While I can totally see toxic managers reading this, and thinking, "Ha! I told them my management style isn't toxic," my takeaways were a bit different. I read it as being about the dangers of overcorrecting when trying to avoid bad management practice.
To play a charitable devil's advocate, here's my summary:
- You should have some understanding of what your people are working on.
- Suggesting a (potentially) bad idea is an efficient way to get people to teach you all the information you're missing.
- Rather than pinning down the perfect metrics, try to make do with the imperfect measurements that you already have. What do you want to achieve with those measurements? Focus on the end result (e.g., CEO understanding) rather than the metrics themselves.
- Don't sacrifice transparency on the altar of your shit umbrella. Protecting your team is good. Hiding things from them is bad.
I think these ideas could have been expressed better, to make them less easy to misconstrue. (I might be misconstruing the article in my summary! I'm honestly not 100% sure myself.)
If a toxic manager recommends this article and doesn't change their behavior, then that's definitely a red flag. They'll read anything and take it as vindication that they're doing the right thing.
To play a charitable devil's advocate, here's my summary:
- You should have some understanding of what your people are working on.
- Suggesting a (potentially) bad idea is an efficient way to get people to teach you all the information you're missing.
- Rather than pinning down the perfect metrics, try to make do with the imperfect measurements that you already have. What do you want to achieve with those measurements? Focus on the end result (e.g., CEO understanding) rather than the metrics themselves.
- Don't sacrifice transparency on the altar of your shit umbrella. Protecting your team is good. Hiding things from them is bad.
I think these ideas could have been expressed better, to make them less easy to misconstrue. (I might be misconstruing the article in my summary! I'm honestly not 100% sure myself.)
If a toxic manager recommends this article and doesn't change their behavior, then that's definitely a red flag. They'll read anything and take it as vindication that they're doing the right thing.