Signs of a Bad Manager: 6 Habits That Often Start at the Top

The clearest signs of a bad manager are that they focus on themselves, blame others instead of taking ownership, chase credit and bonuses, avoid tough conversations, and tell people what to do instead of developing them. I’m Gene Hammett, co-founder of Core Elevation, and I’ve watched many of these habits flow down from the leaders above them.

Most bad managers aren’t bad people. They got promoted for doing the work, and nobody taught them to lead. I’ve interviewed over 1,200 leaders of fast-growth companies, and the fix usually starts one level up.

Spot the 6 Signs of a Bad Manager

When a founder asks me whether a manager is the real problem, I walk through the same six signs. Every sign has an opposite, and the opposite shows you what good looks like on your team.

Read the table once for your managers. Then read it again for yourself (yes, you), because I’ll come back to that later and I won’t let you skip it.

Self-focus sits underneath the other five. I’ll say it as plainly as I can: “A bad manager is one that’s always in it for themselves.”

Bad managers chase significance in all the wrong places. “The bad manager is the one looking for the accolades, looking for the bonus and everything.” They want to be the MVP, and they want you to notice.

Here’s what that looks like week to week.

• ●Their updates to you are mostly about their own wins.
• ●They keep the visible, high-stakes work for themselves.
• ●They judge a good quarter by what it did for their bonus or their title.

A good manager plays a bigger game. They want to create more MVPs, so the team keeps winning when they’re out of the room. Which one would you rather have running your biggest team?

Blame is the tell. When something breaks, a bad manager already knows whose fault it is, and the answer is never them.

You can hear it in the language, with lines like “Sales dropped the ball,” “Ops was late again,” and “My people just don’t care.”

Every problem has a name attached, and somehow the manager’s own name never makes the list.

Good managers do the opposite. I put it this way: a good manager lifts the team to a higher level of performance and “is willing to take extreme ownership of the problems, as if they are all theirs.”

I’m picky about three words here, because people use them like synonyms. Responsibility is something I hand you, accountability is something I measure, and ownership is something you carry yourself, even when nobody is checking.

In other words, a manager who blames has the responsibility on paper. What they’re missing is the ownership.

On a bad manager’s team, the manager’s name is on every win. The person who stayed late to fix the client issue never gets mentioned in the leadership meeting.

Your people notice this faster than you do. Once they believe their work only makes someone else look good, they start holding back their best ideas.

A good manager flips the spotlight. The team gets the credit, out loud and by name, and the manager takes the heat when something goes wrong.

Think about the last win your company celebrated, and notice whose name you heard first.

Conflict avoidance is common, and it’s often learned from the boss. The manager tiptoes around issues and talks about people instead of talking to them.

The missed deadline goes unmentioned. The underperformer gets a vague comment in a review months later instead of a real conversation in the moment, and your strong performers quietly pick up the slack.

I know tiptoeing feels kind in the moment. Over time, it’s the least kind thing you can do for the person who never hears the truth.

I call that “tiptoeing.” The opposite is a direct, skilled tough conversation, which is a skill you can learn. Amanda and I co-wrote How to Have Tough Conversations on exactly this skill, and if you want the practical version, start with our guide to having tough conversations at work.

A telling manager directs every step and makes the decisions for the team. You might call it micromanagement, and you’d be right, but the higher cost is what it teaches people to do, which is wait.

I’ve lived this one. I built my first business, a sports-travel company, past $1 million in first-year sales, and I ran the day off color-coded lists and spreadsheets (nearly every decision came back to me).

Back in 2019, I wrote an Inc.com column about a group of employees who waited on my signal before every move. All that control saved me zero time.

Good managers ask questions that build ownership. Here are three I’d start with.

• ●What do you think we should do?
• ●What options did you consider?
• ●What would you decide if I weren’t here?

Ask those three for one week and watch what happens to the line of people waiting outside your manager’s door.

Your top people get stuck on maintenance work with no new responsibility. They keep the lights on, and nobody stretches them. Ask yourself how long your best person has been doing the exact same job.

High potentials don’t stay put for long in that spot. As I’ve said, “Toxic people drive them away: toxic managers, managers that blame others, managers that don’t allow them a chance to grow.”

A good manager stretches high potentials on purpose, with a bigger project, a small team to lead, or a real decision to own. Stretch assignments are how you end up developing your own leaders instead of always hiring them from outside.

Match the Common Red Flags to Their Root Habit

Most lists online give you 10, 15, or even 25 signs of a bad manager. That is a lot to keep in your head on a busy Tuesday. I find six roots more useful, because when you fix a root, the symptoms usually follow.

Pick the root that shows up most on your team before you read on. Write it in the margin if you have to.

Look at How the Manager Got Promoted

Good employees become bad managers for a simple reason. They’re promoted for doing the work well and never taught to lead, so they keep doing and controlling.

Gallup sees the same pattern. When asked managers why they got the job, they usually pointed to their tenure or their success in a role that had nothing to do with managing people, and Gallup also estimates that companies miss on real management talent in 82 percent of their manager hiring decisions.

So your best salesperson becomes the sales manager, and your best engineer becomes the engineering lead (I’ve watched this play out in company after company). Here’s what changes for them on day one.

None of that makes them a bad person. A manager who was never taught to lead will fall back on what they’re good at, which is doing the work and controlling the outcome.

You might be thinking, “My managers are adults. They should figure it out.” I hear you. But nobody figures out leadership by accident.

Look for the Opposites Before You Promote

You can catch a lot of this before the promotion happens. Instead of asking who your best performer is, ask who already shows the good-manager opposites. Look for the person who does these things without being told to.

• ●Gives credit to teammates in front of other people
• ●Owns a miss instead of explaining it away
• ●Helps a peer get better at the work
• ●Raises a hard issue directly and kindly

Then commit to teaching the new manager to lead. A promotion without that support is how good employees become bad managers.

Check the Mirror Before You Blame the Manager

If you’re a founder reading about the signs of a bad manager, you probably have a name in mind already. Before you go there, look at yourself, because managers learn from their bosses. What if your manager is copying you?

In client company after client company, I see managers, directors, and VPs avoiding conflict. When I trace it back, they’re copying how the CEO handles tough conversations, talking around issues and tiptoeing instead of getting to the heart of it.

I’ve put it this way before: “The good habits flow down to their team a little bit slower than the bad habits. The bad habits have a highway, no resistance to download.”

I call that “the bad-habit highway.” Your good habits take the slow road to your team, and your bad ones get there by lunch.

So fixing the managers starts with the leader above them changing too. Ask yourself these six questions, one for each sign.

• ●When something breaks, do I look for who to blame or for what I own?
• ●Do I talk around tough issues with my leadership team?
• ●Do I make decisions my managers should be making?
• ●Who gets named when we celebrate a win?
• ●Are my best people stretching, or only maintaining?
• ●Am I chasing my own scoreboard more than building the team’s?

Which of those would your managers answer about you?

The work at the top pays off down the line. Chris Ratterman, CEO of Shady Rays, has said publicly that I helped him become the leader his company needed at that stage, so he could put his time into the highest-impact work while his team members led their own areas. Chris did the work, and the credit is his.

Count What a Bad Manager Costs Your Company

Bad managers drive away the people you most want to keep. High performers end up carrying the load while underperformers are tolerated, and toxic behavior becomes the culture.

You’ve probably heard that people quit their manager before they quit the company. Most founders nod at that line, so here’s my question: are you acting on it?

The research backs up what I’ve heard in hundreds of conversations with CEOs.

Look at the second and third rows together, because that is where the fixable part lives. Just over half of the people who quit told Gallup their manager or company could have kept them, and about half never had a real conversation about their future before they left.

SHRM found the same thing from a different angle. In its 2019 research on toxic workplace cultures, most of the people who quit over culture named their manager as the main reason, and SHRM put the cost of that turnover at $223 billion over five years.

I know a national number can feel far away from your own team. So let’s bring it home. Here’s what the cost looks like inside a fast-growth company.

• ●Top performers leave, and they leave first.
• ●Underperformers stay, because nobody has the tough conversation.
• ●The team stops growing, and you end up as the fallback for every decision.

Be honest about which of those three you’re living with right now.

Help a Bad Manager Lead Better in 5 Steps

Can a bad manager become a good one? Often, yes, with real skill-building and coaching, if they’re willing to take ownership.

I’m not going to tell you to fire every bad manager. Most of them were set up to struggle, and the steps below are where I’d start before you make any bigger call.

Go back to the six mirror questions and pick the one that stings (you know which one it is). Change that habit first, out loud, so your managers can see you doing it.

Your managers are watching how you handle the hard stuff. When you stop tiptoeing, you give them permission to stop too.

Sit down with the manager and name the sign you’re seeing, with a specific example from the last two weeks. Keep the conversation about the behavior and what it’s doing to the team.

Then ask what they see, and give them room to answer. The conversation goes better when they help name the fix.

Expect it to feel awkward, and have it anyway.

Blame fades when ownership becomes the expectation. In your next team meeting, ask the manager to walk through a recent miss and say what they own in it.

Model it yourself first, because when you own your part of a problem in front of your leadership team, you make it safe for them to do the same.

Ask the manager to go one week answering every request from the team with a question first. “What do you think?” is enough to start.

Sounds small, right? Try it yourself for one afternoon and count how often you reach for the answer.

The team will push back at first, because they’re used to being told. Stay with it, and you’ll see who starts bringing solutions instead of problems.

Ask the manager to name the person behind every win in their next update to you. Then ask which high potential on their team is ready for a stretch assignment, and what it will be.

Skill-building takes time, and coaching helps it stick. Our guide to manager development goes deeper on building those skills.

Are You Becoming a Bad Manager?

If you’re a manager reading this, the fact that you’re checking is a good sign. Bad managers rarely ask the question, so give yourself some credit for being here.

Be honest here (nobody is looking) and run through this quick self-check.

You can build the habits that make a good manager. Start with the leadership skills managers need and pick one to practice this week.

Work With a Bad Manager Without Becoming One

Some of you are reading this because you report to one of these managers. I won’t hand you a list of ways to outsmart your boss, because that rarely helps your career. What helps is ownership.

Here’s what I’d do in your seat.

1. 1Own your part first. Be clear on your own results and your own misses, so nobody can pin something on you that isn’t yours.
2. 2Ask direct questions. “What does a great outcome look like on this?” gets you further than guessing what the manager wants.
3. 3Bring solutions with your problems. A manager who tells people what to do often relaxes when you show up with a plan.
4. 4Have the tough conversation yourself. Name the pattern with your manager privately, with one specific example, before you take it anywhere else.
5. 5Escalate the pattern when nothing changes. Go to their boss or HR with facts and examples, and keep it about the impact on the team.

You’ll also learn what kind of manager you want to be. Write that down, because one day you’ll be the one with the team.

Frequently Asked Questions

These are the questions founders, HR leaders, and managers ask me most, with short answers.

Start With One Manager and One Mirror

I opened by saying the fix usually starts one level up. Your managers will copy what you do long before they copy what you say.

So grab a pen and paper this week and give yourself ten minutes. Write down the one manager you worry about most, and circle the sign that fits.

Then write down where they learned it, and be honest with yourself about the answer.

What did you find? Is the habit theirs, or is it yours? What would change on that team if you changed first?

Lead with courage.