I am so excited to share the latest Good Manager vs. Bad Manager video with you! It’s called Good Manager vs. Bad Manager: The Meeting. In this video, you will watch the Good Manager and the Bad Manager, and their teams, meet in a scenario where the Good Manager is the client and the Bad Manager is the consultant.
In the video, the Bad Manager – staying true to herself and what we've all learned about her – leads a meeting where her self-importance is on display, congratulating herself based on information she didn't get exactly right. Her employee, the Dev (Development) Team lead, attempts to professionally correct her and get the meeting back on track. She is berated in front of everyone, much to her own dismay and the dismay of her counterparts on the customer team who work for the Good Manager.
The Good Manager stops the Bad Manager's tirade by interrupting her and asking the Dev Team Lead about what she had brought up, which the Dev Team Lead is able to relay despite being feeling completely devastated and embarrassed. The Good Manager asks her direct report, the Customer Team Lead, about the information the Dev Team Lead presented and the Customer Team Lead, so overwhelmed by the behavior she saw from the Bad Manager, cannot recover in order to provide an answer.
The Good Manager recognizes that she cannot recover the meeting because the damage has been done, and suggests that the Dev Team and the Customer Team get together to come up with a solution to recommend to both managers. When the Bad Manager objects, the Good Manager decides the best course of action is to remove the Bad Manager from the situation, taking her out to coffee in a way that suggests that she intends to talk to the Bad Manager about her behavior privately.
Do you think the Good Manager got it right? Should she have spoken up and directly addressed the behavior of the Bad Manager? Would it have been the right thing to do in front of the Bad Manager's direct reports and the Good Manager's direct reports? What if the Bad Manager had been the direct report or the Good Manager's boss?
I can't tell you how many uncomfortable meetings like this I've been in during the course of my career because it's too many to count! And usually the Bad Manager was my supervisor treating her own colleagues - who were also my superiors - disrespectfully! Talk about uncomfortable!
Tricky situations abound when you're in a Leadership role and you don't always get a chance to reflect on and analyze the best course of action when you have to react to a circumstance in the moment. The Good Manager could have left the meeting and removed her team, but would that have helped the Dev Team Lead? She could have also called out the Bad Manager's behavior to stop her abuse of the Dev Team Lead, but would that have helped the Dev Team Lead later when the Bad Manager had her in private?
It can be tricky to always know the right thing to do and sometimes there is no perfect solution because when humans are involved, we tend to react to things the way we interpret them. What is important is showing up with the right intention, doing the best you can in any given moment, and apologizing when you didn't get it quite right.
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