Bad Managers and How to Manage Them

If you’ve made it this far in your career without encountering a bad manager, consider yourself lucky. Many ordinary people are promoted to management without any training or skills to support their position, and dealing with them can be soul destroying or even career ending.

Managers are people who manage people. They are usually in charge of departments or teams, are responsible for day to day running of an operation, processes and procedures, premises, and people. Sometimes they’re also responsible for low morale, and chronically high turnover.

How to spot a bad manager? They are often out of their depth. They hide in their offices, avoid what they deem confrontation and ignore calls for accountability or change. They run the corporate gamut from bored, ineffectual and apathetic to toxic, narcissistic and power hungry.

Bad management manifests itself in many ways like inflexibility and boundless bureaucracy. Managers may refuse reasonable requests without cause, insist on needless processes and endless meetings or cause stress with unattainable deadlines.   

How to manage a bad manager:

Paper Trail : Carry out all correspondence with your bad manager through email. File any notable exchanges carefully. You may need to access these emails one day, for proof or for H.R. If a manager is reluctant to put a request in writing, chances are it is not an equitable one.

Speak Up : Poor communicators have a habit of laying blame for their misgivings elsewhere. Be as straight forward as possible to counteract this. If you have any doubt as to your bad managers wishes, especially relating to job expectations, ask for clarification in email.

Pre-empt : When meeting with your bad manager, prepare by running through a few likely scenarios. Pre-empting reactions can avoid surprise and divert pointless conflict or confusion. Come to the table with reasoned solutions and rationale to successfully fend off incompetence.

Pack up : If your manager is toxic, consider your options. You could always change departments, and managers, without leaving the company or losing any steam in your career. Good managers are mature, affable, responsive, and understanding, just ask their staff!

Unfortunate enough to toil under a bad manager? You have two choices: learn to manage them or get another job. The former can be exhausting, frustrating and bad for your mental and physical health but the latter might not suit you right now either. Timing is everything.

Your time is valuable and your labour is too. Every employee is entitled to be respected in the work place regardless of their position.

If managing a bad manager, has you heading for burnout, it might be time to manage yourself out the door and into alternative employment!