Five Bad Habits of Managers

© 2004, Coert Visser (Source)

It is widely known that the human factor is of crucial importance to organisational success. But this does not make clear just how managers can effectively deal with people issues. Despite all good intentions and efforts many managers often do not succeed in bringing out the best in people. Research by David Maister (2001) shows that many employees think that managers consider money and customers more important than employees.  Below I describe five had habits of managers that stand in the way of success:

1. Imitation neurosis

Many managers are inclined to follow management trends. New management concepts, often called ‘hypes’ seem to spread like contagious viruses. Recently I listed some hypes: empowerment, core competencies, the learning organisation, self managing teams, business process reengineering, total quality management, competency management, enterprise resource planning, investors in people, coaching. One of the HR-manager in the audience said, smiling: “Bingo, we’ve got them all!” Dutch professor of change management Willem Mastenbroek (1997) put it like this: “approximately 75% of the initiatives turns out to be a fiasco. But never mind, the next paradigm jump is already presenting itself.” In short: waste of energy, confusion and cynicism.

2. Defect fixation

When confronted with problems many managers have a strong tendency to look for mistakes, deficiencies, and guilty people. Research of Gallup (Buckingham. &. Clifton, 2001). has illustrated how negatively focused most managers are. Some examples: personnel selection is being executed as a process of risk detection (what risk to we take if we hire this applicant?), in appraisal conversations managers focus mainly on what’s wrong with the person and the performance, and in change management negative goals are formulated (how can we lose this problem?) and a defect based approach is followed (how can we eliminate problem causes?). Fixation on defects often has the following disadvantages: 1) while searching for problem causes it seems more and more causes are found, 2) resistance increases, and 3) problems grow in an unsuspected manner.

3. Supervision addiction

Many managers tend to supervise and check employees too much. Many employees have been told that they are getting more autonomy and decision freedom but feel disappointed when their manager in fact keeps on controlling and overruling them. That managers have a hard time letting go is demonstrated in research by Cialdini et al (1997). They explain this with the so-called faith in supervision effect. In short, this means that both managers and employees have an unjustified strong faith in the value of supervision. This tendency of managers to not let go usually leads to cynicism about the beautiful rhetoric of empowerment and delegation. A separate issue is that the quality of the work and the commitment to work and organisation are negatively affected by the experienced lack of autonomy.

4. Individual obsession

Many managers see the organisation more or less as a collection of individuals instead of as a complex system. This tendency to overestimate the importance of personal attributes and to underestimate situational factors is so famous among social scientist that they have named it the fundamental attribution error. This habit works through in things like a strictly individual-focused selection process, individual target setting, individual performance appraisal and rewards, personal development programs, and a headcount approach to personnel. This individual obsession leads to unproductive competition between colleagues and to a too small investment in cooperative relationships and in the work system.

5. Elite glorification

Many managers invest one-sidedly and excessively in ‘top potentials’. Elite glorification is associated with the above mentioned fundamental attribution error. Examples of what this can lead to: excessive pay for top managers, unbalanced high-potential policies (indulging them and promoting them too fast). The excessive attention to the superstars of the organisation in fact degrades the majority of the employees and allows for grabbling and self-promoting CEO’s). It is ironic that research shows that the best top managers really are tenacious, modest and relatively unknown (Collins, 2001).

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