9 Signs of a Toxic Manager

Is your manager toxic?

Now friends, that’s a question you should ponder before you end up in burnout. But what behaviors should you be looking out for ? Here are 9 toxic traits you could identify:

1. Toxic managers exaggerate their contribution and minimize yours. In other words, they want to be seen as great by their bosses without acknowledging your value, so you never really gain any exposure in your company

2. They are immune to feedback: their toxic work methods are all justified in their world, and if you try to point out that they have room for improvement, they’ll deflect it back at you saying that you are not motivated or involved enough, that you don't understand the company culture or the customers’ expectations (...). In short, you’re the problem, and over time you stop altogether giving them any feedback because you know it’ll end up like that

3. They don't want to do the work themselves and only want to supervise. They over-delegate everything because they feel like they don't have to do it anymore or it’s beneath their position, even if the workload is more than you can healthily handle

4. They make commitments on deadlines on your behalf without figuring out what is reasonably doable

5. They don't trust you and therefore micromanage you. They often check in on you or interrupt you while you’re working to figure out what or how you’re doing and pressure you with additional comments and deliverables

6. They are available to you only when you could be of use to them. If you have a question or need help, that's on you, even though their input would help you move forward much faster

7. They talk behind your back, not in an attempt to figure out how they could manage you better, but to make disparaging comments

8. They can’t find a single nice thing to say about you: their feedback is always about what you're doing wrong

9. Their position matters more than their skill set. So, instead of improving on their personality traits, they become rather manipulative as they want to be seen as doing better than others. In that regard, they could reject your ideas even if they’re great, because they didn’t come from them.

It doesn’t stop there but it doesn’t matter if you have all of these in mind or not, because deep down you already know in your gut that you are dealing with a toxic manager. Indeed, your well-being has gradually deteriorated since you started working with them. But behind the stress you experience on a daily basis, your intuition is trying to tell you that there is an alternative.