29 pieces of advice on how to be a bad leader

On this huge internet, you’ll find lots of advice on how to be a good leader, but no one is writing any advice on how to be a bad one, so that’s the purpose of this article: to teach you to be a bad one.

Advice list

1. If you just become a new lead, be happy with your shiny new position and start ignoring the people from your team. Just pretend they are invisible creatures from another dimension. Do you know about Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak? Google where you can buy one.
2. New people who appeared in the company or whom you hired, you need to ignore them also. Try to avoid meeting them.
3. Since we started talking about people whom you hired: after they signed, forget about what they are doing. You need to remove everything from your memory at the moment they signed on that dotted line! If they work on .NET for example and you need someone who knows Android, then just call those new guys, and ask them if they know Android. For sure they told you, or you might have seen their CVs, but why bother? (Disclaimer: True story! This happened to a colleague of mine, who might even read this article)
4. Never do one-to-one meetings with the people you lead! They might confront you, ask for money, ask for a change. Those kinds of meetings are like kryptonite for a leader. You don’t want to talk with them, you are a leader, you are above them and in the end, you don’t want to break rule number 1.
5. Be a ninja and avoid any confrontation. You have to keep your leadership status intact!
6. If a guy from your team messages you or tries to contact you (dare to disturb you), ignore them. If he is really insisting, say you have a lot of things to finish now, and you’ll get back to him. You hate this, being interrupted, yeah, I feel you, but it’s like a mosquito buzzing near you, at some moment you need to say something.
7. If it’s something that someone else can do, delegate fast to another team member without getting involved. One of them might see that you have no interest in their problems.
8. If there is a conflict between your team members, just support the person who has the highest voice. Do not listen to what he is saying. Who cares, you are a lead, you don’t bother with small things. Support him since probably he will say something good or get everyone bored to death and they will shut up. The key here is that the person with the loudest voice is like a star of their own reality TV show. Most likely he’ll stumble upon some pieces of true wisdom in between all that noise
9. Since we started to talk about being bored to death, if you as a lead get to that, I have the solution to this: start micromanaging. Ask everyone 2–3 times a day what they are doing. If you don’t like talking or breaking the other rules listed before, make them write reports. If the reports do not look accurate, you have even one more option: get your team members to install a time tracker and write what they are doing when they press start and what they have done so far when they press stop. You won’t read that anyway, but it’s fun to see how much time your team really works. It will help you not to give any raise during the evaluation period.
10. We started talking about the evaluation period. Do not do that. Maybe they will forget and they won’t ask for anything. For a leader, this is that ugly period of the year when they need to progress and remember what everyone is doing. Aaargh… you don’t want that
11. If you need to have meetings with them (because you also have a boss), everything you should talk about is about the turnover of the company and how nice and good is the company. You should remind them how lucky they are to be there and have you as a lead.
12. If you are a manager and you need to promote people (so that others will bother you less), just promote random people or people who either talk a lot or who don’t talk at all. The last is even better because probably they won’t bother you at all. If you made the wrong choice and you promoted someone who comes with problems to your table, you need to tell him to find a solution by himself because it is his job now. If this doesn’t work, you need to get rid of him, FAST!
13. If someone starts asking about career paths or ways to progress, try to get rid of him or find something that can’t be quantified. He will ask for more, and you don't want that. The best way if he asks for clear objectives is to give him more than he can do. The objectives must be as unrealistic as they can be. In your mind, all it should be is: What objective would make even Hercules break a sweat? It’s all about keeping them busy chasing rainbows while you enjoy the calm (before the storm).
14. Trust no one, and make your members question everyone but not everything. Your word should be a command. People love commands and not to think by themselves. People are like minions and you are their leader.
15. If someone says something about company culture, stop the discussion, and tell him (but be sure more people are around) that we are here to grow the company and bring money, not to create a culture.
16. In team buildings or in any place you need to be with the people you lead, hunt their mistakes and correct them. It’s the perfect way to show them who’s the boss! Giving bad feedback in public and criticism is something that your people need. Positive feedback should never be given. Be careful here, bad feedback and criticism is perfect but there is a thin line between this and public humiliation. You can’t always do the last one, because they might actually quit, and your boss might ask you to come into his office. You don’t want that.
17. Ask them to work overtime. They are lucky to be there anyway. Unpaid overtime of course. The company is like family! (so many times I heard this one with being a family)
18. Rule the team with an iron fist: you don’t need diplomacy and collaboration should be the word that should be forgotten. The team needs to know who is the boss. And by the way: once you said something, no one should even dare to question you.
19. Even if we talked about micromanaging I still have some tips on this: peek over their shoulders constantly, question every decision they make and to do this, of course, ask them to come daily in the office. The remote is dead anyway. There is no pandemic, right? Only during the pandemic remote work was a thing. (Disclaimer: The last sentence is a true story which was written to me by a recruiter if you can imagine)
20. If something goes wrong, play the Blame Game Champion and shift responsibility faster than a magician does card tricks. See inside you and find your inner Houdini. You need to find a head that needs to be cut. In the end, it’s not your fault anyway.
21. Avoid accountability, if someone wants to hold you accountable (like your boss). The team or preferably only 1–2 people are to blame. Finger-pointing is the key
22. If someone gets you in a corner and you need to answer some questions, communicate in riddles, and be as cryptic as you can be. If he doesn’t understand a thing, can question you. He shouldn’t do it anyway. If he pushes you, start giving him ambiguous feedback. Clarity is for losers anyway. By the way, in all discussions like this, you need to end the discussion with: “I am here to help you” or “I am trying to help you grow” (another true story)
23. You want to keep your team connected. This is what your boss told you since he also read the internet. This is your perfect shot to start gossiping or talking with some of your team members about some rumours, preferably about someone’s love life.
24. Do you know that one with “lead by example”? You should ignore it. Your team should be dependent (job security) on you and your judgement is the only one that matters. They only need to execute. In the end, everyone wants self-managing teams.
25. Do not use words like “Please” or “Thank you”. They are there to serve…sorry, to work. This is why the company is paying them and you are all in a corporate jungle anyway.
26. Set deadlines that fit with the stakeholders' dreams. The team must deliver. It’s their job to learn at home and do overtime. Everyone wants a unicorn. The team is there to deliver.
27. Everything must be on a need-to-know basis. Knowledge is power, and you need to keep the power for yourself.
28. Get all the credit. If something went well, good for you. The entire company should know that you are the best lead. The team made it possible but you are the lead!
29. Find a “golden boy” or girl, and make it painfully obvious who your golden child is. If you are good friends is even better. Push everyone to be like that person.

Conclusion

Being a bad leader isn’t just a job; it’s a lifestyle choice. This is the way to go to make people remember you for their entire life.

The leader is worshipped by his team members.