A Day in the Life of a Senior Leader

Chapter 37. Three Bad Managers

I worked for each of these humans. They either hired or promoted me. I worked for them for many years. As is my way, I’ve vastly altered the details of each human, but the core issue I describe is the core issue. Also, each of these humans is very smart. No dummies.

Here are their introductions.

The Artist

The Artist hired me. I could tell via the interview process that, like me, they were an introvert. The interview was awkward. Long pauses. Odd questions. No feedback. I got the gig because everyone else who interviewed me told me I was a fit, but whether the Artist thought I was a fit or not, I will never know.

First day on the job. I was sitting at my desk, and the Artist walked into my office, hands in pockets, stood in the door, and asked, “How was your first day?”

…because someone told them that is what you do with new hires.

The Artist. Burdened with creativity, all the vision. You could see it in the things they built. Inspired. Somewhere along the way, someone decided to make them a manager. Direct reports. The hope that the art they created would scale with the number of humans.

The challenges were many and diverse, but the core issue was the value of the things this manager was capable of creating, which blinded everyone else to the fact that they were reading books about being a manager, following the rules, but either not caring about what good looked like or not knowing.

“How was your first day?”

I told them. I walked through each ...