Want to Keep Your Best Employees Happy and Productive? Stop These 6 Common Habits of Toxic Managers

These management practices can disengage employees and harm your bottom line.

EXPERT OPINION BY MARCEL SCHWANTES, INC. CONTRIBUTING EDITOR, EXECUTIVE COACH, SPEAKER, AND AUTHOR @MARCELSCHWANTES

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After nearly 30 years of studying leadership literature, interviewing hundreds of leaders, and coaching my own clients, I have found that leadership, at its purest, revolves around one main idea: serving people’s needs so they can achieve their full potential.

Truth be told, however, not everyone selected for the prestigious role of leading other human beings is equally qualified. Some, in fact, shouldn’t be there at all.

While exploring the opposite side of true leadership for many of those years, I discovered some toxic management behaviors and practices that can disengage employees and harm organizations and their bottom lines.

Here are six of the most common.

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1. Excessive bureaucracy

Want to observe toxic, top-down management? Just examine the approval process to move things forward and get things done. In a command-and-control hierarchy, numerous approval levels, committees, work groups, and councils meet, with layered management steps required for a final decision. This bureaucratic process demotivates employees and sends a clear message: “We don’t trust you.”

2. Not sharing information

Managers who hoard information do so to wield power and control their environment and the people in it. The oppressive exercise of power and control over others is the quickest way to destroy trust. Conversely, a leader who shares information responsibly and displays transparency with their team fosters trust.

3. Taking the spotlight away from your employees

The team creates a fantastic product and delivers it on schedule. The client is thrilled. Then, the manager takes all the credit. There’s no praise for the team, no celebration of everyone’s success, and no acknowledgment of individual contributions. Managers like this tend to hog the spotlight, which can really bring down team morale. 

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