It isn’t the erratic bully with their unpredictable mood swings, their favourites and tendency to take the credit for the work of others and the responsibility/blame for nothing . Everyone knows they are a bad, ineffective manager. No one wants to be like them. And everyone knows that is not how you should behave. No, it’s the mild mannered, even tempered, passionless manager who tries hard not to upset any one so doesn’t challenge and lacking a moral compass takes the line of least resistance. This is the manager that hurts the organisation.
Quality of management makes a significant difference but focusing on weeding out the bad managers won’t have a dramatic effect on the organisations culture or performance. But the passive , people pleaser whose primary goal is to keep every one happy who avoids confronting team members is a weak, ineffective, manager and does more to damage the organisations culture and performance than the bad manager.
These managers avoid confrontation and may be seen as incompetent or lacking accountability, as their fear of conflict can lead to unclear expectations and poor performance. They are reluctant to make difficult decision or holding people accountable.
Imagine a football team with a defender who never challenges or tackles but runs around a lot giving the impression of effort and occasionally urging team members on, but leaving it up to the rest of the team to do the best they can.
Passive managers love to tell you how swamped they are. They cancel meetings at short notice, even one to one’s , blaming too much work from ‘up above’. The real reason is that they are disorganised.
Passive managers pass little information to their team claiming they are as much in the dark as the team but truth is they have not developed informal networkers , they don’t read anything not directly related to them, don’t read between the lines or have their finger on the pulse
They don’t clarify expectations or even train beginners properly leaving people to get on with it claiming that not,”interfering” is good management. People do their tasks how they see fit without any direction or challenge.There is no collective problem solving, no team work. People get on with their own tasks in their own way, using the process they like best. Accountability is blurry, causing conflict.
And there are far more of these managers than there are bad managers or good managers. So if the aim is to change things these are the managers to target.
