The three worst kind of bosses

In my 23 year-long corporate career, I have had the “good fortune” of bumping into many leaders who could put Michael Scott of The Office to shame; whose unwritten job title could easily be Chief Monster and whose autobiography could well be called Where Did I Come From??

Looking back, these three types really stood out for me.?

The First Type?

Hi, I am G. I am revered by all around me. My performance appraisal reflects my stellar track record, extraordinary achievements and my indispensability to the organization. “What would they do without me?” is a refrain that often runs through my mind. ??

My signature strength is my focus. In fact, I am so focused that my need to achieve transcends the organization’s need. But don’t worry, in the long run the organization will come around and ?realize it’s in their best interest. My calendar is flooded with personal agendas and one-upmanship activities. I make my team work very hard – after all it’s not easy to fulfil your personal aspirations without the support of others. Whether they want to extend that support or not is immaterial. I have my eye on the big promotion and so I sometimes create an artificial sense of priority and urgency for my team to strive towards. When these tasks are accomplished my bosses appreciate my proactiveness and ‘lean-in’ to my potential. Sometimes my team grumbles that the allocated task is perhaps not so important and bandy around phrases like ‘big picture’. I just look the other way and pretend to not understand their question. It’s amazing what you can achieve when you play dumb.

I don’t see why my team needs to reach out to my boss directly. If you ask me, it’s unnecessary. After all, someone gave it a long hard thought before they invented hierarchies. We should give it its due. The team would often come up with stupid excuses like “we couldn’t reach you,” but I put them in their place. And I might even throw a little tantrum for emphasis. That way they understand the real meaning of compliance.

I also love meetings. They really are the best. I can challenge the team constantly. Sometimes, it means that you have to point out their inadequacies but I am sure that it is a great learning experience for them. I also take the opportunity to gloat about my knowledge and wisdom and I can see my boss giving a subtle nod. Feeling superior is such a high – who needs artificial uppers when you have this?

The Narcissistic Leader: the sole purpose of my team is to make me look good

The Second type?

Hi, I am S. I am a strategic thinker. My favorite place to be is 30,000 feet above ground. I like to call this rarefied place ‘home’. But my team? They keep bothering me with mundane details. Every five minutes someone will walk into my room and fill me in on their challenges and obstacles. I have a great answer for them. I make grandiose statements, tell them that they are senior resources and they need to come up with solutions not problems. Most of the time this shuts them up and they slink away filling me with a sense of relief. But every now and then someone will argue or have a smart alec answer. In one organization, a team member retorted saying that this issue was above their pay grade. ‘What a bizarre thing to say’ I thought. So I gently reminded them that their current paygrade may be at risk if they carried on like this. That did the trick.

I have so many things on my plate and it is not my job to support each and every individual who gets stuck or comes up with a problem. You know what I think? There’s too much of this undesirable leadership literature around servant leadership, supporting and taking others along etc. People should stop reading books. The best teacher is practical experience. After all, I have done all this ‘roll up your sleeves shit’ in my younger days. I don’t have to know everything that needs to happen around me, just the important stuff which I can present to my bosses in our super exclusive briefings. I have one exception to this rule though. I am not great at delivering bad news. I like to ask my team to lead on this one. I operate from a high sense of self-awareness; it’s good to know what you can’t do well. If there is someone in the team who can do it better, who am I to come in their way?

I encourage my team to be accountable though. I give them so much freedom and empower them etc., but results have to come through and there is no compromise around this. Sometimes I am forced to take tough decisions around this but there is always a cost to having such power. Just another pretext to quote good old Spidey, ‘with great power comes great responsibility’.

The avoidant leader – the sole purpose of my team is to make me work less

The third type

Hi, I am K. Whoever said life is a marathon and not a sprint must have been on dope. I love people interactions. I pursue this by calling my employees regularly and constantly reminding them of their day to day responsibilities. I am sure they love that. This way, they don’t need to maintain any reminder systems and they must be thanking me deeply. No points for guessing that I love my ‘to do’ lists. There is no greater joy in the world than placing a tick mark against one of the items. But it is frustrating when someone else’s laziness prevents you from being able to do this. So reminding people is my superpower, my sacred service to humanity. I stay up at night wondering about my long list of pending items. But you know what helps me sleep? Calling my team at 1.00 am and having them groggily assure me that the task will get attended to first thing in the morning. I have a confession though - I secretly wish that they would get to it right away but I dispel that thought quickly. One has to show humanity as a leader and I ?know it’s important for everyone to get at least 2-3 hours of sleep a night.?

Sometimes I think employees are like children. This one time I gave 18 missed calls to an employee only to learn that he had expended valuable time in having a bath. I recommended he catch up on the latest productivity hacks, and even recommended my own book for this purpose. I ended with a very clear instruction – people should pick up their phone on the third ring. It’s common decency.?

You know what else is decent? I always start my phone calls to employees with the question “Where are you?” It’s my way of showing them I care, and to be honest keep tabs on them. That’s only because some of them have a tendency to disappear for long periods of time. I find this especially annoying on weekends and holidays.

I also like spelling out the when, how, what and where part of the task. Unfortunately there is no award in this organization for clarity of instructions else yours truly would have swept all of them.

The micromanager – the sole purpose of my team is to complete the pending items in my to do list.

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These three types of leaders have constantly frustrated me in my career. What is even more deadly is when a leader manages to embody more than one of these traits. Talk about powerful combinations.

Exaggerations aside, there are a few steps an organization can take to minimize the impact of such leaders.

1. Putting in place more skip-level meetings to gauge sentiment. If conducted properly they can provide a good opportunity to identify certain undesirable behaviors.
2. Creating structures, practices and support systems that treat employees as an organizational resource instead of a proprietary one. This means having sufficient systems, processes that throw up red flags, creating transparency and bringing in objective third parties that can intervene on a timely basis.
3. Regular 360 and other assessments for leaders to pick this up early and address it appropriately.
4. Leadership coaching or a suitable intervention for such leaders to address specific challenges especially if they show potential on other parameters.
5. Creating a safe space for employees to provide feedback, encourage open discussions and fostering higher engagement.
6. Lastly a zero tolerance policy on toxic behaviors that are not in the long term interest of the organization.?