How to Avoid Being a Bad Boss : Chance to Be a Better Leader

How to Avoid Being a Bad Boss : Chance to Be a Better Leader

The progress of the company has many factors. In addition to having top talent and good management, there is one more thing that needs to be considered to create comfort in the work environment and ensure that every employee works calmly and can maximize their performance. Today's market has started to have many cases where top talent is looking for other opportunities because they feel they have a boss who behaves badly, or does not match what they expect. This time SMEBrother will explain about how to avoid being a bad boss, develop your positive leadership styles and avoid becoming the kind of leader that can cause employees to disengage or demotivate them.

What is considered a bad boss?

A bad boss is someone who can be difficult to work for and unconsciously creates a toxic work environment. The characteristics are having bad communication skills, an inflated sense of self-importance, ignoring feedback, not recognizing employee's hard work and only demanding productivity, no motivation and always talking bad about employees, and many more. These kinds of bosses cause unnecessary stress in a workplace, making it a major cause of employees having bad productivity and high turnover.

What are the traits of a bad boss?

Many say that people don't quit their jobs, but quit their bosses. A bad boss can make a good job unbearable and miserable. This not only causes negativity to the individual, but also to the overall performance of the team. 

There are several traits of bad bosses have in common. The most common is that bad bosses focus on blame rather than support and solutions. Blaming will not solve the problem and will certainly make it worse. Plus, bad bosses use their team as pawns for their own success, claim team achievements as their own hard work, or act nice only in front of their superiors and badmouth others to maintain their good name.

Their communication is unclear and their decisions are arbitrary, making the team suffer. They have no respect for employees and just order them around without any clear needs or reasons, as a sign of abusing powers.

How can a bad boss contribute to high employee turnover and loss of talent?

Sometimes bad leaders do not realize that they have a negative impact on the team and also the organization. A bad boss can contribute to high employee turnover and loss of many talents due to lacking support, harassment, create a hostile work environment that leads to work stress and dissatisfaction.

Especially if these kind of leaders cannot accept criticism, making them feel the most correct without considering what is good for the organization. If this continues, employees will not feel at home with their workplace, look for other opportunities, or work as best they can and try to stay in the office without any achievements. Employees who work under pressure will not be able to show their best performance and team management will not work well.

Top Strategies to Enhance Employee Performance

These are some important reasons why you need to learn to avoid being a bad boss, find out what you can fix to ensure your organization is on the right track and continues to move forward.

How to avoid being a bad boss?

If you are a manager or CEO, try to reflect on yourself, do you want to have a leader who is unreliable and can only demand productivity? If not, here's what you need to do to avoid being a bad boss.

  1. Appreciate people

Give praise or credit the employees' work appropriately to create a positive work experience. Everyone will be more enthusiastic if they get praise for what they do, and feel motivated to keep their good performances. Productivity will increase periodically, and absenteeism can be reduced because employees always feel valued. Appreciating people does not have to pass on criticism if employees do not work according to target, but you need to balance giving criticism and have prepared solutions for them. A simple appreciation can have many positive impacts for the organization.

  1. Give employees growth opportunities

Everyone deserves growth, not just leaders. Give employees the opportunity to learn according to their fields, or facilitate them with courses, webinars, books, or special meetings to add skills according to their respective fields, plus with leaders also in the same room. This will develop how to coach or how to be mentors, making employees have leader materials and are ready to explain their knowledge if there is a new talent soon. Plus, being a boss who is always there in every employee's growth, they will have a sense of togetherness, and leaders will experience the same difficulty when learning.

  1. Make the work reasonable

Many surveys say that employees struggle with their work because their boss has unreasonable expectations. They only demand without giving appreciation, which is adding burden to every employee who does it. Almost no good comments from the boss to his employees because of the endless demands, or feeling that everything employees do is just ordinary. This will have a bad effect on the company, because every employee works with stress, and degrades their engagement.

  1. Positive interaction

Good interaction between the boss and team members should be like fellow coworkers with equal rank. If leaders or bosses choose to have too big a gap with employees and do not interact positively, then employees will not be open with what they feel. This will increase absenteeism and lower employee morale. Be an authentic boss, admit your mistakes, and continuously improve yourself. Employees will feel proud to have a boss who always wants to grow, and inspires them to do the same.


Being a boss or leader is a difficult responsibility and must consistently develop by showing positive traits and attitudes. Sometimes a person is not aware that they are doing bad things and giving a bad impact to the organization because they feel they have power. Hopefully our ways to avoid being a bad boss can be useful for you, making you a better leader and can inspire every individual. There is no perfect leader, but with you who show the effort that you want to improve yourself will understand your efforts and do every positive things like you do. Check the SMEBrother website for other interesting tips on leadership, how to find top talent, or level up your business.