Tell Us About The Worst Boss You've Worked For

I love hearing about management blunders. I've made a few myself (don't we all?), but I think I've learned about them. The mistakes managers make that they don't learn from are often the most interesting to me.

My human nature is to identify areas of improvement and then fix them. That's how I've been wired since I was a young kid, and that's how I've been throughout my life (it's no wonder that I ended up in the training and consulting field). As I grow older, I'm realizing how special this "gift" is, because there are so many people that either (1) can't identify the root causes of problems, or (2) can't create a solution to prevent the problem from happening again. There are so many that simply keep doing the same (wrong) things over and over and over again even if they don't work.

There was a lot of drama in one company this week because the company bought a laptop for one of its salespeople. The other salespeople wondered, and eventually asked, "Why didn't I get a laptop even though I've been asking for one?" They also wondered,"What is the criteria for getting a laptop in this company so I can get one?" and, "Why did we have to find out about the laptop via the grapevine instead of via communication from management?"

It got ugly. Real ugly.

My desire is that managers everywhere will learn the value of carefully thinking through decisions and predicting likely outcomes so they can prevent this kind of thing from happening again, because unecessary drama is distracting when you're trying to achieve excellent customer service, excellent sales performance, and create a highly functional workgroup. In many companies, though, dysfunction rules the day.

Speaking of management blunders, here's an entertaining (and accurate!) description of the eight worst types of bosses to work for.

Read the article, then come back here and share your stories of the worst bosses you've worked for (you can be anonymous of course). We want to (1) empathize with you, and (2) learn from their mistakes. Let's hear your stories!

Skip Anderson is a professional speaker, sales coach, and the Founder of Selling to Consumers, a B2C and retail sales training and consulting company. Subscribe to the free Sales Tips newsletter.