Toxic managers complicate work of employees, compromise sanity, destroy careers, and destroy morale. For organisations they incur hidden and indirect costs, competent employees leave, absenteeism increases, and tasks are carried out mechanically. Ultimately, dissatisfaction encourages unproductive talk about the behaviour of the boss. Why, then, do organisations persist in keeping toxic managers, knowing the effect […]

Top management has no excuse leaving toxic managers in place. Managers should never be allowed to treat people badly, regardless of their apparent success.  And there is enough management literature out there which shows the impact toxic managers make on their teams and on the organisation: high turnover, absenteeism, intimidated, frightened or frustrated employees, to […]

I have often wondered which type of toxic manager is worst. Aggressive and narcissistic managers are kept on because they get things done or bring financial success. And yet, they have teams where morale is destroyed, mental health is deteriorated, work is complicated, energy is diverted from tasks on hand to deal with the toxicity, […]

The paradox of no-decision managers is that they are invisible to top management, but visible in the organisation to many people and certainly to HR departments working with them. So if you really want to know if you have one in your organisation all you have to do is ask HR. But it is not […]

The paradox of no-decision managers is that they are invisible to their bosses, but visible to the subordinates. They have their survival strategies in place and these need to be understood and dismantled to find them. Inexperienced no-decision managers are more likely to have less sophisticated survival strategies or even none at all, if they […]