Posted by denised in In last Tuesday’s installment of his series Managing the Meanies, Buck suggested that the most dangerous managers in the workplace suffer from low self-esteem. This week Buck continues by discussing managers who have no problem verbally abusing their employees, often in front of colleagues. I like to call it “public displays of incompetence.” Those same bosses however, are strangely quiet when facing their own bosses…
The Morale Buster
This kind of manager is always quick with a caustic remark. One of the managers I reported to would put you down in an instant, usually with a biting sneer, almost a snarl, and often in front of your colleagues. In doing so, this morale buster was diminishing his subordinate and the perceived threat that he or she presented.
I recall well my first morale-diminishing encounter with this man. While I did not report directly to him, he was the head sales and marketing guy for our group and I was the sales manager of one of our paper mills. I had been transferred in to build the business and infuse some life into its anemic sales performance – a challenge that I thoroughly enjoyed. Each month we scheduled day-long reviews of the business, meetings in which I would present the sales numbers demonstrating our progress, new business and accounts, and consistent recovery and growth. We’d begun to really kick our competition in the pants and they were noticing. It was a real success story; month after month of positive reporting. But with this morale-busting boss, while I was making my presentations, I’d find myself wondering why he was squinting at me. Yes, he sat at the conference room table month after month, rarely making remarks or contributions, his laptop as his shield, eyes narrowed to slits like a viper.
It was almost as if he was trying to focus his prismatic predatory eyes, shifting his head in a slow side-to-side rhythm, as if preparing to strike, his tongue darting in and out sensing my fear. I recall being consumed with curiosity as to what the deal was with his strange squinting behavior. What was up with this guy? It was some time later that I learned from a body language expert that narrowing of the eyes, or squinting, is a sign of aggression, an attack signal. This bully-boss was evaluating what I was saying, determining that what he was hearing was a threat and that I was his prey.
Mute in the presence of superiors
This same bad boss, who was a rude and abusive tyrant with his people, was mute in the presence of his boss or someone he regarded as his superior. In the presence of one of the board of directors for example, he was like a stone, terrified to speak for fear of exposing himself as the fraud he surely perceived himself to be. It’s not without irony that this was the same manager who declined to have several of us participate in his performance evaluation because he knew for certain that giving us the opportunity to critique him would have been a damning career move.
If bad-bossing is so obvious why isn’t such poor management exposed to those that count? The fact is this: the particularly manipulative morale-busters portray a different image to those above them; they’re skillful at it. And unless the higher ups peel back the layers and look inside, they’re never exposed. The low self-esteem boss is as skillful at filtering the truth as the illiterate is at concealing the fact that he cannot read. Years of “fooling” people ultimately result in them living a compromised life, full of fear, disappointment and missed opportunities.
Next Tuesday: A classic case study of the dangerous low self-esteemer
Buck Hamilton is a sales and marketing executive who’s spent over thirty years working in the paper distribution business. He’s a prolific writer who’s presently working on a book which narrates the stories of sixteen Vietnam War veterans. You can read his weekly series “Managing the Meanies: A Survival Guide” every Tuesday here on Really Bad Boss.
