The Ten worst Things bad Bosses can Do

Introduction

Bad management is an outright disaster for any organization. Bad bosses avoid their responsibility, are rarely or never on the shop floor, use the typical management language, play games with the budgets and have the standard adage busy, busy, busy. Even in your organization, there are probably managers who practice these habits. And that costs your business a lot of money. 

The Boss

Almost every employee is familiar with the phenomenon ‘boss’ as known from popular cultural phenomena such as Dilbert or The Office. Although opinions about the latter series are divided (UK or US?), one of the reasons for the great success of both is that we all recognize them so well.

Learn from experience

For any boss, who takes himself a bit seriously,  it’s the perfect opportunity to learn how you should not deal with things. But apparently, bad bosses do not have the same sense of humor. Because they do not learn. In practice, bad mistakes are still being made every day, and they can continue for years in the series. You can read about David Brent in the Office here.

Sick and tired of bad bosses? Check out my last paragraph and read how to beat your boss!

Investigations have been performed just to learn what employees perceive as the ten very worst things bosses can do and the results, in order of importance, have been outlined below.

1. Your boss takes the credit for your work

The worst thing you can have as an employee is to deliver good performance but your boss takes off with the benefits. Especially employees of 45 years and older find this very bad. What makes this so frustrating is that when people have achieved something, they want to move on to the next, better project. If someone else then runs away with all the honor, they are inhibited in their ambitions. After all, if no one ever sees how good you are, you will never get ahead. This trait has the worst possible influence on any employee’s attitude and is therefore listed as number one.

2. Your boss does not trust you 

Trust is important in a working relationship. If you feel that your boss does not trust that you know what you are doing, that is disastrous for a working relationship. Managers who do not trust their staff tend to put everything in doubt.

As a result, employees become defensive and lose confidence in their own ability to make decisions. This leads to a vicious circle, if employees do not trust themselves, their boss will not do that at all and it will only get worse.

3. Your boss does not care that you work too hard 

Ok, you have finished your work and you are doing well. But you still sit at your desk until late in the evening and take work home with you on a regular basis. If you indicate that you are tired, you will be told that you are doing a very good job and your boss is very satisfied with you. Hard work is fine, working too hard, however, is a recipe for burn-out. If employees feel that their boss is not taking them seriously, it can only make the complaints worse.

4. Your boss does not support you when it comes to salary increases 

This is a bit in the same category as the boss who runs off with someone else’s work. Employees want to feel that they are making progress in their careers, the reward for their work is an important part of that.

If a boss does not use it for that, people do not feel acknowledged. Whatever the rewards for good work, a salary increase is the ultimate compensation and satisfaction an employee can get.

5. Your boss takes to the wrong people or promotes the wrong ones 

Your colleague who actually always does as little work as possible gets a prestigious project thrown into his lap. Your new colleague is a smooth talker but with little content, but still gets the promotion. If your boss has a favorable opinion of them, it certainly does not benefit your respect for him.

6. Your boss does not back you up 

People must be able to trust that their boss supports them and backs them up, especially when having a difference of opinion with a customer. A good boss is clear and gives confidence. A bad boss is unpredictable. This unpredictability creates uncertainty and leads to an atmosphere of inactivity.

7. The boss is not clear 

Knowing what is expected of you at work is a good thing. Equally important is knowing what the rest of your team needs to do and who is responsible for it. This will only benefit the overall performance of a team. On the other hand, when everyone’s competencies are unclear, it will lead to insecurities with the team members and everybody will hide behind somebody else. You do not want people pointing fingers at each other, saying he or she should have done a certain job.

8. Your boss is a micromanager

Every mail that goes to a customer has to go through your boss. Every memo you write will be checked and after a meeting, you will hear what you should have done differently. Your boss does not focus on the big lines, but on the small things right under his control. Bad for the performance, bad for the motivation of the employee.

9. Your boss mainly concentrates on your mistakes

A bad boss is someone who constantly points out what went wrong, that you do things right is just normal. When someone does this, he does this mainly to put himself in a better picture. If someone continuously shows problems, he or she wants his superiors to see that he has everything under control. Think about how demotivating this would work!

10. Your boss does not create clear expectations 

Only during your performance review does your boss say that you did not meet the expectations, but what were these expectations? If a boss does not say where he wants his staff to comply, he can not expect them to perform properly. And can you believe this anyway? A boss thinks you are not meeting expectations, but tells you only at the end of the year? Read more about the idiocy of performance reviews here.

Final thoughts

If you have a complaint about your boss not being listed here or want to share your experiences, just fill out the comment box.

There are lots of other traits that we do not like in our bosses, but listed above are the top ten. Virtually every one of them should be treated very carefully but dealt with they should. All of them, if existing long enough, can eventually threaten a person’s health. This is the last thing you want. Take action accordingly and leave this work situation in time for another probably better job.

Change to a better life

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As always, please feel free to ask any questions you have and I will reply to you within 24 hours.