Philip R. Diab, MBA, PMP

One of the benefits of working in a variety of organizations across several geographies is the opportunity to interact with a diverse set of management approaches and styles. Throughout my career I have been fortunate enough to see both positive and negative aspects of management and leadership. This has helped shape my own style and allowed me to understand how to better motivate people.

A specific style of management that has always puzzled me is what I would call the “Mis-Manager”. This is generally an individual who believes that the best way to motivate people is to instill fear in the hearts and minds of the team members.

What is further interesting is that this type of manager comes in different flavors which includes:

• The Abusive Manager. This is the person who likes to yell, shout, and scream at their employees to get them to perform certain tasks and complete work.
• The Divide and Concur Manager. This is a person who believes that the best way to lead is to pit employees (peers in particular) against each other. Here the idea is that by making people fight against each other, they are going to be more competitive and generate greater productivity on behalf of the company or team.
• The Cold Manager. This is a person who believes that positive reinforcement will only lead to lazy workers and team members. As such this manager will withhold any praise even in the face of heroic team achievements. The idea is if the team members think that the manager is not satisfied with their work, they will put in more time and effort on the job.
• The Moody Manager. This person seems to possess multiple personalities. Sometimes the manager is warm, friendly, and appreciative while other times they are cold, negative, and angry. The idea here is to keep the team members off kilter trying to guess which personality they are dealing with. By having this shift in moods the team members may not “take advantage of the kindness” of the manager.
• The Lame Duck Manager. This person is the type of manager who claims that they have no actual power so whenever a team member approaches them with the complaint, they end up joining in the complaints against “management”. The idea is to demonstrate that this person is one of the team and is wronged in the same manner as everyone else.

Needless to say that team members reporting to or interacting with ineffective managers get frustrated and resentful. The ultimate result is one that is paid for by the company or the project.

The thing that I’ve been wondering about here is whether these types of managers and leaders are caused by corporate culture or if they join the organization with their bad attitudes and behaviors which ultimately get passed onto others?
Perhaps like everything else in life these ineffective managers are the result of bad genes and bad environment. They may come to the organization with telltale signs and the specific corporate culture tends to draw out the worst from them.

A long time ago one of my favorite managers told me that the most important job of the manager is to shield their team from the “crap” that is happening outside the team. In other words, the good manager is someone who can create a barrier that prevents negative energy and corporate politics from seeping into the team environment and resulting in a derailment to the work or project. I certainly agree with this synopsis as I’ve seen it in action.

However, what should team members do if their own manager is the culprit or generator of the negative energy, poor behavior, mismanagement, and derailment? Unfortunately the answer to this question is very complex and very much rooted in the organization and regional culture. The simple answer is “it depends.”

The bottom line is that there has to be awareness by higher-level managers in the organization that this negative behavior is happening and an assessment that it is outside the norm from the organization. For if this manager is acting within the norm the best that the team members can hope for is a good recommendation as they polish up their resumes and head out seeking other employment options.

In the end there are some who will argue that the tactics outlined above work, even though they may not be the most idealistic approach.  My own opinion is that while they may work on a short term basis, from a long term perspective they are likely to lead to bad employee morale, dysfunctional teams, and ultimately a loss of talent.