Declaring War on Bad Management
Unless you have been really lucky in your working life, you should immediately relate to this headline. Possibly, as you read this, one or many faces will appear in your mind from your experience. I am confident of this because, according to research by R
To understand this, we need to think about how people get to become managers and how they end up being allowed to remain, and even progress, in this role.
A common practice in choosing a new manager or supervisor is taking the best performing staff member and promoting them without any serious consideration given to their ability to do the new job. By doing this, the management inadvertently removes a top staffer and creates a poor manager who is likely to drive down morale and productivity, as well as alienate talent.
So, what makes a "bad" manager bad? Research overseas and in Thailand shows that managers are usually bad because of their inability to lead people, which normally is the result of either chronic insecurity or arrogance.
An insecure manager is hesitant, withdrawn, tentative, emotionally volatile, over-dependent on guidance and likely to hide behind rules and data. An arrogant manager on the other hand is dictatorial, complacent, reckless, overbearing and likely to blame mistakes on everyone else.
These traits are easy to identify as they allow for unpleasant experiences. So how do managers with these shortcomings continue to thrive?
For one thing, few companies use reliable assessment methods that can identify these traits when selecting managers, hence, when these traits do emerge at work, they are not addressed.
The main challenge we face in recognising and eliminating bad management is that organisations ask the wrong people for feedback on managers. Usually it is the manager’s superior who provides the feedback and in all likelihood this person rarely sees this person in action as manager. All the superior person knows is that this manager does what he/she is told, gets things done and doesn’t cause problems; in other words the manager is being assessed as a subordinate not a manager.
Unfortunately, global research and experience with multirater (360-degree) assessments in Thailand show that if you ask subordinates what they think of their manager, you get a very different and more accurate picture of the manager’s performance. Perhaps this is why so many organisations are resistant to the concept of a multirater feedback, as they’d rather keep pretending the issue of bad management doesn’t exist. For too many organisations ignorance is bliss.
However, the reality is that as professional managers working in a competitive employment market, we can’t allow this situation to persist. Most bad managers can be identified early and helped to overcome their challenges, but only if they know what these challenges are.
It’s time to declare war on bad management. And in order to do that, building a culture of regular open assessment and feedback before and during managerial appointments, should be your first shot in the campaign that can only end in victory for everyone.
L Richard Gilman is practice group leader for APM Group and can be contacted via [email protected].
