Page 126 - How America's Best Places to Work Inspire Extra Effort in Extraordinary Times

The Real Job of Managers C113

Managers Behaving Badly—Classifying the Types
The varieties of bad management behavior we see reflected in the ver-
batim comments of survey respondents are not novel or surprising to
most of us. Anyone who has spent time in organizational life has wit-
nessed the dispiriting effects of the many breeds of bad managers on
worker motivation and morale. We include the following categories
of survey comments as testament to these toxic types and as plaintive
evidence to the debilitating effects of tolerating such behavior:

Fostering distrust

: “My manager does not win as a team and does not take respon-
sibility for her job. Her motto is if ‘I’m going down, I’m going to
bring everybody with me’ and doesn’t know how to manage em-
ployees. She is really good about talking behind employees’ backs.”
: “The thing I find most amazing is the lack of integrity in my
supervisor. He purposefully tries to create dissension among his
employees. He will call someone in his office and tell them that ‘so-
and-so said this about you.’”

Devaluing, discounting, failing to appreciate

(Also see Chapter 8 on valuing employees.)

: “When opinions are given, they are ignored, only to be followed by
the management’s opinion.”
: “Overall the firm has good people with good ideas. Managing client
expectations while trying to maintain growth and increase overall
profitability in an industry with increasing demands has resulted in
neglecting the recognition and reward for employees of the firm.”
: “I find it odd that a leading loyalty provider does little to incen-
tivize the loyalty of their most productive employees, those cre-
ating the highest caliber of work, which is the marketed product
and signature of the company. The frontline staff that enables
this company to function 24 hours daily, 365, are greater both in