability

A good manager needs to be emotionally very stable. He should be able to handle different situations, even the difficult and stressful ones, with composure. You can spot a bad manager by observing him using power and authority to create stress or humiliate employees. He is expected to make difficult situations even more difficult with his lack of emotional intelligence and stability. He is often unpredictable, unapproachable and often seen worsening the situations of conflicts and disagreements.

3. Favoritism

Bad managers often indulge in picking their favorites and being partial towards them. Moreover, the favoritism is not even based on performance or skillsets. They establish relationships with them which goes beyond professionalism and provide them with unprofessional perks. Their favorites get the best projects, most appreciations and best ratings and reviews, simply because the managers likes them better.  

4. Closed Minded

Inefficient managers are not open to new ideas or opinions and are always defensive about their own. They can seldom tolerate disagreements, have poor listening skills and do not value the opinions and views of others. They have a sense of superiority and never encourage employees to bring in ideas that may contradict with their own ideas.

5. Takes All the Credit

Appreciating andcrediting employeesfor their good work is immensely important to keep them motivated. However, a bad manager takes all the credit for the accomplishments of his team. He claims all the success and damages the morale of the team.

6. Blames Others

A manager is supposed to take responsibility of the things that go wrong and try to fix things. A bad manager plays the blame game. He constantly blames others for all that faults in the projects and in the process loses the respect of his team members. Employees feel insecure and start looking for the first chance to leave the organization.

7. Sets Unrealistic Goals

Managers need to set achievable goals for team and help them perform with highest efficiency. However, bad managers set unrealistic goals leaving the employees confused and stressed. Lack of properly defined goals and guidance also leads to disengaged employees. On contrary, some managers are overambitious and set impractical goals for employees and push them too hard to achieve them, which leaves them de-motivated and exhausted.  

8. Never Focuses on Career Development of Employees

Good employees always look for good career development opportunities. An ineffective manager never cares about identifying career aspirations of employees and helping them fulfill those. Also, he is poor at coaching employees to improve their skillset and hence doesn’t contribute to upskilling or reskilling of employees which is important for the progress of the organization.

Once you identify a bad manager you should be quick to act. You can either discuss the issues with your manager or give him a chance to change himself for good. Or if you think that wouldn’t work, you should take a stricter action to get rid of him. Having a bad manager can make all the efforts of your organization futile and the sooner you identify him the sooner you can rectify the things that are impeding your success.