Traits in a boss that nobody likes

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Almost every employee needs to deal with a difficult boss at some point in their career. By creating a toxic workplace, a bad boss does not only hurt staff morale, they also put their business in jeopardy as unhappy employees often mean decreased productivity.

Website Comparably collected data from over 2,000 employees in both public and private U.S. companies to find out which quality they find to be the worst in a boss. The respondents were mostly from the tech sector.

Unsurprisingly, up to 39% respondents expressed that they didn’t want “micro-managers”. Other traits that annoy employees were “overly critical” (22%), “disorganised” (16%) and “know-it-all” (14%), while being “impatient” (9%) was the quality that offends the least employees.

The survey also looked at the differences across gender, age and seniority.

While both male (44%) and female (32%) workers picked micro-manager as the worst trait in a boss, female workers thought that being “overly critical” (28%) was almost as bad. Only 17% of male employees said that being “overly critical” was a problem, far less than their female counterparts. Also, being “disorganised” (16%) and “know-it-all” (15%) were almost as annoying among male respondents.

Interestingly, “disorganised” (26%) took over “micro-manager” (22%) as the top response among the employees aged between 18 and 25.

Among different experience levels, entry-level workers were more offended by “disorganised” (25%), “overly critical” (22%) and “impatient” (20%) bosses, when “micro-manager” (19%) came fourth, followed by “know-it-all” (14%). Respondents at all other experience levels regarded “micro-manager” as the worst among all five traits.

Job nature seems to contribute to the mixed opinions on the matter, micro-manager shared the top spot with “overly critical” at 30% for tech designers, the only job role where micro-manager wasn’t a top response on its own.

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