Your Career Is Doomed if Your Boss Has These Two Qualities
I was promoted into a leadership role in my early 20’s because I had a good work ethic and caught on pretty quickly to my job. I did not want to manage people but realized that was the only way I could make more money so agreed to do it.
What I did not realize was how ill equipped I was for the role and what a horrible leader I was. Sure I was bright and competent but at that time, I could care less about the success of my team and was looking for an opportunity to put a couple more zeros on my paycheck and start climbing corporate ladders.
In order for most people to move ahead in their careers, they have to be good at promoting themselves, which does not always bode well for the people they are leading.
Unfortunately I did not become a good leader until my early 50’s when I was no longer interested in climbing corporate ladders and early retirement was a handful of years away. At that time my entire focus was helping my team members be successful.
I recently retired from corporate America and discovered that most horrible leaders have the following two qualities. If your leader has one or both of these qualities, consider moving to a new role since they are not likely interested in helping you be successful.
- They wait until year end performance review time to tell you what you did wrong that year but have no examples to reference.
I had several leaders who gave me feedback at the end of the year on several things I needed to improve on, and when I had the audacity to ask them for an example to learn by, they became flustered and eventually agreed to remove any negative statements from my annual review.
Many leaders are too lazy to actually put time into performance reviews so they just repeat hearsay about you because they are insecure and do not really care about your success.They also most likely have had this done to them by their bosses.
Good leaders will provide constructive feedback right away to their employees which allows the employees time to improve and the issue will be long forgotten by year end review time. This is common sense, but so few leaders do it.
2. They gossip to you about other employees
This bad trait is all too common with many managers. They are either trying to be your friend or are just plain dumb if they gossip to you about your colleagues because they don’t realize by doing so, they have lost the respect and trust of their staff.
If you have a leader that thrives on this type of drama, make it known to that leader that you are not interested in hearing them say bad things about others. Try to change the topic once they start doing this and they will eventually get the hint that you are not interested in listening to them bash your colleagues.
Unfortunately most managers do not become good leaders until they become secure with their careers, or are close to retirement. Unfortunately the competitive nature of corporate America and people’s desire to perpetuate negative gossip about others to make themselves look better, is the reason many people hate their jobs and are looking to retire early.
