See this thread and add your responses:

What are the top ways that people screw up when it comes to management? Active and passive screw-ups welcome.

(I have some ideas but would love to hear yours)

— Anne Helen Petersen (@annehelen) February 3, 2021

Here are some comments and questions:

• Reading the comments makes me wonder about the number of people that can actually be good managers. It seems like workplaces are teeming with bad managers. A part of me feels like many people could be competent, but not great, managers–if they developed the appropriate skillset. But many of these would have some flaws that would prevent them from being truly excellent. Maybe the pool of great managers is really, really small.
• Another possibility is that many workplaces either don’t value good management or don’t properly develop good managers. In either situation, employees with the potential to be good managers never realize this. By the way, failure to value or develop good management is often a function of a good management. That is, the quality of management at the top can have a huge impact of the quality of management in the layers below them. This is one reason good management is so critical!
• In government, if the incentives for excellent work is minimal, this will likely create an workplace that will lack good management. The disincentives for good managements will be too high and the incentives will be too low.
• I almost feel like if one works under a manager that is not awful, one should be grateful. It’s the most one can reasonably expect, which is a sad statement.