How do you spot a bad manager? I read a whole article on the topic. Sure it was a humor piece. But many of the tendencies rang true. I guess I have worked for a lot of poor managers. Haven’t we all? I thought I would share some of these are they are precious.One such trait is that a bad manager is a vacation policeman. In other words, they are a vacation Nazi. You have to fight just to get one day off from work. On the flip side, they never say no to more work. They don’t do resource balancing. They commit you to more work that means you must work longer days and the weekends too.
Bad managers are overly concerned with their physical appearance. This is because they cannot stand on their merits. They need other ways to look good. Bad managers spend all day in Microsoft Project. This software is not inherently evil (unless you hate Microsoft). However you will accomplish nothing by trying to perfect a schedule in a project plan.
You can spot a bad manager because all they contribute in meetings is recording action items. You only hear from them when they need clarification on an action item. Weak. Bad managers are good a blaming others. How else do you think they get away being slackers? Finally a bad manager will jump ship even before the ship sinks. Why should they stick around when they know the project is doomed under their lacking skill set?
