37 Unhabits of Highly Successful Managers
November 14, 2007 by David Zinger
Filed under Business
We all know the habits of highly successful managers but what about the unhabits?
If you want to be a highly successful manager who “kicks butts” you will need to break the following 37 habits:
View screens all day long while screening out the people you manage.
Put work before life as in the term work/life balance.
Believe that high stress in yourself and others demonstrates what a tough manager you are.
Delude yourself by thinking you are indispensable and the organization could not get by without you.
Inform your employees that policy and procedures trump people every time.
Categorize emotions as a trivial part of management that can be reduce to an emoticon :(
Ignore integrity and reduce respect.
Achieve results at the cost of relationships.
Build relationships at the cost of results.
Disparage delegation because you are the person who can do it all.
Refer to the people who work for you as human resources or human capital rather than living breathing complex people.
Treat everyone identically because people are all the same.
Keep your mission statement framed on the wall rather than refreshed in your heart.
Write a daily to-do list that would take 2 weeks to complete.
Manage change with the phrase: “get over it.”
Transform management by walking around into management by stomping around as you yell and compel others to get your way.
When the going gets tough avoid dealing with it and skim the surface with management slogans such as “there is no ‘I’ in team.”
Maintain that employee engagement is just a buzz word and you don’t want any romance in the office.
Be adamant that the only place people should use their strengths is in the gym.
Text rather than email; email rather than phone; phone rather than connect face-to-face; and keep your office door closed 24/7.
Keep performance management feedback to a minimum by avoiding it all together or use a computerized ranking system that emails results to employees.
Generate a weekly plethora of reports to give the appearance of busyness and productivity.
Watch NBC’s The Office to uncover new management techniques and principles to put into practice with your staff.
Avoid taking vacations with your family because they(family or vacations – you pick) are a waste of time.
Reduce your important communication to a muffled management mumble.
When things go wrong blame an external villain, tell people that you are a victim, and let others know there was nothing you could do.
Listen closely for when people pause in their conversation so that you can state your point of view and take over the conversation.
If people say you are not listening to them say, “I understand and I know how you feel.”
Motivate your staff by dangling carrots in front of their faces and dismissal slips behind their backs.
At budget time tell people how much time you must spend working on the numbers and enjoy the opportunity to close your door and have a block of uninterrupted time to solve the latest sudoku.
Use a generic recognition method for all employees – call all males and all females, Pat.
Avoid saying anything if you think a project is doomed to failure and wait for someone else to screw up so that you maintain your teflon project management record.
Keep employee ideas contained to slips they place in a suggestion box.
Micromanage your people because you are a detail person.
Kiss up, kick down and whatever you do don’t wobble.
If you have a difficult employee avoid them but have all your staff take workshops on the topic you are afraid to confront the difficult employee with.
Set a fine example for the next generation of managers: Ensure that you fire someone on take-your-child-to-work-day.
Photo Credit: Bad Habit’s DIE HARD by http://flickr.com/photos/daylove/207331556/
The unhabits were created but not practiced by David Zinger
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and strength based leadership site.
This is a WOW list. Unfortunately, I have worked for many managers who embrace some of these steps pretty aggresively. Managers aren’t always the “people persons” we expect them to be. Great stuff!
Bridget:
Thanks for saying it is a WOW list.
If you turn WOW upside down it spells MOM. I am not sure that means anything but I think if they had a good mother perhaps those struggling managers would be the successful people persons we should not only expect but demand.
David
David, it’s definitely a WOW list for management, but if you really want to have some fun try applying it to “leaders,” especially those in politics. In fact, I think I’ll borrow it and do just that at http://www.leadershipturn.com. It certainly dovetails with the quote I used today.
Miki,
Yes the points could be used to unlead or unmanage. I hope the political leaders read your post and decide to undo some of the things they have done.
David
This list is good although it begs for some type of positive summation- I’ll try with an example: my management of professional consultants taught me that if you care deeply about people’s careers and strongly link that to what they are doing for the company today, people will do just about anything for you. It IS personal.
Bob,
I appreciate your conclusion, of course for me this would be a habit not an unhabit. Thanks.
David
“Refer to the people who work for you as human resources or human capital rather than living breathing complex people.”
Wouldn’t this resolve a lot of problems. I am always troubled when I hear that what is important is what you bring to the organisation…should we not be working for other reasons as well. Can’t someone come up with a course to managers to teach them that performance at all cost is not everything? We are not robots and I am thrilled to read Mr. Turek’s comment:”my management of professional consultants taught me that if you care deeply about people’s careers and strongly link that to what they are doing for the company today, people will do just about anything for you. He adds this is personal. I think he should spread the word…
Diane,
I agree that working together through our humaness would resolve a lot as opposed to making objects of our humaness by calling people resources or captial. Work is personal! Thank you.
David
LOL
Problem we have, is there are people still teaching some of these habits!
Andrew
And perhaps even worse, there are people following these habits. Good point from greatmanagement.
Wow…. do you know my ex boss? Worst boss I ever had. She was a desperation hire on the part of the company we worked for. She had no background in her job but she was willing to take on a very disliked location.
Once there, she set about alienating everyone, including other managers who’d proivded her a lot of help and support – ie. time teaching her her job…..
She would pit employees against each other, belittle people in public, make unfounded claims, and generally treat people like garbage. She went so far as to write a slanderous letter to HR about one employee, who took stress leave for the first tme in their 30 year career.
The kicker? Our city is in a desperate employment situation – far too few people for the number of jobs available. This terrible manager has managed to get a job in the organisation training other managers. The company must be really desperate!
Hilarious. She is THE worst person for the job. Those of us who’ve worked for her have taken bets to see how long she lasts; we think they’ve hired her in order to let her rise to her level of incompetence. About two inches off the floor we figure.
Yikes,
Funny but not funny at all. I am worried that she might adopt these principles as the core competencies for training others.
David