I have illustrated some of the sins with examples of famous Chief Executives, because these are stories we are all familiar with. Does your boss succumb to only one or two of these sins? Or is he a seven-star sinner? I have even put a little questionnaire together to help office workers across the land to rate their line manager. Of course, a bit of artistic licence is necessary here, to adapt words like “greed” and “lust” to corporate life, but on the whole I think they work pretty well. I developed these ideas during seminars with executives where we discussed their experiences of good and bad management. Here is my stab at defining what bad management looks like, using those old favourites, the Seven Deadly Sins. So let’s try the opposite approach - to focus on the bad behaviours we are trying to get rid of. For example, when Google launched a big data-driven program to identify what separated their top managers from the rest, and they ended up with bromides such as “be a good coach,” “empower your team” and “be a good communicator.”

We point to the things managers should be doing, which tends to get bogged down in platitudes. Perhaps the problem is that we’ve relied on education of positive practices. And yet the problem endures: In a recent survey I conducted, less than a quarter of respondents would encourage others to work for their manager. We have known what “good management” looks like for decades, and enormous sums have been spent on programs to help managers manage better. I continue to be a little puzzled about why so many managers do such a poor job. We all know bad managers - be they ambitious and aggressive, doing whatever it takes to move up the corporate ladder, or the opposite: managers thrust into their position without the skill or the will to do the job properly.

Deadly Sins by Jack Steel