We all know that a manager is integral to having a functioning team, but for most people it stops there.
The chances are, if you’ve got a team that’s riddled with confusion and poor performance, you can trace things back to some failure at the management level. That doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve got a bad manager on your hands, it just means you need to make a change.
As a manager, you cannot expect to have a solid team when you’re just mailing it in.
You need to come to work every day prepared for new challenges, determined to inspire, and ready to throw yourself into the trenches with your employees.
If you’re not quite convinced, try taking the temperature of your team. If you’re experiencing some of the problems caused by poor management listed below, chances are the root issues can be fixed when the manager makes a change. Take an honest look at your team, ask yourself the hard questions, and figure out how you can make those little tweaks to see a big difference in everyone’s performance.
It Fosters Bad Communication
For starters, poor communication is one of the most obvious signs of poor management.
If simple tasks aren’t being completed the way they should, it’s probably because they’re not being properly handed out. People start to misunderstand each other, and it can create all sorts of frustration that leads to more misunderstanding.
Think of it like playing the telephone game.
When the message doesn’t come across clearly, it follows a chain of small distortions at each passing step. By the time it reaches the person it needs to, it’s completely indistinguishable from the original.
When you have even the slightest breakdown in communication, your team is worse off. Effective communication needs to start from the top, and it’s a sure way to help bring clarity and precision to your team.
It Makes Your Employees Inefficient
Similar to a breakdown in communication, poor management is going to produce inefficient workers. Whether it’s caused by that same bad communication, or it’s poor delegation, when you don’t properly manage your employees, they’re not going necessarily going to do the job you want them to.
When an employee sees that there’s a lot of work do be done, but doesn’t know which job is more important, it can mean they’re doing tasks that really aren’t as important for the day-to-day. While there may be long-term needs that they’re addressing, it might actually be slowing their coworkers down when they’re not focused on the right tasks.
It’s like water flowing through a series of pipes. The water is going to flow through as many openings as possible. Limit the number of openings and it will be guided through the best route possible.
It Causes Dissatisfaction
When the job isn’t getting done properly, and there’s a lack of direction for your employees, it’s naturally going to create frustration, ultimately leading to employee dissatisfaction.
It will promote griping, and encourage a negative environment.
Rather than people coming in motivated to produce a great day’s worth of work, they’re going to be much more focused on “how things are going to screw up today.”
When your employees aren’t satisfied with their job, they’re not going to be effective.
It’s not going to feel as fulfilling, and that effect will carry outside of the inner circle. Soon your customers will notice it, and it will affect the overall culture of whatever goals you’re trying to reach.
When your employees are dissatisfied, it shows, and it doesn’t help your business’s reputation.
It Destroys Motivation
Similarly, the negative power of poor management will work its way down the food chain to your employees, and they’ll begin to emulate that behaviour. If a manager is mailing it in, they’re going to mail it in too. They won’t feel like hard work is being noticed, and they’ll feel like they have to carry the management. That will be demotivating, not encouraging.
Proper management inspires workers to be better, it doesn’t expect them to pick up the slack when they don’t. The best way to keep employees motivated is to help the ship run as smoothly as possible.
It Creates Politics
When the griping and frustration escalate to a certain point, it’s probably going to lead to a lot of one-on-one conversations. That’s probably going to produce the feeling of added confusion, miscommunication, and the ever-dreaded “alliances.”
It’s the feeling that allegiance may lie with certain folks, but others are thought of as “enemies” or simply that some employees or managers cannot be trusted or confided in.
That all will create an environment where employee politics run rampant. Rather than having a healthy climate of camaraderie, it creates a workplace full of back-door dealing and unfair treatment. At the very least you will be left with employees who feel neglected, and at the worst, many will want to leave.
It Encourages Laziness
When there’s no motivation, people won’t just do their jobs poorly, they just won’t do them. People will feel that because they’re being overlooked, they can get away with not doing much at all.
If your employees don’t feel that there’s proper structure and accountability, then there won’t be an understanding of repercussions for poor performance. Most often, that breeds a lazy staff, and a manager who cannot motivate.
It Deflates Respect
Above all, poor management will decimate the way employees view their higher-ups. There wont be a culture of respect, and it will almost completely inhibit progress and growth.
Don’t let poor management affect the growth of the business you’ve worked so hard to help build. Be honest, address the problems, and watch these side effects slowly slip into the past.
