Good People, Bad Managers summary

We admire those who fight their way to the top, battling difficult circumstances or overcoming great hurdles. It’s the stuff American dreams are made of. And so maybe it’s not so surprising that the business world is all but defined by self-focus.

In other words, when it comes to business, managers focus solely on their own success, not the success of those who report to them.

In business schools across the United States, people skills are referred to as soft skills – and these are thought to be inferior to the hard skills that enable one to boost the bottom line and increase profits.

The problem is, this preference for hard skills has a detrimental effect on management. Here’s just one example of how business schools fail to teach MBA graduates about being a good manager.

Have you ever lied to your boss?

Now think carefully: has your boss ever lied to you?

We all know there’s inequality in the workplace. So why does it still exist? Because culture is hard to shift. It’s the same with bad management.

Bad management is hard to shake because there are structural incentives to keep it in place. Most managers are confident that they know what is needed in order to get results. They believe that simply telling their employees what to do is quicker and easier than taking the time to understand, guide and support them. And, at least in the short term, it is quicker.

When managers are used to being self-focused and directive with their employees, it can be hard to know how to change. So here are some concrete ways that managers can become other-focused.

First, replace performance reviews with two-way conversations. Performance reviews, though ostensibly objective, tend to be extremely biased, not to mention damaging. Not only does a single manager’s personal opinion get recorded as a factual report on your abilities and imperfections; the one-sided, hierarchical nature of reviews also intimidates employees into remaining silent about management problems.

To better manage employees, leaders should replace the core cultural expectations that drive bad management with a new mind-set.

Our desire for immediate results, our expectations of perfection and our association of punishment with accountability are just a few of the workplace’s unhelpful cultural expectations.