Three reasons we have terrible bosses

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Ahoy,

Today we are going to cover why we even have bad leaders/managers out there.

But first, I just want to update you on last week’s announcement - We’ll start ripping on those terrible bosses in just a second, I promise.

Last week I announced the waitlist for a new project I’ve been working on.

Well today, I’m going to give you a little bit more, and I’m really proud to reveal…

The Winning Startup!

If you are a founder/CEO of an early stage startup, you’re excited to start growing your team and your business, and you want to make your dream company a reality, this is for you.

The Winning Startup has been carefully designed to take you from founder to CEO, and from CEO to inspirational leader.

To find out more about the program and to receive amazing discounts and bonuses, join the waitlist though the website or hit “YES! Sign me up” below:

There are only 5 spaces available so you need to be on the waitlist to be in on a chance of getting onto the program.

Anyway, lets get back to our regular viewing…

I feel like I can say fairly comfortably that most people have had to deal with a terrible boss at some point.

Some of those bosses may have even gone through some leadership training.

Yet they still end up being terrible.

Either terrible at the job itself, or terrible at managing and leading people.

But with all the resources out there (like this newsletter), why do we still end up with terrible bosses?

I’m going to cover a couple of traps that “leaders” fall into and how you can avoid doing the same.

Let’s take a deeper look.

Hopefully, nobody goes into work with the intentions of doing a bad job.

I seriously hope, especially if you’re in a leadership position, that you go into work wanting to do the best you can.

But yet for some reason we still have terrible bosses?

How could this be? With all these resources, surely you should know how to behave?

I have three main thoughts around why this happens:

1. Peter’s principle

2. Lack of awareness

3. And my least favourite, ego

I did a full deep dive into Peter’s principle in a previous Premium edition, you can see that here.

So I won’t go into too much detail, but essentially, this is the principle that people will be promoted outside their level of competence.

For example, person X was good at job A so they were promoted to supervisor. Then after time they were promoted to manager, and now the fact they were good at job A actually has no impact on how good they’ll be as a manager.

And without any additional training, you have someone promoted outside their area of competence.

A surprisingly common tale found in almost all industries - I bet you’ve worked with someone that was promoted to manager because they were good at the core role, and received no management/leadership training.

Next up we have a lack of awareness.

I genuinely believe that a lot of terrible leaders are terrible leaders because they simply don’t realise they’re terrible leaders.

Now arguably this ties in very heavily with point three, but we’ll get to that in a second.

Without any leadership coaching it can be easy to think you’re doing the right thing.

If you don’t spend much time reflecting on the kind of leader you are on the kind you want to be, it can be really easy to just assume everything is fine.

And while this is incredibly unhelpful for the rest of the working world, it doesn’t necessarily have to come from a place of malice.

Now stupidity is a strong word, and I don’t think it comes from stupidity either.

Simply a lack of awareness.

Which can happen to any of us in any aspect of our lives.

I’m not judging someone for being unaware. It is up to us to take ownership therefore of their leadership journey.

Lead up the chain of command.

Support them, guide them.

Maybe anonymously send them a link to the Silent Leadership newsletter…

But onto point three and my least favourite.

The ego.

I said this is tied into point two because, sometimes their belief that they are doing the right thing that spawns from a place of ego as opposed to a lack of awareness.

When it spawns from ego, there is a genuine belief that they are right in their approach.

This is really dangerous in the workplace.

Someone that treats people poorly but believes they are doing things right, and will not accept that there is an alternative route because their belief is driven by ego.

By believing they’re doing it right, I don’t mean, they believe they are doing things like empowerment and putting people first.

I mean, they think their approach is the correct approach.

These are commonly found in the authoritarian style of leader.

This becomes significantly harder to manage and to “lead up the chain of command”.

And because that’s such a huge topic, it’s one for another day.

For now, let’s just be aware of these three pitfalls for leaders and do our best not to fall into them ourselves.

How can we do that?

1. Make sure we prepare and train for new roles

2. Maintain a level of self awareness and reflect on the actions we take

3. Keep an open mind, be open to the fact that what you’re doing right now might not be the best approach

Every time you level up as a leader, you make the lives of your team better.

So don’t stop learning and developing!

As always, have a great day.

Reece