There is a saying out there that has a lot of truth to it: You are only as good as your last manager.
Not that the manager is the difference in your capabilities, your skills, or your talents. Those things don’t change much.
But a good manager, at worst, will do your career no harm. A great manager will push you in all the right ways to improve yourself and your personal brand.
A bad manager is simply bad for you, your career and your personal brand.
Let me count the ways:
- Your skills are not recognized. You can have all the right stuff, tell your manager you can help, and the manager ignores all of it.
- Your work is a threat to the manager. How many managers do you know who are threatened because they are not the smartest person in the room?
- Your manager doesn’t provide you 40-hours of work a week. Strange, but true. Boredom is a killer of productivity and a catalyst for gossip.
- Your manager plays favorites. One simple way: combine this with number two and your bad manager will favor those who are not a threat to the manager.
- Your manager makes decisions about the rules, not about the business. If your budget needs to be cut 15%, your manager just cuts it 15%, regardless of where department is doing well and not so well.
How many others do you see in your work?
Get a few bad managers in a row and it can really set back your career. Do you have a bad manager? If you do, you have a quick choice: outlast the one manager and hope the next one is better. Or, get two bad managers in a row and figure out how to get out of the department — or Company.
Scot
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