These characteristics were identified at a highly entertaining brainstorm. It’s not so entertaining if you are working for one of these people and relying on them for your career development. They see ‘people stuff’ as an annoying distraction. Enlighten them. Tell them what you need. Build relationships with influential people to get things done. Find other people to advocate for you and inspire you. Don’t tread water and don’t cover for them either. If the situation doesn’t improve, network for opportunities elsewhere.
Here’s some red flags of a hopeless manager:
- Crazy Busy. They love to tell you how swamped they are. They cancel meetings at short notice, even appraisals, blaming too much work from ‘up above’. The real reason is that they are disorganised. They certainly haven’t found four hours to read or listen to The Crazy Busy Cure. They only pay full attention in leadership meetings, tapping away on phones and laptops in any others.
- No information. They don’t understand that a significant part their job is to be a conduit of information from up the chain. Their team must turn detective to figure out what’s going on and how to get things done. Siloes build when there aren’t effective communication channels. People do their tasks, but that’s about it. There is no collective memory or problem solving.
- Too busy to train. They make a big deal of hiring ‘self-starters’. They want people who they can leave alone. This means they hire people who’ve done the job before, albeit to a mediocre standard. They don’t clarify expectations or even train beginners properly.
- Rogue operators. People get on with their own tasks in their own way, using the process they like best. Accountability is blurry, causing conflict. Job descriptions are out of date. There’s little role standardisation except shared calendars.
- Empty office. People don’t come into the office unless mandated because they can’t see any benefit to it. They aren’t missing out on anything. There is certainly no sense of shared purpose or exchange of feedback. Good people outgrow the team and move on.
It’s not their fault.
These managers have blind spots about what they are supposed to do. I often hear that the only training managers have had is on personality colour types. Thats woeful.
Here’s my newsletter on how the job should be done.
The UK’s Chartered Management Institute found that 82% of those who enter management positions have not had any proper training. Half of the people surveyed who worked for these accidental managers intended to leave in the next year. That’ll be the half their organisation wanted to keep.
Please get in contact to discuss how my evidence based and very practical masterclasses, coaching and training programmes will make a measurable difference.