Why are there so many bad managers?

Bad managers, it seems, are ubiquitous. 34% of people quit their jobs due to “uninspiring and uncaring leaders” in the past year. 40% of people claimed to have quit a role at some point due to a bad manager. Anecdotally, most people I know have encountered at least one bad manager in their professional lives. Why is this the case? Why, particularly in tech, an industry known for its thorough multi-step interview processes, detailed levelling frameworks and focus on continuous learning and development, are there so many people affected by the plague of bad management? What makes a manager “bad” in the first place? 

This article isn’t a rant. Nor is it an exposé of all the bad managers I’ve witnessed or been told about (need to keep some details for my memoirs after all!) Rather, I’ve set out to try to better understand the components that make up a bad people manager, in the hope that it helps those struggling with their managers take action to improve their work lives.

Before diving into this subject, I’d like to acknowledge what I consider to be three impacting fundamental truths. 

Fundamental Truths

1. It’s unnatural to have a manager

Paul Graham discusses this concept in his essay “You Weren’t Meant to have a Boss”. He argues that humans didn’t evolve to collaborate in such large groups, and that the operating structures of big companies conspire for people to work in a way that over time leads to “a vague sense of malaise”. It’s not just how you work that is affected, but also how you live. Corporate life, executed by managers, often requires us to give up a degree of autonomy in our personal lives in exchange for money. For example, you a grown adult, may need to ask for permission to take time off. The unnatural structures of organisations seeps into the core of our everyday life. 

2.People often don’t understand what they want or need from a manager

When asked what level of support they’d like to receive from a manager, people range from “stay out of my way”, to “give me autonomy but support me when needed” to “tell me what to do”. The desired support level is typically situational and yet this nuance is rarely communicated. Some people have a good grasp of their capabilities but many suffer from insecurities which prevent them from reaching their potential at work. Others have unfounded confidence in their abilities which doesn’t correlate with performance. What people say they want from a manager is not always what they actually want or need.

3.Culture and environment trump all

A good manager is limited by how effective they can be if operating in an organisation that’s dysfunctional or if they themselves have a bad manager. A good manager is limited in how much they can help you thrive if you are not a cultural-fit for that particular company or are not interested in the role. A good manager is limited by how much they can help you grow your career if the company itself isn’t growing. A manager, whether they are a positive force or a bad-actor, will either be empowered or curtailed by the culture and environment they operate in. 

Components

There isn’t an agreed upon definition of a bad manager. I’m sure many of us will have varying interpretations of what constitutes “bad” based on the factors we value most. There is also a difference between a bad manager and a bad-fit manager, something I discuss in section 6 below. My definition of a bad manager is someone who has a consistent negative impact on the work delivered, the environment they operate in and the teams and individuals under their remit, due to their capabilities and/or behaviours. Worth noting that a bad manager does not (always) equal a bad person. 

I’ve identified 7 components which impact a manager’s overall effectiveness and also how effective a manager they will be for a particular individual.  

1.Domain Expertise

Occasionally a manager will end up leading a team, whether due to a re-org, reward for being an early employee or other reasons, where they have no/limited knowledge of that team’s domain. While a manager doesn’t need to be the best performer skills-wise on the team, to be effective they need to know what good looks like to make informed decisions on strategy, hiring and performance. Having a manager with limited domain expertise can at times have an upside for their reports, particularly if it results in increased scope or flexibility. However, sometimes it can just be downright frustrating having to explain the basics to someone whose salary and organisational status may be orders of magnitude greater than yours. 

It’s not the lack of expertise in itself that makes a manager bad. This can be solved assuming they invest in 1) developing domain knowledge, 2) hiring people to complement them and 3) utilising other capabilities which are applicable to the role. What makes a manager bad is usually how they deal with their lack of expertise. Sometimes they don’t know that they don’t know, and end up wasting resources and their team’s time on ill thought out strategies or low-impact busywork. Sometimes they try to hide their lack of knowledge by mistreating or firing anyone who is in danger of exposing their lack of competency (this is usually a more capable direct report). 

If you find yourself reporting to someone who lacks domain expertise or is generally incompetent, ask yourself how much this is impacting your career ambitions and if negatively, what changes you are willing to make. Invest in learning domain expertise from other people (internally or from experts in your field). Build your network. The greater your professional reach, the less one manager can control your career trajectory. 

2.People Management

There is a reason why management training is an industry in itself. People management is a skill. There are rituals involved (1:1s, performance reviews etc). You need to be able to understand what motivates each individual on your team and how to get the best out of them. You need to be able to help guide people on their career journeys. You need to be able to give and receive feedback. You need to be able to listen to both what is and isn’t being said. To be effective, you need to adapt your style based on seniority, role type and individual personalities. You need to be able to create a conducive team culture. You need to be able to do this in an environment where you don’t have full control over the inputs (e.g. direction of the company, culture, team hired prior to you joining etc). You are part coach, part cheerleader, part doer and part policy enforcer. 

Managers who perform “badly” in this category (i.e. not do the above) tend to either lack the skills or desire to manage people. Perhaps they see themselves as managers of the work, rather than understanding that their role is to create high performance teams and develop people. This is often the case if they’ve never worked in a performant working environment that also values people. Alternatively, they may be a new manager who is still learning the ropes. Sometimes they may just not like this aspect of their role. Many people find people management tedious. This can particularly be the case for those whose preference is to operate as a lone wolf or who just like to get sh*t done. I’ve lost count of the number of people who’ve admitted to me that they don’t enjoy the people management part of their jobs (“people are difficult”, “1:1s are boring”, “so much admin”), but find themselves doing so because it’s part of the path to fulfilling their career ambitions.

If your manager is lacking this skillset, make a list of what you would ideally like them to provide (more actionable feedback, development opportunities etc.) Develop a plan to solve for those either with your manager or elsewhere. 

3.Organisational Influence

Bad managers tend to either have limited organisational influence or else use their organisational influence for ill gains (see toxic behaviours below). 

A manager with limited organisational influence may not be able to advocate effectively for the resources (headcount, budget) required, or implement the business strategies needed, for their teams to be successful. They may not be able to gain a pay rise or promotion for their reports. They may be edged out of critical decision making discussions which have downstream effects on their team. It may not be your manager’s fault that they have limited influence, however, it does limit how effective a manager they can be. 

If you’re unsure if your manager has influence, look around. Are they attending the meetings you think they should be in? Do their peers and seniors respect them? I’ve often found that there is a circling of the wolves when someone lacks influence, ranging from slights in meetings to open hostility, to being side-lined or ignored by those who sense that that particular ship is sinking.

If your manager does lack organisational influence there are many ways you can probably use politics to work the situation in your favour. I’m not going to touch on those here. As naive and idealistic as this sounds, I think the world would be a better place if we didn’t engage in those games. That being said, if you do believe your manager lacks organisational influence, you should invest more-than-average effort in strengthening yours. Build relationships with peers, other managers and your manager’s manager. Find ways to expand your sphere of influence beyond your day-to-day work (e.g. mentoring, partaking in company events, sharing insights related to the industry etc). It may also be a case that your manager has organisational influence but is unwilling to advocate for you. Try to analyse the root cause of this. Is this a power play by a bad manager who is trying not to be outshone, or is it something more specific to you? Once you know the reasons you can start actioning solutions, assuming that’s what you want to do. 

4.Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence is defined as the ability to manage both your own emotions and understand the emotions of people around you. A lack of it hampers all aspects of our lives. If I had to hazard a guess, I would say that low EQ is the number one cause of bad management.

There are three key aspects to emotional intelligence: self-awareness, self-regulation and an understanding of others’ emotions. A manager with low self-awareness may not know their weaknesses that impact their performance and therefore cannot mitigate against them. A manager with low self-awareness may allow their insecurities to manifest as negative behavioural traits. For example, their insecurity about not feeling competent may cause them to not take responsibility for mistakes, or worse, deflect it to others. Sometimes a manager will be aware of their negative tendencies but not regulate the effects of it. A manager may be aware of their tendency to be conflict adverse and yet continue to avoid difficult conversations at work e.g. not provide constructive feedback to an underperforming report. A manager with low EQ often struggles to understand why their team may feel differently about a decision than they do, or how an outcome may impact people differently. They often struggle to read a room, leaving with a very different impression of what was said or done than everyone else. Managers with low EQ are known to adopt a “my way or the highway” approach to management, being intolerant of, or intolerable to, those who disagree with them. 

Everyone has a bad day, and even high EQ folk have moments where they falter. However, if your manager has low EQ it is worth asking yourself if you can continue to work with them. It may just manifest itself as small annoyances that can be worked around, however, it may also cause you to entirely lose respect for them which is a hard one to overcome. The best way to deal with someone who displays low emotional intelligence is for you to have high EQ. Work on developing this skill. It will help you better understand your manager, and help you navigate the challenges related to reporting to someone with low EQ. Who knows, maybe your manager will start modelling some of the positive traits they see in you. 

5.Personal Life

Difficult periods in our personal lives can negatively impact our work. That is no different for people managers. Grief, relationship issues, health concerns all take their toll. If you find your manager is dropping the ball more than usual or are acting more erratically, it may be a case that they don’t have the mental or physical energy to perform well at work. They may have actively decided not to make work a priority while they tend to other aspects of their lives. Sometimes you may know about a difficult period. Often you won't. As an employee there is usually nothing you can do, other than being understanding, to improve your manager’s personal life (and that’s usually a boundary that shouldn’t be crossed). 

6.Manager-Report Alignment

I feel this is a topic that is not discussed enough. Ideally every manager could flex their style to be the best manager possible for each individual on team. This is certainly the utopia that management trainers preach. Yet, it’s incredibly rare. Molly Graham writes:

“I am exceptional at managing high performers. This both brings me huge amounts of joy and I think I’m really uniquely good at pushing people who are already doing well to new heights. On the flip side, I am not a great manager for people who need a lot of teaching or hand holding. I’m a sink-or-swim type manager, but if you’re a swimmer, I can often turn you into the absolute best freestyler or butterflier or whatever that you can be.” 

I found this to be refreshingly honest. Your manager may not be a bad manager. They may just be a bad fit for you. 

It may be a case where you’re not misaligned with your manager. You’re just not as aligned as others. There are two categories of reasons for this.

The first is personal. Humans tend to gravitate towards people who are similar to them. We tend to like people who we build a rapport with easily. This doesn’t differ when it comes to manager-managee relationships. Discrimination is inexcusable but that’s not what I’m referring to here. Rather it’s the similarities and preferences that create bonds. You may find that your manager has a better relationship with another report on their team because they grew up in the same area / went to the same university / have a similar hobby / support the same sports team / share a similar sense of humour etc. The ease in their relationship can lead to favouritism (certainly a bad manager trait) and a willingness for your manager to advocate more on their behalf than that of others in the team. It leads those outside of the inner circle with fewer opportunities. It is both deeply unfair and unfortunately common. 

There can also be professional misalignment. If you and your manager have different working styles, communication preferences, standards of quality, work ethic or ambition levels, this can also cause friction.

Misalignment can also be due to a mismatch in values. It doesn’t make either person wrong/bad but it can make a working relationship more tenuous at times. 

A bad manager is someone who doesn’t realise, or care about, how much their personal and professional preferences are impacting their management style, and therefore ability to be a fair and effective manager for a particular person. Most of us are probably better suited to managing certain people over others. However, that doesn’t excuse us from being actively bad managers to the people we don’t feel a natural alignment with. 

If you find yourself out of alignment with your manager try to identify why this is the case. If this situation is unfixable it may be worth leaving/moving teams. However, it is exceptionally rare to find someone you will be perfectly aligned with. Learning how to better manage up could be a good first step to helping mitigate some of the issues. 

7.Toxic Behaviours

Discrimination (racism, sexism, classism etc). Harassment. Politicking. Favouritism. Apathy. Credit-taking. Gaslighting. Yelling. Passive-Aggressiveness. Under-mining and humiliating people. Optimising for themselves rather than the team. Lying. Stonewalling. Unethical/illegal actions. Lack of accountability. Blaming. Narcissism. Immaturity. 

The list is endless. Bad managers tend to display 1+ of these traits consistently. Sometimes these actions are deliberate. Sometimes they are more unconscious, a manifestation of insecurities or unconscious biases. Sometimes behaviours are overt. Sometimes, and more dangerously for employees, they can be subtle. Sometimes a manager can be toxic towards one person on the team but a great manager to everyone else. Toxicity lives on a scale. Some actions are of course much more harmful than others. A manager who displays some of these traits may not be a bad person (humans are multifaceted), however, they are a bad manager. The root cause of these are irrelevant. You are not your manager’s therapist, parent or fixer. 

If you find yourself working for a toxic manager, ask yourself is the job really worth it? Working in a toxic environment can destroy your mental and physical wellbeing. Also behaviours are catching and can become normalised over time (this is why toxic managers can end up creating toxic teams). If you choose to stay because you have decided the cost of leaving is too high (visa considerations, salary decrease etc), then I recommend finding ways to protect your wellbeing (therapy, journalling, hobbies, cultivating a good support system etc.) to try to mitigate the negative effects of working in a toxic environment before they are absorbed into your core and begin seeping into your personal life.

 

Changes and Choices

Most people don’t set out to be a bad manager and thankfully it is not a fixed state. If you find yourself with one, hopefully they’ll improve or leave over time. There are actions you can take to try to improve your working relationship with them, although sometimes it is a hopeless case. As with anything in life you can choose how you respond. You can choose to stay on the team or leave. You can choose how you react to their behaviour. You can, to a certain extent, choose how their actions impact how you feel. In the meantime, you and the team may want to choose to anonymously send them a copy of The Making of a Manager…