5 Qualities of Horrible Bosses

I was reading through this article on the 5 Qualities of Remarkable Bosses and thought it would be fun to list 5 qualities of horrible bosses. If you took each of these qualities and do the opposite, you would be well on your way to becoming a remarkable boss.

Keep communication to a minimum

Keep your eployees in the dark. They don’t need to know the direction of the group or company. This also enforces that you are more important then they are. Plus anything they need to know they’ll hear through the grapevine anyway so why bother?

You don’t want your employees to get a big head and think they are important so don’t ever show interest in their work. You should, however micromanage their work because they’re doing it all wrong.

Be reactive

Planning ahead is the worst thing you can do. You should only react to problems and needs as they arise. There are several of old sayings that prove this:

• The squeaky wheel gets the grease
• Let tomorrow worry about itself

This keeps everyone on their toes because they’ll never know whats coming up next. It also makes you look like the hero because you solved all these problems. Why on earth would you want to solve a problem if no one will ever know that you solved it?

Keep employee turnover rate high

It’s best to constantly have new blood in your group. You don’t want your employees to ever feel secure in their job because people do better work when they know their time is limited. Make sure there is a toxic work environment and  ignore team morale (or actively lower it) to encourage voluntarily turnover. Don’t worry about the costs associates with training new employees, they won’t be around long enough to be fully trained anyway.

Keep all power to yourself

You are the boss because you know the most.  You need to be involved in everything. Every meeting, every email, every decision. Don’t ever let one of your team members to make a decision or lead a project. This makes you look weak and incapable plus you can’t trust any of them. Occasionally make an obviously wrong decision and stick with it no matter what, just to remind everyone who’s boss.

Sanction Incompetence

What better way to keep your power intact then to ensure you have incompetent employees. Don’t ever send your employees to training or give them projects that would increase their skill set. Hiring low-end employees is cheap and they are great scapegoats to blame when things don’t go well so always keep a few on hand.

What are some of the qualities of horrible bosses you’ve seen?