You can feel all the sympathy in the world for your teetering manager, and if he or she is a decent person, you undoubtedly will. Still, according to Bloomberg, you have to take care of your own career needs first. Managers are on their own paths.
1. Shifts from long-term to short-term thinking. If your supervisor was drawing up marketing plans for the second half of 2012 and is now fixated on this quarter’s lead generation, someone is none too happy on the executive floor. If she’s putting off down-the-road decision-making and obsessing about today’s, this week’s, and this month’s metrics, there’s a reason for the shift in focus.
2. Emphasizes optics. If your manager starts talking about the impact of various decisions in terms of “how it will look,” take it as a huge clue that he’s worried about looking bad: too slow to act or too rash, too spend-thrifty, or too conservative—too whatever or too whatever. Confident bosses don’t worry about how things will look. They act according to their conscience and their experience and they sleep soundly at night. Managers who fear being bounced don’t trust their instincts. Alert team members (such as you) will be able to tell.
3. Does your job for you. Marina called me from the bus station on her way home from work. “My boss was in my office six times today,” she said. “He’s basically devolving into the person he was before he got promoted, back when he used to do my job. I know I’m killing at my job, because the [vice-president] of marketing tells me about once a month. So I think my boss is freaking out about adding value of his own.” A boss who takes a huge personal interest in the work on your desk, when you have no need for help and could really move faster without the interruptions, may be a boss on a performance plan...
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Learn more at http://www.businessweek.com/management/five-signs-your-boss-is-in-trouble-12092011_page_2.html
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