Are you in the Bad Bosses Club and want to have your membership revoked so that you can be a better manager? The Bad Bosses Club has strict policies that must be followed to maintain your membership. Be a better manager by breaking these bad boss rules.
10 Ways to Be a Better Manager
It’s easy to fall into the trap of being a bad boss, and no one sets out to become one. Take time to regularly reflect on how you are leading your team and watch out of these easy to overlook areas that can make you a bad boss.
Look the part
People tend to be biassed when it comes to evaluating someone based on their appearance and behaviors. The Bad Bosses Club doesn’t require you to follow a dress code, have good manners, or present yourself in a positive light.
Having a polished exterior will encourage people to want to get to know your interior. Being a boss that people are proud of starts with how you present yourself. Polish your look, your manners, and always put your best foot forward.
Use your power well and share it
Bosses have a great deal of power. Sometimes that power comes from their position, and sometimes it comes from their knowledge. Using your power for control and hoarding your knowledge is how you keep your Bad Bosses Club membership.
Start using your power to get the right things done and to inspire people to believe in themselves. Share your power with your team, so they have the authority needed to do their job or to have that next big breakthrough.
Get better at your job
The Peter Principle says that in a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to their level of incompetence. In other words, people work in a competent manner, and so they are promoted, but they are promoted into a position where they are no longer competent. And, this is how bad bosses get their start. They get comfortable by thinking they have arrived and so they relax. This feeling of comfort is toxic to their future and to their employees.
To get better at your job, start by attending seminars, webinars, or join an industry group. Practice the art of continuous learning and watch your Bad Bosses Club membership get revoked.
Improve your employee’s self-esteem
A bad boss maintains their membership in the Bad Bosses Club by damaging their employee’s self-esteem. This is done through constant criticism, inflating mistakes, falsely accusing them of errors, and spreading rumors about them.
Find opportunities to praise along with the criticism that breeds improvement. Know the facts before seeking blame, and never spread rumors about your employees.
Ask for feedback to be a better manager
The first rule of the Bad Bosses Club is to never ask for feedback. The membership is based entirely on being a boss that is above needing feedback because they are always right and because they hold a position of authority. If the membership committee for the Bad Bosses Club ever finds out a member asked their employees for feedback, they immediately revoke their membership and ban them for life.
Start seeking regular feedback on how you are doing from your team, openly listen to the feedback, and then put it into practice.
Stop playing favorites
The Bad Bosses Club has several seminars on how to play favorites. The Bad Bosses Club knows that in order for a bad boss to keep their job, they have to have allies. Playing favorites gives them allies because employees naturally want to feel important and valued. When someone knows they are one of the boss’s favorites and possibly “untouchable,” they will always sing the good praises of the bad boss.
Don’t play favorites, but do treat everyone fairly. Being fair and honest gives you genuine allies who will sing your good praises. They do this because they know everyone is treated fairly based on their merit.
Get out of their way
When you are in the Bad Bosses Club, you have to act as a roadblock for your employees by running interference while they try to do their job. The Bad Bosses Club teaches its members to fly in, mess everything up and then fly out, leaving a confusing mess for the employee to sort through and attempt to put back on track.
Provide a clear and well-articulated vision, have regular checkpoints, and move out of their way.
Delegate, coach, and guide to be a better manager
In the Bad Bosses Club, they want you to delegate tasks down to see if an employee will sink or swim, but the fine print of this rule says always to make sure they sink. Bad bosses do this by continuously being dissatisfied with the end result. The script they provide members to use for this section is to say “this isn’t what I wanted” or “this isn’t what we agreed to” or “I knew you were unequal to the task.”
Delegate tasks and provide coaching and guidance along the way. When you supplement your delegation with coaching and guidance, you ensure success by keeping them on the right path. Employees start to demonstrate progressive responsibility and maintain their motivation and confidence by achieving wins.
Provide regular, quantifiable and actionable feedback
The Bad Bosses Club teaches its members to give irregular and intangible feedback. They provide each member with a regularly updated list of generic items that have a 50/50 chance of being true.
Recognize the work employees are doing by being present an observing. Do not use hearsay; document the examples well so you can be specific. Turn the feedback into an action plan with timelines and a clear picture of the end result.
Stop undermining your employee’s trust and be a better manager
The Bad Bosses Club goes to great lengths to teach its members how to undermine the trust of employees. They have classes on running interference by not communicating change. They teach members how to damage someone’s credibility through gossip. There is training on how to ensure failure by leaving out important details and many more.
Start to cultivate, build, and earn your employees’ trust. These things require a significant investment of time and energy on your part. To get started, keep your promises, talk about the good work they are doing, and have their back when things don’t always turn out as expected.
It is very easy to earn your membership in the Bad Bosses Club. It is just as easy to have your membership revoked and to be granted membership into the Good Bosses Club. Deciding which club to join and choosing which membership policies you want to follow is entirely up to you. Will you follow the good boss or bad boss policies today?
Last updated on October 15th, 2019 at 05:48 am
