The Moron Boss' Thirteen Behaviors
“Our boss is a moron; He is an idiot; He doesn’t get it; He does not understand our generation, etc., etc.” I had bought a couple of rounds of drinks to get them to loosen up, and once they did, that was the recurring theme around the bar with a group of a dozen Generation Y, newly minted, supervisors and managers from a client company. I was gathering data to understand the culture and people issues before a turnaround engagement, and since I found alcohol to be a great research aid, I took a group of them out for dinner/drinks. Now, my definition of a Moron Boss is a manager who is notably stupid, lacking in good judgment, or demonstrates most if not all of thirteen behaviors I call the Moron Boss’ Thirteen. Having assessed Gary (not his real name), their boss, the previous day, I found him to be a decent manager in a bad situation who tried hard to do the right thing, even if he did not succeed some of the times. He was not exactly the brightest light bulb on the chandelier, so I rated him a solid B, but to hear these folks talk, one would have thought the guy was a complete failure who should have been fired a long time ago.
There are many mediocre managers, but true Moron Bosses, just like truly Exceptional Leaders, are rare. None of us scores zero against the Moron Boss’ Thirteen but a true Moron Boss is a unique experience to behold. In my twenty years as a manager, operating executive, or management consultant I have experienced dozens of bosses and clients, and I can truly say I only had one manager who was truly a Moron Boss, and an unethical and vindictive one to boot… But that particular executive is a discussion for another time after a couple of years go by and my non-disclosures expire.
Back at the bar, having collected the information I needed, and since I had also enjoyed a couple of beverages alongside them, it occurred to me they needed another perspective on what a Moron Boss looks like from someone who has experienced a couple of them over the last twenty years. After all, one data point (or one boss in their case) does not make a trend and the bell curve exists for a reason. So I took it upon myself to candidly educate these young folks and, over the next couple of hours, I had fun scaring the crap out of them with horror stories about bad bosses. At the same time, I also put their manager’s behavior in the right perspective, which let them to conclude that compared to some of the people I described, he was not so bad after all.
Most research around how bosses are perceived by their staff indicates that about 50%-60% of their direct reports think their boss is a good or even a great boss, 20%-30% think she is an adequate boss, and less than 20% think he is incompetent and should not be in the job. If you adjust the 20% for the people who vote negatively because they think they can get/do the job themselves, I would guess only a small percent, maybe 10%, think they work for a truly bad boss.
So how do you know your boss is just in the middle of the bell curve, a proof of the Peter Principle, a true Moron Boss, or merely a good manager in a bad circumstance? Well, to paraphrase Forrest Gump, “Moron is what Moron does.”
Let’s start by recognizing most bosses did not get the job completely by accident. Even the one true Moron Boss I experienced, besides the fact he was a personal friend of the CEO, had at least one redeeming quality that was the reason he had his position, he was with the company at the beginning and had gathered industry knowledge. Unfortunately he demonstrated every one of the thirteen behaviors of a Moron Boss. So take a look at this list and assess your boss (or yourself if you are a manager), to see where you fall on the Moron Boss scale! Rate your actual behavior - what your direct reports observe you doing not what you think you are doing- against these classics on a scale of 1 to 5 with 1 being very rarely and 5 being most of the time. If your boss, or you, scores more than 50, you may be one, or may be in the presence of a true Moron Boss. If you work for a large company and the Moron Boss behavior has been tolerated, or even worse rewarded, for more than two years, get your resume polished and look for another job. Your Moron Boss also happens to possess the skills of a great survivor and will be there for more time you should have patience for. If the company has a reputation of weeding out Moron Bosses quickly, stick around, she will be soon gone.
My boss is threatened by, and competes with, competent direct reports
If your boss constantly competes with, bypasses, sets up to fail, or even actively sabotages his direct reports, he is not smart enough to recognize he already has the job and if he lets his stars shine their successes will reflect well on him. My best example is a boss who had been trying to launch a product for eighteen months unsuccessfully. Under pressure from his own bosses, he hired a product manager with experience in the area of product launches to bring the product on line. The new manager shook the organization up and completed the work in six months. Rather than tout his own ability to hire competent people who got results, he felt threatened and actively sabotaged her by sending her on wild goose chases and lying to her about objectives, resources, and internal company politics. The new manager quit in frustration and the moron boss took credit for all the work she did. This boss had demonstrated this pattern or behavior a number of times over the years and he used this particular approach to fix problems his own poor management created and then got credit for solving them. Unfortunately the company has been tolerating this behavior for a while, and the management team of that division is always in turmoil and never stabilizes to the performing stage.
My boss does not share all the information she has and there is always one critical piece of data she shares at the last possible minute
That behavior comes from the mistaken belief that by withholding information she has power over her people. Unfortunately, in effect she just makes the job more difficult than it should be and she negatively impacts the results her group gets. My best example is a manager at a client company who noticed a design flaw in a product design document and rather than point it out to the team, she let them continue down the road until the prototype came back from engineering not functioning. She then used that isolated incident to rate her top designer who was on a promotion path out of her department as a low performer and blocked his transfer. Eventually, the designer figured out what happened and within three weeks he was working for one of the competitors. When she was questioned about the departure, this manager claimed the designer was a mediocre performer on the way out anyway. The good news is that the story got around and when she was finally found out was fired by the CEO, who also made a personal call to the designer and brought him back to the company.
My boss is a micromanager who selectively engages in directly managing relatively tactical activities that are assigned to people that report to me
When a boss demonstrates micromanager behavior - which is different from, and must not be confused with attention to important details - he does not have the confidence in his management team or his own abilities. A true Moron Boss goes even beyond that and never hires competent managers who could do the job (see below). At one of my clients, a top software engineer received a battle field promotion from Sr. Developer to Director of Product Development because he developed some critical piece of code the company needed. Unfortunately, he had no operational or management skills and rather than manage the group, he spent most of his time reviewing code developed by the programming staff. As a result the department experienced a severe decline in morale, missed budget objectives and product milestones, had continuous turf battles and the star developer became an example of the Peter Principle. Eventually the client asked me to be his coach and for over a year I worked with him to establish good management practices and build a good management team around him that compensated for his lack of management expertise. In this case, the manager was not a true Moron Boss, he just did not know any better.
My boss only hires people that know less than she does and we have no apparent succession plan
This cliché exists for a reason, that A-players hire other A-Players, but B-Players never do. The difference between a Moron Boss and a mediocre boss is in the reason they only hire B players. A mediocre boss, or a B player, does not know what an A player looks like so they tend to hire people that look like them. A true Moron Boss adds insecurity to that, and even though sometimes she may even be an A player in her area of expertise, she would never hire anyone who could be viewed as a threat to her B competence or a challenge to her A player status. The best example was a manager who had retained a management consultant on staff for two years because he needed the expertise he did not have but never made any attempt to find a permanent replacement, or assign an internal resource to take over from the consultant. In the end, when the consultant moved on to another engagement, the only person who knew what the consultant did was the boss and the team lost all the knowledge he had accumulated. The funny part was when the time came for that Boss to be promoted, there was no one ready to succeed him so they kept him in the same position, until a rising star from another division was promoted over him to be the group head and eventually fired him for his bad behavior.
My boss takes all the credit for our work and actively blocks us from building any visibility with her boss
The main source of this classic case of moronic behavior is fear and insecurity. An even worse example of this behavior is the moron boss who knowingly set up his direct reports to present to the CEO of the company without providing them any coaching or context for what the CEO was looking for. As a result they all missed the strategic context the CEO was expecting and the boss used that incident to complain about the lack of talent on his management team and to justify missing the strategic objectives he was charged with. Eventually, after a repeat performance by that team, the CEO bypassed the Moron Boss and met directly with the team to understand what was going on. He realized the team was very competent but mismanaged and eventually fired that manager.
The Moron Boss’ Thirteen
1. My boss is threatened by, and competes with, competent direct reports
2. My boss does not share all the information she has and there is always one critical piece of data she shares at the last possible minute
3. My boss is a micromanager who selectively engages in directly managing relatively tactical activities that are assigned to people that report to me
4. My boss only hires people that know less than she does and we have no apparent succession plan
5. My boss takes all the credit for our work and actively blocks us from building any visibility with her boss
6. My boss has no position or direction and always agrees with the last person that was in her office
7. My boss has loose ethical standards and expects us to do the same
8. My boss does not trust the judgment of any one of his direct reports so he assigns the same task to different people creating massive confusion
9. My boss gives explicit oral instructions but never puts anything in writing and when things go wrong denies knowledge
10. My boss has to always be the smartest around the room, even when he is not
11. My boss uses threats and emotional blackmail to get his direct reports to follow his lead
12. My boss has meetings so she can hear herself talk
13. My boss avoids confrontation at all costs