The 12 Behaviors of the World's Worst
Bosses
Sometimes, when it comes to management, no bad
deed goes unrewarded.
Over the
years, I've interviewed hundreds of CEOs and top executives to discover
the core
beliefs and personality
traits that made them successful. Sometimes I
run across horrible
bosses who are monetarily successful but who
are miserable to work for, or with.
Here are the traits they share:
1. They think they know everything (or can learn anything in
seconds).
Few people are more irritating than know-it-alls and their
conceptual cousins, people who think they're so smart they can understand even
highly-complex subjects simply by watching a TV show or glancing through a news
story.
2. They refuse to believe facts that are contrary to their
opinions.
Bad bosses "shoot the messenger." The worst bosses,
however, do the mental equivalent of a child plugging up his ears and yelling
"lalalalalalalala" to drown out a parent's voice. Then they shoot the
messenger... without really hearing the message.
3. They tell lies but convince themselves they're telling the
truth.
The best con-men believe the lies
they're telling because that belief makes them more convincing. Horrible bosses
do the same thing, conning themselves or, as it's sometimes called,
"breathing their own smoke."
4. They judge women solely based on their attractiveness.
While this distasteful trait is
more common among male bosses, there are female bosses who feel the
same (e.g. "The Devil Wears Prada"). The big red flag here is when every female on the team is
perfectly coifed and wearing a pencil skirt with heels.
5. They hire unqualified family members to do important jobs.
When a boss gives close relatives jobs for which they are
unqualified, it doubles the work for everyone else, who must now waste extra
time truckling to the relatives, covering for their mistakes, and redoing the
work they've scamped or bungled.
6. They never admit they're wrong and never apologize.
While often full of bluster and braggadocio, horrible bosses are
secretly afraid that, if they admit they were wrong, everyone will realize that
they're not the superheroes they're pretending to be. Apologizing, of course,
entails admitting that they're wrong.
7. They wriggle out of paying salaries and commissions.
Over the years, I've received dozens of complaints about bosses
who make big promises to salespeople--and then don't pay the commissions.
Equally bad are bosses who hire contractors and then stiff them after they've
done the contracted work.
8. They encourage aggressive hard-sell tactics.
Horrible bosses frequently push
salespeople to sell an ever-increasing number of products that customers
neither want nor need. Best case, this creates a horde of angry dissatisfied
customers. Worst case, it results in fraud, as in the case of Wells Fargo.
9. They can't tolerate being laughed at.
I'll never forget the time a marketing group I'd just joined did
a skit making fun of our company. The employee playing our boss (who was in the
audience) made a joke about the boss's weight. From that point on, the boss
treated the poor guy like crap for a year and then fired him for no good
reason.
10. They take all the credit and finger-point the blame.
If an organization wins, a horrible boss boasts "I am
obviously a great leader." If the organizations loses, though, that same
horrible boss inevitably complains that "my employees let me down."
11. They sacrifice the company to line their own pockets.
Horrible bosses often run up the short-term stock price to
increase the value of their own options, even when that means that firing
employees, alienating customers, damaging the community, and screwing long-term
investors.
12. They just talk the walk; they don't walk the walk.
Finally, horrible bosses always have high-minded mission
statements promising to treat customers and employees well and to "make
the world a better place." In reality, they use such statements as a
veneer of plausible deniability while they pursue their own selfish interests.
By Geoffrey James
https://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/the-12-behaviors-of-the-worlds-worst-bosses.html
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