Thoughtful Thursday: Leadership

Here are some observations of how not to be a good leader, from someone who has been an employee. This list is inspired by actual events. 

1. Hold meetings where you tell your department it is everyone's responsibility to know everything, and to stop referring every question to yourself. Then get mad at people when they answer someone's question without consulting you first. 

2. When someone asks you a question, blow it off completely. But when you ask them a question and they don't answer within an hour, spend a half hour at the next department meeting demanding to know everyone's schedule because you can "never" find people. 

3. Spend large amounts of time at meetings talking about your adult son even when no one asked about him, but when you talk to employees about their kids, be sure to mix up their names. 

4. Promise to host retirement parties and baby showers, but forget to plan them and/or tell the honorees they are to attend. 

5. Be sure to drop everything when loud, annoying employees want something from you or they tell you about yet another free app for your work-issued technology toy. However, don't bother to praise the people who wrote the grant that brought you the toy in the first place (that part is boring). 

6. Demand to be copied on every email everyone sends out, but never include people on emails you mention them in. Let them be surprised when they get a request from someone out of the blue and with absolutely no context! People LOVE to feel like idiots. 

7. Hold a meeting outside someone's office, loudly mention that person by name at least 10 times during that meeting, but do NOT invite that person to be a part of your meeting. Let them wonder what you're saying about them. 

8. Buy some people flowers after putting in a few long days, but not others. 

9. Never remember to say happy birthday to employees. Instead, hound them for a report you need that day that you never asked for in the past. 

10. When you have a series of minor operations and everyone pitches in for flowers, do not send a thank you email. 

11. Talk to your employees about other employees. Trash them like crazy! Then don't ever confront the original person about the problem. This makes everyone feel insecure about their performance and what you might be saying behind their backs. 

12. Promise people certain unsavory aspects of their jobs will be phased out, but then out of the blue resurrect them! 

13. Schedule meetings months in advance, send out a reminder a day in advance, then just when the meeting should be starting, send an email to cancel it. 

14. Schedule meetings months in advance, then don't say a word about the meeting again so people have to go out of their way to ask if it is still going on. 

15. Hire the candidate who is the least experienced and most annoying, even when everyone on the hiring committee is against it. 

16. Micromanage! Don't trust the people you hired to do their job! Then, gripe constantly about how you have to do everything. Never, ever make a connection between being a control freak and having to do everything yourself.

17.  Even though you spend a lot of time out of the office for sick leave and appointments, make sure to approve everyone's vacation leave requests. But, only approve these while stating how nice it is that someone gets to take vacation, since you never get to. 

18. See how long you can make it between sitting down one-on-one with your employees. Cancel annual evaluations. Don't provide any meaningful feedback to them. Expect them to still know everything that's going on.