I’m not a great fan of labelling someone a good or bad manager.  I believe it disempowers us to do so and guides the viewer to believe the situation is static and cannot be changed rather than a function of our experience and something we can take action to address.  Also because it suggests that our experience is purely a function of our manager and his or her behaviour and omits to notice that we, too, are playing a role in our experience.

A key sign that something needs to change is when the person being managed is experiencing some adverse effects as a result of his or her interactions with his or her manager, such as loss of confidence, sleepless nights, risk adversity (when taking more risk is optimal), performance getting worse (and so on…).

It’s easy to look to the manager to make changes (after all, it’s the manager who is paid more, more senior, charged with the responsibility etc.).  However, when we take this view, we are at risk of viewing our manager as the ‘parent’ whose role it is to meet the needs of our ‘child’.  We are all adults in the workplace and we are all fallible even whilst doing the best we know how in a particular moment.

So, as much as I am passionate about my work to support men and women in the workplace effectively to discharge their roles as leaders, I invite anyone who is unhappy with their experience of their manager’s behaviour to notice their own contribution to the situation and to take action to change it.  This often requires learning, sometimes very deep learning.  Looked at from a spiritual perspective, the ‘bad manager’ is a gift to us in our learning journey, even though we may not initially recognise the gift that’s tucked away inside the wrapping.