Bad Management

Bad Management

It’s important that we learn from our own mistakes and failures, and self-reflect in order to improve. However, there’s also a lot we can learn from things others get wrong. That, after all, is partly why psychological safety is such a powerful foundation for high-performing teams. When we share our mistakes and what we’ve learned from them, the potential for learning extends beyond ourselves to everyone around us. That’s the thinking behind this issue – I’m sharing some stories of “bad” management that newsletter readers have kindly shared with me, so we can all learn from them. This is just a selection of the stories, chosen because they highlight key themes.

I want to caveat this by pointing out that “bad” management doesn’t mean a “bad” person. As we’ll see, a lot of these examples come from people who are trying to do the “right thing” – they might just not know how to yet, they’re not sure what the “right thing” is, or they simply made a mistake. And that’s ok, as long as we learn from it!

My story – where I learned that good leadership involves being a competent manager too.

It’s only fair if I start off with a story of my own: my introduction to management was shaky. Much of what I had learned came from managers who either lacked experience or clung to outdated and traditional ideas. I knew a lot of this management practice was “bad”, but I also didn’t know what “good” looked like! So when I took over a seven-member technology team, my naive vision was to be the cool, fun, approachable manager who everyone loved.

My intentions were good but my execution was flawed. In my quest to be liked, I overlooked the cornerstone of management: competence. In trying so hard to be the go-to guy who everyone liked hanging out with, I lost sight of the core essence of my role – managing the flow of work, priorities, technology, value delivery, operations and finance. The wake-up call came when a frustrated team member confronted me about my lack of focus on managing the day-to-day tasks and priorities for the team. They were havign to spend too much time working out what to do and how to do it, rather than doing it. I had to swallow the bitter pill that my approach was hampering my team’s performance, and I walked home that day worried that I was actually awful at the job I’d so desperately wanted to be great at.

But that confrontation forced me to re-evaluate and refocus on what mattered most: enabling my team to excel. I worried less about being liked, and instead concentrated on their needs, managing priority conflicts, and ensuring smooth work by giving them what they needed and then getting out of their way. I began to foster a more authentic bond with them as their manager, not their buddy. And counterintuitively, that meant that the fun followed. We became genuinely high-performing and had a great time working as a team.

I like to think I’m a better manager now, but I know I still have a lot to learn. Let’s take a look at some of the stories others have shared and learn from them:

The unintended impact of delaying feedback and causing unnecessary anxiety.

I had a manager who was nice to me etc., however refused to tell me if I was doing well or not during my probation. This was when I was 19 so, relatively new into my career. When I would ask for feedback he would always say “You’ll receive your feedback at your probation review.” This was a full 6 months of stress and anxiety, and made me physically ill.

Then when it got to my probation review he said, “Yep, everything is great!” This caused so much unnecessary stress, and it made me think that as a manager myself, I should always ensure that I give feedback to my team whenever asked, and more frequently in 1:1s etc. 

A manager thought that doing everything out in the open was the right thing to do, despite the impact on people in the team.

My boss would always insist on very detailed, critical, public feedback for everything we ever did. As we were a remote team, almost everything we communicated was in group zoom calls or in Slack chat. Our boss would give feedback on everything we did, made, shared, etc, and very rarely give any praise for it. He thought he was maintaining high standards, but it meant that people didn’t want to share anything because they knew it would only get critiqued, and in public too. There was at least one case where someone was getting feedback in the chat and we could all tell they were getting upset, but he didn’t seem to notice and kept on going until they went offline. 

Here’s a tale of a boss using emotional blackmail and “friendship” to get what they want.

After working for my previous company for 15 years, our company of 10 was taken over by a company of 1,600. Their HR team issued new employment contracts with much less favourable terms and there was pressure to sign. I chose not to sign but started to be paid a lower salary anyway. When I chose redundancy, my boss said that if I didn’t take the redundancy offer, ‘you’ll just get fed whatever jobs they see fit. I could have you cleaning toilets if I wanted’.

During this process, my boss asked me to waive my right to a 2-year ‘earn-out’ clause in the company sale agreement (signing my small percentage over to him). He saw it as ‘his’ money due to some previous negotiations between him and the organisation. He said that if I didn’t agree, our 15-year friendship was over; I decided the friendship must already be over.

I took no pleasure in lodging a formal complaint against both my boss and HR, but I was not convinced my life would be made easy with the settlement agreement. My boss came in the following morning and told me that he neither wished to see or speak to me unless I needed him for work purposes. I no longer wanted to be in the same building as him so asked HR if I could leave, and did. I contacted my boss after everything was done as I don’t like leaving things on bad terms, but he didn’t reply.

An example of the toxic impact of holding different expectations for women and men. 

My team was without a manager for months, so I was excited when we hired what would be the first female manager of my tech career. She was attentive, but after a few weeks I got the feedback that I was too abrasive and I needed to phrase my suggestions as questions and not interrupt during meetings. I asked if she would give the same advice to a man, and she said of course not. 

(Reader: they found another job!)

This story shows how it’s good to change things around sometimes, but we also need to allow people time to adapt and improve.

I had a manager who always wanted to try out the new idea that he’d read about online, or been told about by a friend. Many of the ideas were awful (e.g. changing everyone’s contracts to hourly rates instead of salaries, or constant re-organisations), and some were ok or at least interesting (e.g. company-wide sprints and Friday afternoons off). But the main problem was that he never gave them any time to embed and to work. Within a few weeks, or even a few days, he’d ditch the idea and move on to the next shiny thing. It made work really stressful, and we never got a chance to practice and be good at anything.

This is an example of how the values of an organisation don’t always get reflected in how managers behave.

Towards the end of the year, I thought Christmas had arrived early, as I secured a promising position at a respected NHS Board, a role that resonated with my values of integrity, authenticity, and self-care. However, six months into my tenure, a leadership change brought about a stark shift in dynamics. The new leadership contradicted the organisation’s values of openness and responsibility, putting me in difficult positions.

When a promotion opportunity arose, I applied and excelled in the initial interview. I was identified as a “preferred” candidate for an informal discussion regarding the available posts. However, after this conversation, I was informed I was unsuccessful. This left me disappointed and humiliated. When seeking feedback, I learned that all candidates were labelled “preferred,” which went against the organisation’s recruitment policy. When considering reapplying for a second post, the hiring manager was noncommittal about a fair process. This, among other reasons, led to my decision to leave the organisation, as it became evident that my values and expectations were not aligned with the prevailing culture.

A good example here of how financially incentivising managers can result in negative behaviours.

A boss asked me to complete a task within the month. My son was then admitted to hospital for a heart issue, and when I indicated I would not be able to complete it in time and needed an extension, I was told I had to complete it as his bonus was riding on it.  I reached out to my team to assist, and it did get completed, but it was at a considerable sacrifice.  When it came to my bonus, this came up, and I shared that it took a toll on me (in fact, I was not asked how my child was).  I was given the impression that I should be grateful for the slight increase I got above the norm.  The next year I was told they were taking away some of my bonus to give to an Individual contributor who, under normal circumstances, was not eligible for bonus, to reward them for performance. As it was a large company, I tried to move to other roles, but my boss interfered, so I quit within the year. 

“The Atlas of Bad Leadership”

Elizabeth Ayer shared a work-in-progress that she and colleagues are working on: “The Atlas of Bad Leadership”. It’s a fantastic piece of work, too long to fit into this newsletter, but what I love about it is how Elizabeth et al have established some core archetypes of poor management into primary categories of:

• Reorgs
• Prioritisation
• Time
• Information 
• Feedback
• General Conduct
• Psychological Safety
• Rewards

We can see how the examples above fit into at least one of these categories, and I love the idea of collating all these management antipatterns together, so we can all learn from them. Undoubtedly there will be more to come from Elizabeth and folks!  

I hope you found these stories of “bad” management useful. I believe it’s within us all to be amazing managers and leaders, but it’s also within us to, intentionally or otherwise, be the subject of these stories of bad management. We can always do better, and we can do that through feedback and self-reflection alongside learning from others’ successes and mistakes. We’ll never be perfect, we’ll make mistakes, but if we admit it when we do so, make it right, and learn to improve, hopefully we’ll be the subject of more “good” management stories than “bad” ones!

Psychological Safety 101

“When pilots display emotion-laden rejection of collaborative safety or deem CRM too touchy-feely, they are acting in an unsafe manner. The flight deck is a sociotechnical system, and it’s time the industry does a better job of training the socio aspect of safety.”

Clearly, Crew Resource Management and psychological safety are being heard in the same contexts much more often – here’s another, excellent, article about the importance of fostering environments where people can speak up despite any power differentials or hierarchies. Psychological Safety on the Flight Deck by Kimberly Perkins.


Psychologists and others have posited hundreds, maybe thousands of different cognitive biases over the years, and new suggestions pop up frequently. This is a fascinating paper by Aileen Oeberst and Roland Imhoff about cognitive biases that suggests that all these biases boil down to a few essential beliefs combined with confirmation bias. “Toward Parsimony in Bias Research: A Proposed Common Framework of Belief-Consistent Information Processing for a Set of Biases“

We recently did an issue on psychological safety and burnout, and here’s Simon Sinek echoing exactly what we discussed in that issue – people must feel safe to ask for help and to share that they’re tired, sick, or stressed, or that they have stuff going on at home – because if they can’t, it’ll contribute to burnout.

Friend of the newsletter (and me!) Bazil Arden has been working on this idea, inspired by listening to Amy Edmondson, of a “Discussability Index”. It’s a team exercise, intended to help teams surface and examine what they feel safe to discuss, and what they don’t. I’m looking forward to trying this out in a future workshop, and it’s certainly a useful tool to facilitate a discussion. One thing to bear in mind though when trying this out is that typically “safe” topics can still be unsafe for some people – and they might not feel comfortable saying so (because doing so may disclose something they don’t wish to disclose). For example, a team member experiencing financial troubles may feel uncomfortable talking about holidays, a team member who spends all their free time caring for a sick parent might not enjoy discussing weekend activities, and a team member with an undisclosed eating disorder may not feel safe talking about food. 

I’m really excited to be going back on Becky’s Leadership Log podcast to talk psychological safety again! This time, we’re answering listeners’ questions and debating their suggestions, so head over to Twitter and suggest your question or simply reply to this email! 

Finally, This is a stunning piece called All These Hysterical Women, by Lyz Lenz, who writes the excellent newsletter “Men Yell at Me”

“Any time a woman speaks up in her defense, it’s hysteria.
…
These are our lives on the line. We should be hysterical; we should become unruly, unmanageable, we should fill the halls with rage, and the streets with screams. We should become unhinged, unfettered, and overwrought. We need to be hysterical. Our lives are worth it.”

More Psychological Safety Workshops!

We have a few places left on our upcoming workshops in October and November – you can choose from:

• Intermediate: essential theory and practice to help you level up your knowledge and skills.
• In-depth: examining elements such as cultural impacts on psychological safety, complexity, sociotechnicality, organisational scale and more.
• Practices: From Empathy Mapping to TRIZ. You learn practices and take away canvases and templates too.
• Leadership: Specifically for managers and senior leaders (or folks on that journey): we cover effective management practices, strategic leadership, reporting, 1-1s, work design and flow, managing neurodiverse people and more. 

 Find out more and register here.

This week’s poem:

Saltwater, by Finn Butler

Everyone who terrifies you is sixty-five
percent water
and everyone you love is made of stardust,
and I know
sometimes
you cannot even breathe deeply, and
the night sky is no home, and
you have cried yourself to sleep enough
times
that you are down to your last two percent,

but

nothing is infinite,
not even loss.

You are made of the sea and the stars, and
one day
you are going to find yourself again.