Four signs you are a bad boss

You’ll be hard pressed to find a worker in the UK who doesn’t have horror stories to share about an awful boss. What makes these stories even worse is that in the vast majority of cases the boss has, or had, no idea just how bad they were.

Why is it that so many bosses are more likely to remind us of the cringeworthy David Brent, from the BBC’s The Office, when in their head they think they could give Richard Branson a run for his money? The reason is twofold: firstly, they lack an objective audience to give them truthful feedback, and secondly, they haven’t had the right training. We aren’t born knowing how to be a good boss – leadership is a learned skill that can always be improved.

Unfortunately the bad-boss epidemic is even more pronounced in small businesses. With small teams, staff feel even less inclined to give feedback that could be construed as hurtful, especially when they think it could limit their career. Also, with a small company, it’s more likely that the founder started the business with a great idea, but has not had experience in leading, growing and motivating a team.

Remember, a better boss means better business, so it’s in your interest to brush up on your skills. If you can relate with one or more of the points below then there is definitely room for improvement.

• You try to befriend your staff and struggle to delegate.
  If you find yourself thinking it’s quicker to do jobs yourself because you don’t want to irk staff with negative feedback then you are inadvertently creating a culture of helplessness. Delegation takes time to do effectively, but it’s worth it to help staff develop. It will also free you up to focus on the parts of the business that really need your attention. Staff won’t respect a boss who tries to be their mate – they prefer to be given clear tasks and to be coached.

• You try to create an image of perfection.
  If you are the type of boss who thinks your job is to set a standard of perfection, you need to tone it down a notch because it sets an unrealistic goal for staff. The “perfect boss” is very prevalent in business; regaling staff with their successes but forgetting to admit where they have failed and the important learnings that came from these mistakes. Fallibility humanises you, plus it enables you to model the behaviour of taking responsibility for a mistake and putting it right. A bad boss allows their staff to pass the issue back to them without learning how to resolve their own mistakes.

• You opt for tough love.
  The tyrannical boss is the one most likely to appear in scare stories between friends down the pub – the stern, angry boss who makes people dread coming to work because they feel that nothing they do is good enough. Not you? If you spend more time highlighting mistakes than rewarding good work then it is. You need to flip your approach and use the carrot not the stick – employees will improve faster through positive reinforcement.

• You don’t have a process to hold people accountable.
  Staff rarely leave for money, they leave because they don’t feel valued. To feel valued starts with being given responsibility and develops by having their performance against this responsibility measured. With responsibility comes accountability. If you don’t have a system and process that holds people accountable then your business will suffer, because you’re not getting the best out of your staff. As a boss you should have a clear process for rewarding those that are doing well and an escalation process for those that aren’t – otherwise it isn’t fair.

Shaun Thomson is the CEO of Sandler Training (UK)

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