Skip to main contentSkip to navigationSkip to navigation
Number 11: ‘Build a sense of important by talking about how busy you are all the time’.
Number 11: ‘Build a sense of importance by talking about how busy you are all the time’. Photograph: Barry Wetcher/EPA
Number 11: ‘Build a sense of importance by talking about how busy you are all the time’. Photograph: Barry Wetcher/EPA

29 tips on how to be a horrible boss

This article is more than 7 years old

When non-profit director and blogger Vu Le asked his Facebook community to describe what makes a horrible boss, he was inundated with responses. Warning: you may recognise yourself here

1. Involve yourself in every decision
Don’t let any decision be made without weighing in, no matter how small. Insist on being the final decision maker for every aspect of every project, but then don’t make decisions in a timely manner. Wait until it’s the eleventh hour and make everyone scramble to get the work done.

2. Make everyone run on your schedule
Be 20 minutes late to every meeting, leave early, and then get angry when a minor decision is made without your input.

3. Correct small mistakes to demonstrate that you’re smart
Review and approve letters. Then change your mind over inane word choices once they are printed. Randomly “correct” already correct grammar or spelling on documents given to you to sign in pen, ensuring that even once you understand it’s correct, your staff has to reprint it.

4. Refuse to give any feedback
Don’t give any feedback, either positive or negative, ever. But do overreact when people fail to correctly intuit what you want. Remember, giving proper feedback just makes employees happier and more productive, so you don’t want to do that.

5. Spend time on less important things so that you can ignore more important things
Insist on doing tasks someone else could do while unmade decisions pile up on your desk to the point of nearly halting anything getting done.

Number 15. Passive-aggressively remind people of the power your hold over them. Make ‘jokes’ often about firing people, then laugh it off. It’ll remind your team that you have a great sense of humour. Photograph: Adrian Rogers/BBC

6. Refuse to let people do their jobs, then punish them for it
For example, hire someone to be your legislative director, then forbid them from calling certain legislators’ offices directly, and then give them low marks on their evaluation for not developing those relationships.

7. Don’t learn new skills or improve existing ones
You’re the supervisor, why should you learn stuff when you have people to do stuff for you. Fail to learn even the most elementary technology like email attachments; make your younger staff do that in addition to their work.

8. Treat people as if they’re idiots
Manage your employees with 10+ years’ experience with the same scrutiny you would apply to your interns. And then tell them that the interns are much more open to feedback.9. Never communicate about anything unless it’s trivial
Focus your communication on small, insignificant things. Don’t tell anyone about challenges such as delays in payroll, changes in the budget, elimination of departments, or an awesome new consultant you just hired.

10. Be inconsistent and unpredictable
Keep people on their toes by being totally inconsistent in terms of communication (both style and content), expectations, feedback, and long-term vision for the organisation. Everyone loves a good game of workplace Russian roulette. Also, change the expectations every time you meet with your employees. Berate them for not meeting the new expectations you just told them about and for wasting all their time trying to meet the expectations you set last month. Then constantly ask your employees to validate you.

Number 16. Active-aggressively remind people of the power you hold over them Photograph: Sportsphoto Ltd./Allstar

11. Build a sense of importance by talking about how busy you are all the time
I had a supervisor constantly telling me how she worked late and on weekends. As if they are busier and thus work harder than everybody else. Often the same people who talk excessively at work. Remember, talking about being busy is just as good as actually accomplishing things.

12. Evaluate your employees on goals they have never seen before during a performance review
Bonus points if some of those goals are actually impossible to achieve.

13. Belittle your team over things both significant and insignificant
When a soft draft deadline is missed, raise it at a staff meeting by throwing your hands up and shouting about how everyone’s incompetence will ensure the closure of the organisation. Keep telling everyone in staff forums how the whole organisation and its success is based on what you downloaded from your head 15 years previously. Keep saying loudly how you’re the only one with any ideas and it’s clear that no one else can think.

14. Don’t set clear priorities
Always imply that the latest idea is top priority but don’t ever reschedule existing deadlines. Base your priorities on whoever spoke to you most recently, or whatever your horoscope is for the day.

15. Passive-aggressively remind people of the power you hold over them
Make “jokes” often about firing people, then laugh it off. It’ll remind your team that you have a great sense of humour.

16. Active-aggressively remind people of the power you hold over them
First staff meeting (first day of supervisor’s new job): “I know you people have won all sorts of awards for being the best in the business, but I want you to know I have no problems firing anyone who is not doing their job.”

17. Cross personal boundaries
For example: take a member of staff out for a drink and get horribly and embarrassingly drunk. Have a great time being very friendly and joking around though so they form the impression that you have bonded. Then, when they return to work on the following Monday you should act as if you had never gone out together or interacted as friends.

18. Physically invade people’s spaces
Hug all your employees every day, and get really close to them when talking. If they have told you they don’t want to hug their boss at work, hug them anyway. If you’re standing up talking to them and they take a step backward to get some personal space, take a step forward.

19. Delegate autonomy, but don’t really mean it
For example: “I want you to make the decision. I don’t want to be involved. You’re experienced and you are driving this project.” [Later:] “You made the wrong decision. Here’s what I really wanted you to do. Now go and change everything.”

20. Play favourites with team members, and make it obvious
For example: give Christmas gifts to your favourite employees. Keep them wrapped and with tags in your office so everyone can see them.”

Number 19. Delegate autonomy but don’t really mean it. Photograph: SNAP / Rex Features

21. Criticise people in front of their coworkers
Don’t pull them aside and give feedback. Public humiliation means everyone gets to learn. When applicable, use reply-all to unleash your fury on a team member.

22. Send subtle messages to your employees that this is not a good fit for them
For example: leave job posting announcements on desks of employees with notes saying, “You should look into this.”

23. Don’t learn anything about your employees’ leadership and working styles
Why would you assume that people have diversity of perspectives and ways of working. You’re the boss. Make sure people adapt to working with you, not vice versa.

24. Become defensive at the slightest constructive feedback
Ask for feedback in meetings and then bully and belittle everyone who opens their mouth. Then when people don’t contribute to meetings, act passive aggressive about it saying something like: “I guess no one has anything to add and we’ll just have to go with my plan.” Solicit feedback on said plan in emails and other meetings until someone finally says something rash and then give them a written warning for insubordination.

25. Multi-task while interacting with others
For example, you can get a lot more done if you don’t pay attention to people during meetings. As an executive director it’s totally fine to browse your smart phone during every staff meeting, type on your phone during staff presentations/discussions of issues, and answer personal phone calls.

26. Take credit for your employee’s ideas and work
Ask others for ideas on a project, then pitch those ideas as your own, then make others carry out the grunt work of their project idea while getting all the credit for having “thought” of it.

27. Be completely insensitive regarding pay differential
Tell staff about your raise and bonus when they are receiving little or none.

28. Be paranoid that your employees are out to get you
Change the password to the shared hard drive and refuse to give it to any employees that you deem “untrustworthy” regardless of their need to access said drive for their jobs. After employees hand in reports to you, hide them and accuse others of trying to steal company secrets. Forbid the entire office from speaking to certain employees because you “don’t want them to be distracted”. And, very importantly: don’t tell the employee that no one is allowed to speak with them and wait for them to go crazy from the paranoia.

Number 26. Take credit for your employee’s ideas and work. Photograph: c.20thC.Fox/Everett/REX/Rex

(And if none of those things work and you still want your team to hate you...)

29. Get drunk at a gala while wearing a strapless dress that simply won’t stay up so that I get to have a conversation with our richest and most intimidating donor or board member about how I need to DO SOMETHING RIGHT NOW about that shameful spectacle. Or, “get drunk at our gala wrap-up meeting, drop your crystal wine glass into the pool, and throw up on the host’s custom-painted powder room walls”.

Look, I already apologised for that last one, OK?

This piece was first published on the Nonprofit With Balls website and is republished with their kind permission.

Join our community of development professionals and humanitarians. Follow @GuardianGDP on Twitter.

Comments (…)

Sign in or create your Guardian account to join the discussion

Most viewed

Most viewed