When you talk about the perfect workplace, honestly speaking there isn’t any. And when you have a manager or boss with rude behavior all the time then the workplace can feel like nothing less than a living hell. But is there any way to deal with this bad manager’s behavior in the workplace? Well, the answer to that is something that we are going to find in this post today.

So hopefully by the end of it, we would expect you to become a better dealer if not the best one of bad manager behavior.

There are companies where you will often get to see highly talented employees have quitted their jobs just because they couldn’t deal with the bad behavior of their boss or manager in charge. Only if they would have known the tips for dealing with the rude managers at the workplace that we are going to discuss today, they wouldn’t have to quit their jobs so early.

But before getting any further with the idea of dealing with bad managers, let’s quickly know what are some of the common bad behaviors that one might face in the workplace.

Bad Manager Behavior That You Should Be Wary Of

There is every chance to have a dip in the performance of a team once a manager or team lead fails to nurture and the true potential and encourage their success wherever it’s due. This may also eventually lead to a team with low morale and unsatisfied members.

Sooner or later you are bound to face the consequences of bad behavior within the team. But there are ways to check whether you are behaving in the same way or not. Once you are aware of the ‘bad manager’ behavior, you can probably be careful about it by avoiding them when you become a manager someday. So let’s find out the list of some bad behavior that you should avoid being a manager yourself.

• Always Comparing with Others
• Being a Hypocrite
• Providing Inadequate Feedback
• Plays Favorites
• Being Over-friendly
• Acting as a Dictator
• Setting Unrealistic KPIs
• Not Communicating Enough

How To Handle Bad Manager Behavior in the Workplace

Become a Ideal Role Model

The way you treat your people can really impact the way they treat others. If your team lead or manager can get away with rude behavior, then there is every possibility they would copy it. In this case, you can set yourself straight becoming a role model to them.

Set a good example to them to prevent rudeness from spreading within the team.

Always try to highlight the positive side of yourself, such as your professionalism, responsibility, self-control, integrity etc.

Always Listen and Respond to Feedback

Another damaging characteristic of a manager is not listening or responding to feedback. You can’t really get to the route of the issue if you don’t listen to others and provide constructive feedback. So managers with poor listening skills will have zero chances of managing an effective and productive team.

One of the defining things for a good manager is their ability to listen and respond to feedback from their team members.

Your staffs are a genuine source of information and if any manager is not smart enough to yield the right information out of them looses out on the opportunities to improve things as their employee might have valuable insights about the customers that they want to share.

So always make sure you are encouraging others to share feedback and more importantly you listen to it carefully.

Involve More in Tough Conversations

As a manager, one should always be open to their teammates all the time. It’s the duty of a good manager to foster an environment of a collaborative workplace. A place where every member of the team can be involved in equal and rightful conversations. Where people are encouraged to question others’ progress, concerns, ideas, and activities.

If you don’t make yourself available for important or tough conversations by acting too busy in front of your team then you are more likely to miss out on valuable information and insights that they might have to offer. So always try to make your team feel that you are always open to any type of conversation with them.

Provide Realistic Or Clear Direction

Bad manager behavior often includes no guidance whatsoever while setting unrealistic expectations. Many of them don’t really clearly define the responsibilities of their team members. Moreover, it is essential for any manager to realize the key difference between challenging and overworking their employees. There could be projects that may require less teamwork to complete as well.

So this may often lead to frequent confusion among team member about understanding the actual responsibility of their task that they are assigned for. While learning their own way through a project the team members would become resourceful objects for their whole team.

So if a clear direction isn’t given and if they stay confused about their responsibility all the time then it becomes really difficult for a team to deliver the expected results from the managers.

Follows through & Recognizes Responsibility

Many bad managers feel that they have the privilege to have more freedom than others. But in fact, they have the responsibility to manage a team responsibly and have the maximum work in hand. There are occasions when we all get to see someone right after becoming a manager forgets their responsibilities and start to take everything for granted.

They think they do not need to follow through at work anymore. This shouldn’t be how a responsible manager should act or behave.

Once someone becomes a manager they would need to follow all the rules and complete all the small duties that are required to manage the team. In fact, they should become more active and less egoistic once they become a manager. Otherwise, this can very well demotivate the whole team and send a negative message as well.

Good managers are always organized and understand their responsibilities more than anyone on the team so that everyone can count on them to follow up.

Stay Neutral & Act Fair

It is certainly not a very conscious decision to make when you favor some people over the others. This looks odd in the eyes of the team. Moreover, the team members get a negative vibe due to this. Though this is also true that this can happen even without your realization.

The people with whom you spent more time, the people you ask for assistance more often, this sort of thing knowingly gets noticed by the other team members at the workplace.

And this might make others feel jealous thinking they are more close to the manager than them. If some certain person always gets to stay close to the manager or team lead, this automatically makes others feel left out within the team.

So every person in the team needs the same level of nurturing, management, and support from their team manager. Staying neutral or acting fair to each member of the team is how they would feel equally valued with each other.

Do Not Be a Control Freak

Not every manager can trust their juniors to handle projects completely. They want to control everything on their own. They want his subordinates to get all the jobs done but at the same time want everything to be approved by them. Though this is not a bad thing in some cases.

But there are chances of bottlenecks when everything needs to go under a certain manager’s approval.

In such a situation, there will be junior members sitting around for hours waiting for the manager’s approval of their work. This is certainly a loss of productivity. So instead of being a control freak on everything, they need to find a way to trust the people they have hired to do the job accurately more often.

This is really important when it comes to boosting the productivity and mental satisfaction of the people the manager is working with.

Avoid Micromanagement

An amateur manager always wants to micro-manage their team no matter what. They don’t really value the input of others and look to accomplish the task in only one way. In such a case staff don’t get to grow themselves. Mistakes are glared upon and the manager won’t recognize the success of a completed task until and unless it is done exactly as the manager wanted it. This is the case even when the completed task brings any positive results for the whole company or team.

To avoid such micro-management, managers are required to give their team personal independence. And the team members who are being suppressed while doing their job freely would feel disillusioned and frustrated at the end.

So micromanaging a team in minute detail is a lousy habit for any manager out there that should be evaded. You got to give your team sufficient freedom to do their work and more importantly you need to trust them enough to let them carry it out forward on their own. Only then the team will feel full of motivation and creativity.

Always Give Credit Where Its Due

A good managerial behavior consists of taking regular responsibilities for the performance of their team. They wouldn’t blame them for every mishap that happens within the team while doing their work. They will even shower them with praises in public even for the ideas that the manager could have himself come up with.

On the other hand, bad managerial behavior is the exact opposite of it. Bad managers would want to take away credit even for the ideas that other employees have presented with. They would blame the team members for every little thing that goes wrong.

They will even publicly humiliate the staff for their failures. This opposes them to work not so much in the best interest of the company. As it ravages the trust of them and leads the team to always try to cover for themselves.

Follow Work Culture & Values At Workplace

Disrespecting the work culture and value is one of the biggest behavioral problems of a bad manager. More often than not they will project inconsistencies in respecting the values of the company. They might act as if they are really respectful to the work culture and maintaining the value of the company but in reality, their actions would demonstrate otherwise.

So always make sure you are leading by example when it comes to maintaining work culture and values in front of your team.

As we all know actions speak louder than words. Your good work ethics and values would influence teammates or other junior members in the team to follow your path of maintaining work culture and more. Otherwise, you might have employees that due to your inconsistencies in values would get burnout.

Deal With Bad Manager Behavior Better With the Right Attitude

In many companies, some managers might act childish that’s because they didn’t heal their inner child yet. In such a situation, you got to use your self-awareness and management skills to handle such childishness of your manager.

The managers might even be unprepared to accept logical feedback from their team. But you always make sure you solicit more and more feedback. Once others will continuously appreciate your feedback then automatically your ideas or feedback will be heard with great importance by managers that don’t take feedback much.

Timely feedback is really essential when it comes to a team to grow. But it is not always easy for a manager to open up and provide feedback. Moreover, it requires courage for someone to give an honest opinion about the performance or behavior of some colleagues or team members. This is also something that many managers lack these days.

Read: How to be the Best Project Manager

What’s More?

More essentially they don’t acknowledge their mistake that they make. They are always unwilling to accept responsibility for their mistake, which is really not how a manager should behave among team members.

Some managers are also incapable of showing their vulnerability in front of the team. This vulnerability could have acted as a medium to highlight their manager’s humanity to the employees. Along with not being able to live up to the company’s values and expectations, bad managers more often are unable to inspire others.

In spite of receiving countless negative feedback about their behavior, the bad managers often don’t care about how their behavior impacts others. They would also act to be a perfectionist and would want everyone around them to be perfect as well. And this is something most teams cannot live up to.

Concluding Note: You as a manager or working under one should always try to avoid encouraging or following the behaviors discussed above. Only then you can allow yourself not to get affected by any bad manager behavior at the workplace because now you know how you can handle them effectively.

Final Thoughts

Whether you like it or not, one way or another you will certainly come across a number of bad managers with a rough attitude in your lifetime. That moment instead of backing away to allow them to rule over you, you will need to fight back and stand up against them strongly. Only then there might be a chance of making them realize how badly they are actually making others feel with their bad behavior.

So do not let bad manager behavior get upon you. Learn to deal with them following the tips that we have shared here in the post today. We are sure once you apply them rightly, your manager wouldn’t be able to take advantage of your good behavior all the time. Make sure to stand up for yourself and others for what is wrong. And sooner or later you will find people around you at the workplace supporting you.

And lastly, every manager is different and has their own style of being rude with their subordinates. So make sure you know the kind of person you are dealing with. Then it will be much easier for you to deal with them. But we honestly hope, those of you who have read this article never have to deal with a rude boss or bad managers in your workplace. But If you, unfortunately, come across one, then don’t forget to apply the tips you have learned here. 😉