Leadership

  • Bad Managers Cause Poor Mental Health

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 1 minute

    Think about it, someone in management who has never learned how to communicate will have a team unaware of what is happening. Leaders who follow the examples of those above them, who’ve created a misogynistic culture, will continue with the same practices. When things don’t go smoothly, managers getting berated from above will berate the people below them. And on and on it goes. 

    If we want a healthier, open, and inclusive workplace, we need to train the people in charge of setting the tone and the culture. All the lunchtime yoga and meditation in the world can’t overcome that shortcoming. 

  • Linked – Managers Should Encourage Employee Development

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 2 minutes

    The article below mentions something we’ve all seen way too many times. The manager who gets promoted, but never developed any of their reports to do their job, and winds up having to continue doing it. In the worst-case scenario, since the culture was not to develop people to replace you, that person is probably also learning the new role from scratch while still doing a large chunk of their old role.

    What a waste of time and talent.

  • If You Have to Constantly Remind People You’re a Leader, You’re Probably Not

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 3 minutes

    My hypothesis, and the reason for my list above, is that leaders don’t talk about being leaders any more than brilliant people talk about being smart or kind people talk about being kind. They just do it, and it shows. Leaders set the example, help others succeed, and solve problems. They share credit and take the blame. They are constantly learning from others instead of setting themselves apart. People follow them because of those characteristics. These are people you want to follow. They don’t have to raise a flag and beg people to follow them any more than the most intelligent people have to remind you of how smart they are. Their actions show it.

  • Linked – The Myth of the Brilliant, Charismatic Leader

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 2 minutes

    As I’ve heard many people say, the problem is not that having managers is bad; it’s that there are so many bad managers out there. We don’t treat managing and leadership with the attention and importance it deserves, mainly because we don’t realize how much it matters. Good management is boring. (A point made in more detail in the link below) I say that because good management has no drama and no chaos. It’s pretty simple communication about expectations and follow-through. Unfortunately, those managers don’t get highlighted in magazine features because they aren’t interesting. But that’s the point. Good management isn’t there to be entertaining in a reality-TV kind of way; it is there so that the team can get the job done.

  • Linked – Monitoring Individual Employees Isn’t the Way to Boost Productivity

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 1 minute

    I am convinced that the best managers are the ones who help remove obstacles to doing good work. Every organization has them. It’s a question of how effectively they can be navigated. In toxic environments, it’s not possible. In healthy ones overcoming obstacles is possible, and that is where managers focus their efforts. Monitoring every action of an individual employee does nothing to help them navigate the obstacles and does nothing to support them. It’s all a top-down case of the “gotchas.”

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    Is Your Organization “Well-being Washing”?

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 2 minutes

    I’ve heard of companies “green-washing” talking a good game about their work on climate change while also continuing to be a large contributor to it, but in the area of wellbeing, this was a new one. Except, it isn’t a new idea. This study asked employees at UK companies if the public statements about mental health and employee support match what is happening within the company itself. Many said that the public supportiveness did not match the internal work culture. That’s not anything new. I think we have all worked somewhere or have heard plenty of stories about workplaces where the public face of the company or even the internal HR face talks quite a lot about how much they focus on employee wellness but apparently, no one told the middle managers about it.