When I left school I worked for four bosses at the same company in quick succession, two of them were "desk-thumpers" who believed that shouting and hissy-fits were all that was required, two simply asked you as if they were asking a favour and were approachable if you had a problem with something.

Guess which two got the respect and who I modelled my own management on ?

The shouting, bullying form of management has no place in any workplace regardless of what those who practice it say, all that actually happens is that the employees find other ways (and there are plenty) of stitching up the bully but will back to the hilt the one that they respect.

Seems to be mostly about what is not good management.

Micro-management, bullying and a lack of praise and encouragement when due/needed – absolutely agree all are counterproductive etc.

I'd add not having the guts to tell you things to your face and sending someone else to do it.

Mintball wrote:I'd add not having the guts to tell you things to your face and sending someone else to do it. Or doing it by email...

Mintball wrote:I'd add not having the guts to tell you things to your face and sending someone else to do it. Or doing it by email...

Not shifting the blame - if you are the manager and someone in your team screws up it is you who has to carry the can.

You should be the one taking the pressure off the team not the other way round - asking for unrealistic deadlines to be met because of your own inefficiency is wrong - a manager should be planning the work to ensure time pressures are reduced not increased.

Treat the people you manage with respect, put yourself in their shoes and ask if you would like to be approached and talked to in the way you have just talked to them?

Rock God X wrote:Or doing it by email... Yup.

Rock God X wrote:Or doing it by email... Yup.

I made three predictions about mine when he came in.

1) Change the name of the department

2) Institute a tidy desk policy

3) Move people between teams, possibly renaming some teams.

And then I said we'd never hear from him again. Still waiting on the tidy desk policy, but nobody's seen him for weeks.

Ex- boss of mine was nice when he wanted to be, but would just turn into a grade 1 knob at the drop of a hat and start taking his problems he was getting from higher management out on us lot in the yard. Everything had to be done his way, no matter how efficiently you were doing a job he'd always chirp up with "wouldn't it be better doing it like this....". Problem was, he tried to play the hard man and thought he had us intimidated - P*ssed off and fed up, yes, intimidated, no.

Don't agree. If you clearly outline expectations and someone f***s up by doing the opposite of what you have told them then it's their fault. I hire people at a particular level, many of them have PhD's and/or years of experience in research or customer service roles. There are certain expectations, when you give people responsibility they have to accept it. If they are not happy to do so then they should say at the time and then we'll discuss more training and ways to support them (usully by me getting involved). If something is beyond their capability there are several levels of more senior company executives whose job it is to take these things forward and intervene. If they blunder on and make mistakes when they know they should be getting help then it's their fault and they take the blame.
The main issue is that some managers like to make small f*** ups appear like big ones. I have seldom, if ever seen a single c*** up by anyone in my team that caused us real issues as a company. Most problems are blown out of proportion needlessly.

I have current issues with one guy who simply doesn't understand the meaning of paperwork. He's been like that since we hired him nearly 4 years ago and I've done everything I can to explain to him why what he does is not acceptable. He hasn't changed, despite apology after apology and promise after promise. The difficulty is that his main function is to support customers and a sales team, which he does spectacularly well. He's dilligent, willing to go anywhere anytime, technically excellent and his customers love him. So I don't blow the paperwork thing out of proportion because it does not effect $1 of the sales figure. In the past I've had to hassle him regularly about paperwork and every year I set his performance objectives to improve it (I know he does a good job, the rest of the team know he does a good job, but unless he actually bloody documents it our US colleagues, some of whom only look at reports logged on our internal system, may not). This year we have moved to a new database/calender/contact management system called SFDC (the most widely used in the sales industry) and we are monitoring metrics on everything. We can't do that unless people fill out their calender entries correctly using the specific fields we have written. This guy doesn't do it. His entries are hopeless - when he bothers.
He's had my foot up his backside twice this year already and he's now trying to get out of the office as much as possible so we can't sit down and do his performance review - where he'll get kicked again.
Is that his fault? Yes. He knows what to do, everyone else is making the effort, he won't do it. Fake ignorance is no defence.

Prior to me being promoted to UK Sales Manager, the incumbent, who I reported to, insisted on endless reports. Sales Reports, Fleet Reports, Competitor Intelligence Reports etc etc etc. Half of my bootspace was taken up by reams of NCR paper forms, all having to be submitted each week.

One day he called me into his office and informed me that he hadn't seen any Fleet Reports from me for quite a while. I told him I stopped sending them in when I realised that he never read them anyway. He was insistent that he always read them in full and acted on them accordingly. I managed to blow his argument when I asked him to dig out my last report and read it in front of me. He was almost apoplectic when he got to the bit "Company Directors". The company in question was Rainbow Transport of Nottingham, I had listed the directors as: Zippy, Bungle & George.

When I got his job, I burned a storage cabinet full of his forms, replaced them with one, rigidly enforced, Weekly Itinerary and the message that if any of the guys had anything to report, they should do so by fax or phone.

Best manager I ever had was one who started a tradition of whenever anyone went abroad on business they brought back a bottle of the most disgusting alcoholic drink they could find which was then put in his filing cabinet to be brought out along with all he rest on a Friday afternoon in the "team meeting".

Those were the days!