7 Signs a Manager Cannot Handle Conflict, Workplace Challenges

Workplace challenges can be very difficult to manage.  Headaches, stomach upset, and more can result, but these are no excuses to avoid workplace conflict altogether.  Eventually issues will need to be dealt with before there are staff walking out the door, profit losses, and other issues that might put a manager’s head on the chopping block.

Upper management is sometimes not aware or doesn’t care when middle managers are often delegating responsibilities to staff that they should be handling.  When this occurs, a team can start to feel like fearful and/or lazy managers are getting away with something.  Why should they have to do the managers’ job?  Not every employee is looking to take on a leadership role and they shouldn’t be expected to, the manager is getting paid to lead not hide!

1.  Makes excuses to get out of work.  The fearful or often worried manager will make up excuses as to why he or she can’t be in the office during a challenging time.  “I have to take care of my relative…I can’t be there because something has come up…I really wish I could help but I have to leave early.”  How true are these statements during a time when the manager’s presence is very much needed?
2. Fakes busyness. The leader may not come up with an excuse to leave the office, but he or she will lie about being “busy” while conflicts are ongoing.  The instructions are given to team members “not to disturb…or interrupt” when the office doors are closed.  However, the conflict that is ongoing out on the floor ought to be addressed by the manager and not a staff member.  Issues are priority not making busy work for one’s self to avoid handling problems.
3. Takes days off. The manager conveniently takes personal or vacation days to do things like:  avoid critical meetings, train new staff, reorganize the office, assist out-of-state visitors, etc.  When a date is pre-planned or fast approaching, managers who don’t want to get involved, make certain they will be unavailable on those days.  Upper management, who isn’t carefully watching the timing or looking for any patterns when days are being taken off, will inadvertently approve time that shouldn’t have been approved in the first place making it quite inconvenient for the rest of the team.
4. Talks negatively about having to work.  There is a tendency to frequently complain about workplace conflicts or challenges, but management doesn’t do anything about them.  Instead, the manager hopes the problems will work themselves out.  When they don’t and they grab the attention of upper management, now he or she wants to write people up or terminate them.  Unfortunately, the manager should have been proactive from the start.
5. Ignores responsibilities.  An important thing to remember is that not every manager who is hired by a company is there for the right reasons.  The position could simply be a temporary gig until a better position comes around.  With that said, the nonchalant manager, who isn’t fearful or worried about the office conflicts or challenges, simply doesn’t address them because his or her mind is somewhere else.  This manager expects the office to be run on autopilot whether or not he or she is present.
6. Delegates tasks to people who are ill-equipped to handle them.  Whether pre-planned or requested at the last minute, work is given to those who really have no clue what they are doing.  Very little training or none at all occurs and when things are done incorrectly, the irresponsible manager blames those who he or she assigned to complete the tasks rather than hold his or herself accountable.
7. Calls off due to a myriad of genuine or conceived health issues.  Real or imagined health problems, managers, who slack on their duties, will share either in advance or at the last minute with select team members. They will do this when they don’t want to or can’t handle tasks by deadline.  Sometimes health woes really do show up because the manager is sincerely stressed out because he or she is doing poorly at his or her job.

Employees who notice leadership is not working up to par need not suffer through the excuse-making and ploys to get out of work, notify Human Resources or upper management about your concerns.  State what you are noticing and how the manager’s lack of enthusiasm, poor work ethic, and nonchalant attitude is causing the team to miss important deadlines and other relevant information. Managers, who behave in this way, bring employee morale down and ultimately cost companies more to keep them around while losing revenue.

Nicholl McGuire is the owner and contributor to this blog.