Today’s not-so-funny joker wraps up the Joker’s series, and it’s a character you might have had the misfortune of coming across at work as a toxic manager. Interesting thing about this archetype is how often they exist among high-performers. But just because someone is good at what they do doesn’t mean they’re good at managing or leading others.
Epitomized by Meryl Streep’s character Miranda Priestly in the movie, The Devil Wears Prada, this is one of the worst type of people you might end up working with because of their negative impact to both your professional growth and your health.
Their MO is based on the simple principle of, ‘I am a genius. I am the most competent person in this place, and the rest of the staff don’t know what they’re doing.’
They’re driven by their ego’s, so they do everything they can to prove that:
1) They hog all the attention. All the time. Everything is about them – and if it isn’t, then it should. They’ll take credit for other people’s work when a project is a huge success but when it fails, they’re always ready to throw others under the bus [Check point #8].
2) As a manager, rather than empower you to do your work, they’ll micro-manage. They’ll always find something to pick on, even if your work is perfect. So expect to hear things like, “I don’t like this font, and why do you use this bullet point shape not that.”
3) They have a problem with communication. They think that everybody is telepathic and could understand what’s going on in their (sometimes twisted) minds. This communication gap is bad for business, as it leads to work being done over and over and over again only because clear expectations of deliverables don’t get communicated in a timely manner. Unfortunately, the worse ones do that on purpose with the intention of proving their principle of them being the most competent. They want to call you out for your supposed incompetence though it is their poor communication skills that caused the entire thing to tumble.
4) They have no vision, no strategy, nothing. There’s an Arabic expression that translates to, “He doesn’t know his head from his feet.” This is interesting because the basic thing you would expect a leader in an organization to have is clear vision and strategy, otherwise what is the company doing?
5) They’re so insecure about their lack of understanding but are neither willing to admit it nor ask for help. Since they see themselves as know-it-alls, they tend to be ignorant and are not open to learning anything new. Even if an employee has a better comprehension of a subject, they would never ask for their opinion.
6) Simply put, they never outgrew the insecure bully that used to torment other children on the playground. They will never appreciate you for work well done and instead find ways to engage in emotional abuse, which is defined in a 2017 survey by the Workplace Bullying Institute as the “repeated mistreatment of an employee by one or more employees or boss; abusive conduct that is: threatening, humiliating, or intimidating, work sabotage, or verbal abuse.”
7) They lack empathy. They wouldn’t care if you’re having problems at home, and instead, tell you to check your feelings at the door.
8) They take no responsibility for poor decisions. Sometimes they pretend the outcome of the poor decision didn’t even happen. Sometimes they hire people for the specific purpose of being a scapegoat when everything fails under their ‘leadership’.
People like this are very difficult to deal with because their characters actually gets in the way of the very thing they claim to want to advance – business goals. Most people can’t do their best work in such environments, and would just do the minimum to get by. The most direct way to gauge whether or not you are working for a toxic manager is through your feelings at the end of your work day. Do you feel stressed (for no reason), disengaged, unappreciated, dissatisfied, fatigued, burnt out?
Unfortunately, all these negative emotions end up taking a toll on your physical health as well, so the sooner you can find another job and leave, the bigger a favor you’ll be doing yourself. You spend 40 hours at work every week, and you really do not need this type of negative energy in your life, when you could be spending your time and energy on more positive activities than handling a bully.
Now that we’ve seen an example of how to not be a leader, what makes a true leader?
I love Quincy Adams definition of a leader that says, “If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.”
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