Hi,

     I have just read your articles on Good Boss/Bad Boss and found the "10 Habits of Highly Offensive Managers" by Larry Hulsmans helped me. I recently was terminated by a female manager who fits these categories to the letter. I am trying to produce a letter for her superiors regarding all the difficulties I have endured in the past 22 months and this is very difficult for me as I could write a book with all the situations I have experienced with her. The most unbelievable situation occurred after 3 months of employment. I gave a staff person my favorite winter coat as it did not fit me anymore. This staff person told our manager about my gesture and when my manager came to work she was in a rage. She told me that in the future, I am to discuss with her first any more donations I have for this staff person plus she informed me all about this staff person's personal financial situations. I could not believe my ears. I am 56 years old and this manager made me feel like I was her daughter instead of an employee and that I needed her permission first. Why would a manager react in this manner? This was of a personal nature and none of her business.

This is only one of many disturbing situations I had to deal with and I challenged her on many incidents eventually resulting in her terminating me. I am dealing with all the lies and unjust criticisms she put in writing on my termination letter and I am not able to defend these false statements and lies to the board members in person. My only satisfaction will be when my letter of complaint is in all the board members hands and they will look upon this manager with a different opinion and will challenge her position.I am just a frustrated individual with no support regarding this situation and again, reading your article knowing there are plenty of abusive managers in the workplace and their peers turn a blind eye to their destructive actions has helped.

Thank you

"Dilbert" in real life

A magazine recently ran a "Dilbert quotes" contest. They were looking for people to submit quotes from their real life Dilbert-type managers. Here are the finalists. -- Must have been hard choosing the winners.

1. As of tomorrow, employees will only be able to access the building using individual security cards. Pictures will be taken next Wednesday and employees will receive their cards in two weeks.
(This was the winning quote from Fred Dales at Microsoft Corp in Redmond,
WA.)

2. What I need is a list of specific unknown problems we will encounter.(Lykes Lines Shipping)

3. E-mail is not to be used to pass on information or data. It should be used only for company business. (Accounting manager, ElectricBoat Company)

4. This project is so important, we can't let things that are more important interfere with it.
(Advertising/Marketing manager, United Parcel Service)

5. Doing it right is no excuse for not meeting the schedule. No one will believe you solved this problem in one day! We've been working on it for months. Now, go act busy for a few weeks and I'll let you know when it's time to tell them. (R&D supervisor, Minnesota Mining and
Manufacturing/3M Corp.)

6. My Boss spent the entire weekend retyping a 25-page proposal that only needed corrections. She claims the disk I gave her was damaged and she couldn't edit it. The disk I gave her was write-protected. (CIO of Dell Computers)

7. Quote from the Boss: "Teamwork is a lot of people doing what I say."
(Marketing executive, Citrix Corporation)

8. My sister passed away and her funeral was scheduled for Monday. When I told my Boss, he said she died so that I would have to miss work on the busiest day of the year. He then asked if we could change her burial to Friday. He said, "That would be better for me."
(Shipping executive, FTD Florists)

9. "We know that communication is a problem, but the company is not going to discuss it with the employees." (Switching supervisor, AT&T Long Lines Division)

10. We recently received a memo from senior management saying:"This is to inform you that a memo will be issued today regarding the subject mentioned above." (Microsoft, Legal Affairs Division)

11. One day my Boss asked me to submit a status report to him concerning a project I was working on. I asked him if tomorrow would be soon enough. He said "If I wanted it tomorrow, I would have waited until tomorrow to ask for it!" (New business manager Hallmark Greeting Cards.)

12. As director of communications, I was asked to prepare a memo reviewing our company's training programs and materials. In the body of the memo one of the sentences I mentioned the "pedagogical (pedagogical refers to the art of teaching) approach" used by one of the training manuals. The day after I routed the memo to the executive committee, I was called into the HR director's office, and told that the executive vice president wanted me out of the building by lunch.
When I asked why, I was told that she couldn't stand for "perverts" (pedophilia?) working in her company. Finally, he showed me her copy of the memo, with her demand that I be fired - and the word "pedagogical" circled in red. The HR manager was fairly reasonable, and once he looked
the word up in his dictionary and made a copy of the definition to send back to her, he told me not to worry. He would take care of it. Two days later, a memo to the entire staff came out directing us that no words which could not be found in the local Sunday newspaper could be used in company memos. A month later, I resigned. In accordance with company policy, I created my resignation memo by pasting words together from the Sunday paper. (Taco Bell Corporation)

The Engineer and the Manager

A man flying in a hot air balloon realized he was lost. Reducing altitude, he spotted a man on the ground and descended to shouting range. "Excuse me," he shouted. "Can you help me? I promised my friend I would meet him a half hour ago, but I don't know where I am."

The man below responded: "Yes. You are in a hot air balloon, hovering approximately 30 feet above this field. You are between 40 and 42 degrees North Latitude, and between 58 and 60 degrees West Longitude."

"You must be an engineer," responded the balloonist. "I am," the man replied. "How did you know?" "Well," said the balloonist, "everything you have told me is technically correct, but I have no idea what to make of your information, and the fact is I am still lost."

Where upon the man on the ground responded, "You must be a Manager." "That I am" replied the balloonist, "but how did you know?" "Well," said the man, "you don't know where you are, or where you're going. You have made a promise which you have no idea how to keep, and you
expect me to solve your problem. The fact is you are in the exact same position you were before we met, but now it is somehow my fault.

The Top 10 Habits of Highly Offensive Managers
by Larry Hulsmans, The Banff Centre for Management.

A survey of 65 managers from a wide variety of public and private sector organizations was recently conducted to determine what they believed to be the most offensive habits of managers.

It is interesting to note that many of these traits or issues correlate strongly to characteristics previously identified as being required to be a good leader. Indeed, there is as much to learn from poor leadership and management as there is from good leadership and management.

1. Inability to Communicate Effectively
This category includes those managers who fail to provide feedback on jobs performance including praise and constructive criticism, discipline subordinates openly, or unable to effectively communicate job or assignment requirements or falsely assume that subordinates understand their requirements.

2. Failing to Have Confidence in Employee Ability
Managers that fail to trust employees to do good work, or allow them the latitude to accept increasingly more difficult tasks are viewed as a hindrance to employees and a roadblock to employee growth and good performance. This lack of confidence leads to a reluctance to delegate on behalf of managers, which in turn may lead to employees withdrawing their involvement from the workplace.

3. Inability To Listen
Managers who fail to act upon employee requests, or fail to tell employees why they have not acted on their suggestions, leads employees to believe that managers are not really listening to employees. Managers do not explain why they have failed to act on employee suggestions, as a result employees feel as if they are not being listened to. This element is closely linked to communication.

4. Failure To Be Organized
Managers who race from crisis to crisis, or who are constantly reacting to crisis, rather than being proactive are viewed as ineffective by employees. Ultimately, much of the managerial stress will be transferred to the employees.

5. Indecision
Managers who are either afraid to accept responsibility or are afraid of the consequences of decision making are viewed as offensive by employees.

6. Failing To Set The Example
Managers who fail to set the example in their department, work habits, and attitude make it difficult for employees to maintain these same high standards even when they want to. Indeed it would appear as if employees blame managers for providing them with an excuse not to perform at their best.

7. Being Disrespectful
Managers who fail to treat employees as human beings are detested. For many managers there is a we-they attitude which is not justified. Managers frequently do not treat employees with common dignity and respect. This would include using profanity, sexual harassment, asking employees to do personal errands, and generally just failing to be fair and friendly.

8. Manipulative Managers
Self-indulgent managers who play employees off against one another or incite employees to undertake tasks, which are for purely personal gain on the manager's behalf, are viewed as offensive. Work place "politics" which is engendered or fostered by managers is demotivating and disruptive to employees. Unequal treatment of employees can also be viewed as manipulative.

9. Breaches of Confidentiality
Managers who tell employees that discussions or issues will be kept in confidence, but proceed to discuss these issues with other people are viewed as offensive and untrustworthy.

10. Lack of Knowledge
A number of employees cited the tendency for manager not to ask questions,
bluff their way through a situations, or basing decisions on something they
know new very little about to be highly offensive.