What Makes for a Good Manager?! Part-I

My last weeks blog, Career Coachings Top 10! brought me many private queries, mostly from my clients. Many of them are managers themselves and were wondering, in their own minds, if they belonged to the proverbial 80% category to which dysfunctional managers belong. I added a comment in my blog after many such queries and promised my readers to shed some light on what makes for a good manager from my perspective. This perspective is steeped both, in my own role as head of engineering of a technology company, and what I glean from talking to my clients, many of whom come to me prompted by a dysfunctional boss.

As I was planning to write on this topic I realized that before I make a list of the traits that good managers exhibitthose that belong to the 20% groupI thought it might be more appropriate to first showcase what a bad manager isthe dominant managerial pool. In Part-II of this blog next week, I plan to shed some light on what makes for a good manager. In this blog I want to showcase some egregious examples of what a bad manager is, who definitely belongs in the 80% category. I then want to summarize the top 10 traits of bad managers, again from my own perspective.

I want to make clear that there are many shades of gray in this 80% category. It is, once again, a normal Gaussian distribution with long tails, one end of which goes into egregiously bad, and the other spills into marginally good.

So, in this blog I am going to list the actual examples that constitute a bad manager (90th+ percentile; actually, three SDs, those who understand what a standard deviation is). What this means is that >90% of managers are better than these characters. These are actual cases that I encountered and had to forcefully tell my clients to take drastic and urgent action to save their health, welfare, and career by getting away from these clowns.

Case-I: Here, my long-standing client was a project manager working for a services company that worked with client companies delivering projects that they staffeda typical technical staffing company. My client was an experienced project manager with 20+ years successfully managing projects of various sizes and flavors, so he knew what he was doing.

As soon as my client joined their project team he was given a project that was already red. This means that my clients predecessor and the team had failed to deliver on the project commitments and the 12-month project was nearing its deadline and was already over budget (my clients company could no longer recover any further costs). This was the second time this project was red. So, the pressure was intense. My client knew none of this when he joined the company and when he was assigned to the project to manage it. He was given the impression that he would be starting a new project with this client company and was excited about making a go of it!

Almost immediately, my client realized what he was in for. He quickly assessed the situation and made a recovery plan, that included working closely with the client companys technical team and collaboratively working on a recovery plan. The plan also included moving out some of the poor performers and replacing them with turnaround experts available from my clients staffing company. His boss refused to even look at this plan and told my client to work within only what was already available (the two-time loser team). Every day from then on my clients boss kept reminding him of the spend that the team was costing the company and pressuring him to recover from the setback and to get back out of the red. As you can imagine, technically this was an impossibility, as the project was in the red on day-one.

My proud client was trying hardvery hardto deal with this hopeless cause and show what he could do with both of his hands tied behind his back. He was further forced to misstate the projects progress to the client company, which made it even harder and very stressful for my client to do.

As the pressure continued to mount, my client was working 16-18 hour days merely treading water, just to keep up with the pace of what he felt could still be done to recover, with no support from his management. Within about three weeks of this my client suffered a mild heart attack at work and he was rushed to the ER in front of all his colleagues when the EMT hauled him outbarely consciouson a gurney to a waiting ambulance with its lights flashing. Although the doctors told him to stay away from work and to rest when he was discharged the next day my client bravely went back to work. As he entered his work area he ran into his ruthless (Im at a loss for the right adjectives here!) boss, whose first words to my client were: I understand you suddenly took off yesterday without telling anyone. Make sure you do not charge that time to the company!

When my client called me with this story that evening, I met with him and his wife immediately and told him to quit his job the very next day. He did!

Case-II: This case involves a manager at yet another company, who persuaded my client to join his team despite a great job my client already had, but with a promise of a promotion and great prospects at his new job. Within the same week my client came on board this manager told my client that he realized that he had made a mistake hiring my client and that my client should look out for his own welfare in his new job. My client was devastated at hearing this, but this was just the beginning.

Soon, the manager told my client that he expected response to all his emails within an hour regardless of when they were sent. My client soon started receiving emails in the dead of night, to which he started responding. He then assigned my client to manage the India team, which meant that my client had to work the day shift here and then manage the India team at night; basically working two-plus shifts most days of the week.

When my client found this ratcheting workload and pressure to perform unbearable he approached me for a way to deal with this situation. I asked my client to investigate and see if this manager had a history of abusing his employees in the past. When my client did the researchyet another task that he had to now dohe found others who had also suffered the wrath of his boss egregious behavior in the past. So, we decided to escalate this matter to HR and to his skip-level boss with specific evidencenames and episodes of those before himto to support my clients case.

It took about a year of hell that my client had to go through when HR followed its own process of investigation. Soon after, this manager was terminated and my client got into a better situation.

I have about half-a-dozen such examples of extreme managerial behavior that defies any connection to what I call good management practices. Both these cases involved managerial behaviors so egregious that they can be cast as Hall-of-Shame case studies in bad management practices. They both resulted in having to take extreme and immediate measures to remedy the situation.

Whenever I encounter clients with similar problems with managers who abuse them I find it puzzling to understand how these clients are willing to take the blame for the soured relationship. They often ask me how they could salvage this relationship and get back on track with their manager. I guess that this is what happens with many who are abused, even in their personal lives: They are convinced that they are somehow responsible for what is happening to them. In such extreme cases my advice is always the same: It is NOT you; it is the manager. Get away and fast!

So, what are the top 10 traits of such managers, who cause so much grief in the ranks of their employees and create such hellish environment? Here is my partial list and I am sure that you can add your own to this list:

1.Manage by checklist: They do not provide a tasks context, these managers just tell their reports what they should do next and HOW they should do it. They parcel this list one item at a time.
2.Manage by proxy: I wrote an entire blog on this topic recently. This is where a manager relies on his pet employees to tell them about you and your performance. Without any direct evidence of observing you, you feel at a loss to understand where the managers concern is coming from.
3.Micromanage: This goes with #1. Here, the manager not only tells you what to do but how you should do it. They want constant status through emails, calls, and reports that never get their time. And, yet they will remind you if you missed one.
4.Leadership/Management confusion: These managers have no clue what leadership means and they exert their management regime through the dint of their authority.
5.Manage upwards: Bad managers are great at managing upwards. They ask you to do some tasks and batten on your successes (e.g., you prepare the PowerPoint deck and they present it to the higher-ups without even acknowledging your contribution).
6.Managers Pets: They have a few employees that they favor in giving opportunities, pet projects, and preferred treatments despite its open optics.
7.Throwing you under a bus: When they see trouble coming their way, they do not have any problem throwing you or others under the bus and absolve themselves of any blame.
8.Empty promises: These managers make promises about raises and promotions to get what they want, but never come through. They deftly dodge the issue or move on to their next promotion when time comes to honor what they promised.
9.Empty words: These managers are great at preaching you what to do but never practice what they preach.
10.Recognition: These managers have trouble even recognizing star players in their team, because they are too busy taking credit and too petty to acknowledge good work.
Now that you have seen what bad managers do and what they are about learn how to spot them early in your engagement and dont just walk away from them, but run!

Good luck!

About Author

Dilip has distinguished himself as LinkedIn’s #1 career coach from among a global pool of over 1,000 peers ever since LinkedIn started ranking them professionally (LinkedIn selected 23 categories of professionals for this ranking and published this ranking from 2006 until 2012). Having worked with over 6,000 clients from all walks of professions and having worked with nearly the entire spectrum of age groups—from high-school graduates about to enter college to those in their 70s, not knowing what to do with their retirement—Dilip has developed a unique approach to bringing meaning to their professional and personal lives. Dilip’s professional success lies in his ability to codify what he has learned in his own varied life (he has changed careers four times and is currently in his fifth) and from those of his clients, and to apply the essence of that learning to each coaching situation. After getting his B.Tech. (Honors) from IIT-Bombay and Master’s in electrical engineering(MSEE) from Stanford University, Dilip worked at various organizations, starting as an individual contributor and then progressing to head an engineering organization of a division of a high-tech company, with $2B in sales, in California’s Silicon Valley. His current interest in coaching resulted from his career experiences spanning nearly four decades, at four very diverse organizations–and industries, including a major conglomerate in India, and from what it takes to re-invent oneself time and again, especially after a lay-off and with constraints that are beyond your control. During the 45-plus years since his graduation, Dilip has reinvented himself time and again to explore new career horizons. When he left the corporate world, as head of engineering of a technology company, he started his own technology consulting business, helping high-tech and biotech companies streamline their product development processes. Dilip’s third career was working as a marketing consultant helping Fortune-500 companies dramatically improve their sales, based on a novel concept. It is during this work that Dilip realized that the greatest challenge most corporations face is available leadership resources and effectiveness; too many followers looking up to rudderless leadership. Dilip then decided to work with corporations helping them understand the leadership process and how to increase leadership effectiveness at every level. Soon afterwards, when the job-market tanked in Silicon Valley in 2001, Dilip changed his career track yet again and decided to work initially with many high-tech refugees, who wanted expert guidance in their reinvention and reemployment. Quickly, Dilip expanded his practice to help professionals from all walks of life. Now in his fifth career, Dilip works with professionals in the Silicon Valley and around the world helping with reinvention to get their dream jobs or vocations. As a career counselor and life coach, Dilip’s focus has been career transitions for professionals at all levels and engaging them in a purposeful pursuit. Working with them, he has developed many groundbreaking approaches to career transition that are now published in five books, his weekly blogs, and hundreds of articles. He has worked with those looking for a change in their careers–re-invention–and jobs at levels ranging from CEOs to hospital orderlies. He has developed numerous seminars and workshops to complement his individual coaching for helping others with making career and life transitions. Dilip’s central theme in his practice is to help clients discover their latent genius and then build a value proposition around it to articulate a strong verbal brand. Throughout this journey, Dilip has come up with many groundbreaking practices such as an Inductive Résumé and the Genius Extraction Tool. Dilip owns two patents, has two publications in the Harvard Business Review and has led a CEO roundtable for Chief Executive on Customer Loyalty. Both Amazon and B&N list numerous reviews on his five books. Dilip is also listed in Who’s Who, has appeared several times on CNN Headline News/Comcast Local Edition, as well as in the San Francisco Chronicle in its career columns. Dilip is a contributing writer to several publications. Dilip is a sought-after speaker at public and private forums on jobs, careers, leadership challenges, and how to be an effective leader.

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