Horrible Bosses: What to Do When Your Management Team Isn’t Cutting the Muster

You’ve been in business for a couple of years, defying the odds and keeping your company from becoming another failed business statistic. You’ve hired what you believe to be a strong and capable staff and credit them with your company’s success.

Lately, you’ve noticed a growing turnover rate. It seems like the longest an employee stays is six months, then they hand in a two-week notice; that is if you’re lucky—some just skip out. You’re not sure what’s going on. Once you’ve filled one position another opens, and it’s not because of rapid promoting.

There’s something amiss, and if you want your business to make it to the five-year mark and beyond, you need to figure it now. But management doesn’t have a concise answer as to why people are leaving the company, so what can be done about this?

Management Troubles

According to Forbes Magazine, 50 percent of workers surveyed in a Gallup poll reported that they left their job “to get away from their manager.” In the long run, it won’t matter if you have an all-star staff, if management isn’t nurturing their potential, recognizing their hard work or serving in some sort of mentorship capacity, they will look elsewhere and leave your company.

There are three personality types that make a bad manager, and if any members of your leadership team exhibit these qualities, you’ll need to reevaluate your own management style and may even need to reshuffle the deck.

The Flash in the Pan

This team member demonstrated they were a quick-starter and go-getter early on. They took feedback well and adjusted their work to reflect the company’s mission and made their end goal the success of the company. There was no question that they would be promoted, and with just a few months under their belt, you promoted them to a management position.

Functioning much like a startup, you trust that your staff is getting their work done when they work remotely, but this manager makes only weekly appearances in the office and has not shared their calendar with their department. No one knows if they’ll be in the office and employees have a hard time getting ahold of the manager. It would appear that they think being a manager means going to pub cons and hosting cocktail hour with potential clients, not keeping the staff abreast of company news or following through on staff questions and meetings. Also referred to as “the ghost,” this type of manager does not inspire employee loyalty.

Management Tactics: Make it a rule that all management must be in the office when employees are. Conduct a weekly meeting with this manager and their department to see where they are in their work and to learn of any discrepancies. If there is a client meeting that must take place, the head of the company will manage it.

The Peer

This type of manager worries about not being liked by their subordinates and will do anything to stay on their good side, even if that means making some questionable calls that could hurt the business.

Who you put in charge will dramatically affect the success of your business. If a manager should spend their day on Facebook making comments on your employees’ status updates, there’s going to be trouble, especially if they make a disparaging comment from the company’s social media page in an effort to be funny. When that happens and an upset employee threatens to sue, business insurance will cover the cost—but you’ll still lose a valuable staff member.

Management Tactics: Set internet usage rules. Management and employees alike cannot update their social media feeds while at work, and management must make sure that all conversations taking place between management and staff are politically correct.

The Identity Thief

This person takes all of the good ideas and work of their employees and marks it as their own. The only time this type of manager doesn’t take responsibility for something is when a project falls flat, only then will they say another team member worked on it.

Management Tactics: Call this manager out. Ask who has and continues to work on the projects and demand that the meetings be led by the team, not the manager alone.

No one is perfect, and going from being a staff member to manager takes time to adjust. Make sure you are giving every member of your staff the tools they need to succeed.