3 Behaviors Of An Incompetent Boss With No Real Skills, According To A Career Expert
We've all worked for one, and they usually all have at least one of these in common.
Voronaman | Shutterstock.com Is your boss incompetent with no real skills? We've all worked for one at one time or another — the boss who very clearly had a connection or has been "failing upward" their entire career and is now in charge of everyone even though they're low-key (or high-key) bad at their job.
But there's more to being an ineffectual boss than just making tons of mistakes. One professional shared some more subtle examples of shortcomings that point to the fact that it's your boss, not you, who is the problem.
Brandi, who goes by Brandi Thee Millennial Manager, is a workplace expert who offers advice about the ups and downs (especially the downs) of working in corporate America on TikTok as well as her podcast "The Millennial Management Podcast."
Having risen the ranks to management herself, she's seen both sides of the bossman and bosslady coin, and in a recent video she shared some signs that a boss is absolutely not cut out for the job.
The career expert reveals the signs of an incompetent boss with no real skills.
1. Poor communication skills
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If there's a basic lack of clarity whenever you end up in a conversation with them, that's a red flag. As Brandi put it in a recent video, "you never understand where they're going or where they have been," and that's precisely the kind of thing that can leave you scratching your head like maybe YOU'RE the problem.
Nope — trust yourself. You probably just have a boss who has no business being a boss! But more importantly, Brandi said you should be careful about this kind of boss, because, as she irreverently put it, "they're taking you on a highway to hell, because they don't know [what] they're talking about." Yep. Been there.
2. Micromanagement
This isn't just annoying and potentially abusive. Brandi said it's often a cover-up for the fact that your boss is just plain bad at their job. "This person does not have any skills. But you know what they've got? Control," Brandi said.
That's why they create a workplace in which "you cannot make a move or move forward without them reviewing it, without them seeing it, without them knowing what you're doing," Brandi added.
I used to have a boss like this who demanded to personally proofread every single email we sent, even if it was just a "yes," and Brandi's right — while he was great at the artistic thing he'd built his business around, he was a terrible businessperson with terrible people skills and the reputation to match. Being insane about emails was his way of feeling less panicked about all that. Bad news.
3. Playing favorites and other workplace 'games'
Obviously, this is one of the quickest paths to a toxic work environment, and Brandi said bosses and managers do this stuff to obscure the fact that they're bad at their own job. Which makes sense.
"[They're] playing favorites because they know that it's gonna get y'all against each other inside of the workplace," she said. And what better way to shift blame than putting your employees at odds and then chalking all failures and mistakes up to the conflicts between them? It's the old, "if you two got along better this project would have succeeded" okey-doke.
Brandi said this ultimately comes down to one simple truth: Not everyone's cut out to be a leader.
In a follow-up video, Brandi elaborated on what makes for a bad boss, dividing managers into three camps that will instantly resonate for anyone who's been in the corporate world. At the top are the good bosses, who are both effective at the nuts and bolts of their job, and at managing people.
In the middle are people who mean well but nonetheless fall short. Maybe they're overwhelmed by their workload, for instance, which means they just aren't hitting their marks when it comes to helming a team.
And then there's the bottom tier, which sadly seems to comprise most management — people who are just plain incompetent bosses, whom Brandi said are usually people who were once good workers and got promoted because of it, but have no business being in the role they're in.
That's because, as she put it, "just because you are a good employee does not mean that you are gonna be a good leader." Truer words were never spoken.
John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.