A Bad Project Manager Spoils the Firm 2024 [Updated]

Download ebook

Any project’s success depends on how it will be managed at the top level. There is no point in getting the latest tools and software if the bad project manager is unable to handle and manage the job. 

It is the responsibility of the good project managers to create a workable atmosphere among their stakeholders, supervisor, peers, and subordinates.

As it is rightly said Bad Apples Spoils the Barrel and it needs to be stopped from creating and fostering such bad habits, which leads to the bad project manager. If you want to be listed as a good project manager of an effective and efficient organization.

Know-how or let yourself known…

In short, you need to know one’s job and know your business.

Identifying your company will enable you to draw together the various strands of a project in the most effective way possible. Yes, all of the companies have policies and procedures. But instead, there are ways to do things

If you expect the various departments in an organization to bend to your will just because you’re a project manager and you say it should be done – then you’re going to fight.

Explore what improves the flow of action within your organization, and then avoid the problems faced by some poor Project manager– the issue of people intentionally putting obstacles in their way because they have neglected noticeable societies.

Knowing the job would go without saying but in one or more of the critical skill fields, many crappy product managers appear to be deficient.

Enroll in our PMP Certification today and develop a strong foundation in the principles of project management.

Managing projects needs an awareness of:

• Core Accounting.
• Supply chain factors like production, distribution, and inventory.
• Project scope aligned with business goals.
• Quality management and assurance.
• Managing risk management.

A weakness in the management of human resources could mean that, for example, a Project manager underestimates the time taken to fulfill a schedule.

Failure to conduct a risk management audit appropriately could result in foreseeable issues jeopardizing a project’s progress for weeks, months, or causing it to fail altogether.

Let’s go through a list of 9 behaviors that have in common with all bad project managers.

Not always available- 

As project managers are the project’s face…

They are the primary contact point for any project material. You will be responsible for answering questions as a project manager, from the stakeholders to the team members.

You are the one responsible. When you are not available when need, it is a bad reflection of your management and leadership skills

Ineffective delegation

Efficient project managers efficiently delegate jobs. They trust members of their team to get the job done. The ineffective delegation represents a poor project manager. It shows they don’t trust their manager, and they don’t know the project.

This results in micromanagement. Asking about the project’s success is none the opposite.

Inactive Planning

A project idea can sound basic, but its implementation needs to be thought about carefully. Sometimes incompetent managers approve initiatives to get ahead of their game without prioritizing their needs within the company. This leads to a series of issues and problems that spill over the deadline. Obstacles and future challenges must be expecting and solutions must be placed in place before the project even starts and it involved in the planning process.

Inactive Communication

Project managers receive daily feedback from stakeholders, consumers, partners, and team leaders as the point of contact for the project. Where required, this information from one must be communicating with the other teams involved in the project.

The project manager needs to efficiently convey changes in schedules, improvements to be made, or any other information between the parties.

According to some figures, in some areas of communication, more than 50 percent of the time a project manager spends. This includes meetings, status reporting, emails, phone calls, coordinate, talking to people, and completing documentation. Some studies have even suggested that 80 percent of the work takes up verbal and written communication.

As a project manager, you are primarily an end-to-end people manager. The project is the team of people that are looking to complete it. Therefore, leadership and people management are at the core of project management-and this means being an efficient communicator.

Project managers need to communicate with, and listen to, clients and stakeholders. The same applies to the workforce. Bad Project Manager starts to collapse at the first hurdle and does not take the time to effectively collaborate with clients and managers. This means the project brief is not fully understood or to agree upon, and the criteria for success are not explicitly defined in the minds of anyone.

Therefore, when the project produces it’s a lottery as to whether the investors get what they’d hoped to get. 

Ignorance of Problems

Difficult to get hold of is a project free of issues. But there are plenty of project managers who neglect or disregard those things and issues. You should be able to deal with any issues that occur during a project if you are a project manager. If the issue goes beyond your support network, seek to find someone to help you. Ignorance will only make its effect on the project worse and is negatively represent the whole team.

Lack of respect

The least you can do is thank them when someone does a fantastic job on the project. It not only raises the team member’s morale but also increases their efficiency. Ineffective managers are the ones who take credit for all the success without considering the hard work of the members of their team.

Processes don’t follow

No-one wants to be a process slave. But to be efficient, you need good processes, as your projects get bigger. If you don’t want to go through good project management processes, as a manager, you won’t get too far.

Not perfect in managing people

When you want to sit in your office and concentrate on your job, you won’t have the collaborative ability to be a successful project manager. Good project managers need to spend considerable time with clients, stakeholders, and members of the team.

Choose to work with Favourites

By playing the team’s favorites, choosing the superstars and the people in the squad, and thanking them, and calling them out for all the wonderful things they’re doing. By playing favorites, we believe that retracts and demotivate the other team members within the team.

Allowing or Let favors

If you allow other team members to favor or exception or allow them to miss their timelines, or their milestones, or their outcomes, or accept stakeholder favors, and accept and inject scope into your project, we feel it’s a bad habit.

Becoming or act as a bottleneck

Most of us became a project manager because we were the unintentional project manager rather than the deliberate project manager. So, on the fly, we do that. So, if we’ve been promoting from the ranks to the role of project management a lot of time we ‘re juggling something.

Other business areas that we handled before we became the project manager. And maybe we are trying to be the specialist in the industry. We are trying to be the business analyst and we are trying to be the manager of a project. So, in reality, we are becoming the bottleneck by trying to do everything on the project alone.

• The demeaning of your team- By pointing out and demeaning your teammates, you disconnect again, and close down the whole squad. And, they ‘re ganging up on the project manager.

Experienced micromanager

Experienced people are experience people and because they’re experiencing, they get there. They know how to do what it’s like to do. They’ve got the practice, they’ve got the training and the know-how. So, and usually, they know better than you how to do it. So, we don’t have to micromanage the seasoned.

Ignore the team or just stay at our desk

By not being friendly and dealing with team leaders or partners, maybe sitting at our office, trying to keep away from people just because they’re not going to annoy us on issues. We feel that it is a bad habit.

As a project manager needs you to be the master of all trades…

Although being an experienced strategist, you need to get a grasp on accountancy when being about to inspire a team and manipulate other people’s time.

Nobody says it’s simple and managers very frequently slip into certain bad habits. Self-consciousness and other factors are taking power.

If you are the sole tool, you don’t have much of a project. You need to be able to manage people, to be a good project manager. You will not have 100 percent responsibility for staff members, but you will need leadership, transparency, conflict management, etc.

Bad project managers will come to you presenting numerous problems for your projects and even setting up a deteriorated environment for your team. If a project manager does their job well, it will bring enormous benefits to everyone within the company, but if the project manager goes down the wrong path, it’s better if you can recognize which path it is.

Let us go with the habits of bad project managers with some remedies and suggestions to deal with them…

Too much paperwork

Project managers are infamous for truckloads of paperwork (that no one reads).

• Things need to do: Document things in brief. If a lengthy document has a legit reason, provide a recap that allows organizations to easily digest the most important points.

Too frequent meetings

• Some project managers keep their team members in jail meetings, and the meetings are often things that could have been handled differently. This behavior results in frustrated team members who are busy trying to complete their work on the project.

• What need to do: Where possible, reduce regular meetings. Eliminate Status Meetings-collect and exchange status information through progress reports. Also ask yourself: Is there a better way of dealing with it that doesn’t entail a long meeting? A short telephone meeting. An email to you. Instant announcer. A quick get-together.

Walk and Talk… hand in hand

Teams slow to a complete halt when there’s a lack of confidence and trust.

Things need to do: Steven Covey says in his book, The Speed of Trust, that trust is created through two things:

1) Good intentions and
2) Delivering on the promises you made

If you have good intentions but fail to deliver, then people will lose faith in you. Additionally, team leaders and stakeholders do not trust you if you deliver but have bad motives. So, make sure your motives are correct; do what you say then!

• Those managers who lack a sense of commitment tend not to keep a close eye on project progress and thus fail to notice warning signs.

• It means that due to lack of intervention the project timeline could derail. Failure to engage also tends to suggest a lack of contingency planning or a lack of desire to find creative solutions to difficult issues.

Lead to self-promotion

Team Leaders don’t get anything more demotivating than a project manager who constantly praises themselves while giving the team no recognition.

Things need to do: Ask your trusted mentor to help you overcome the problem. Look for opportunities to appreciate the team members, and thank them for their hard work. Take the high road when there are issues and tell your stakeholders you are accountable and what you are going to do to deal with the issues. Highlight the contributions of the team member and downplay yours when there is a success.

Poor listener

Great project executives know how to listen. Instead of interrupting for a point, leaders listen intending to dig deeper and understand others’ perspectives.

Things need to do: Focus more on the talker, contact the good eye, and ask relevant follow-up questions, showing empathy and concern.

Bad facilitation capabilities

If you attended the meetings of Betty’s project, you have seen a lot of one-way communication from Betty to her team members. She directs and rarely asks for suggestions and inputs.

Things need to do: plan your meetings with a clear agenda and the questions you intend to ask to get the team involved. Do not let silence tempt you to speak prematurely when you ask for input;

Another enormous demotivating factor is when individual team leaders struggle to discuss and overcome inadequate performance by project managers. Such representatives of the issue never complete tasks on time, and often have an excuse.

Things need to do: Coach one-on-one members of your problem squad when you begin to have problems and clarify your expectations. Ask the person for a promise to inform you as soon as possible if anything is starting to hinder their ability to complete the assigned tasks. If you can’t get the reactions you want overtime, speak to your project sponsor about steps to replace the person.

A bad project manager is going to have a bad day at work. But, you must love working with people, love working to processes and structures, love answering the question “but why? For what?

If you hate any of those aspects of your job, then you’ll be a nightmare.

Because instead of helping people get the task done you ‘re going to get in their way. You ‘re going to create a hazardous atmosphere that constructs on the fear of failure and probably that person who takes all the greater if it goes well.

How will you tell if you’re turning a bad project manager into this vision?

Put these questions to yourself:

Are you getting mad and angry every single day?

Do you feel a focus on the jobs that other people are meant to do, micromanaging their actions rather than the efforts of the entire team?

Are you taking responsibility for the wins and sharing the losses blame? Have you deliberately become unavailable because you’re too busy or don’t want to deal with other people’s problems?

You go quietly to meetings whenever the risks and obstacles come up rather than being creative and potential solutions at the front and center?

Did you just ignore issues? If you are ignorant of the problems then after the first section you probably should have stopped reading this article.

It’s not the lack of education or experience that makes a bad project manager, but the inability to be a leader and lack of vision.

You’ve got that far, however, meaning you’re probably committing to doing well – and at least now you know how not to fail!

Project manager…habits can be enhance and changeable…

let see how…

It can be quite demanding to be a recruiter. It’s mainly because the recruiters have to make day-to-day employment decisions. Indeed, the company’s success depends on the actions of the recruiters.

And we all know that the company is worth as much as its workers. In reality, the turnover of workers will cost the organization up to $15,000 per worker. And that’s the average! We can all assume that these numbers double or even triple within the IT industry. That because recruiters are responsible for hiring or firing employees and it’s very difficult to manager like never before 

Hence, we’ve prepared a quick guide to help recruiters make better decisions when it comes to hiring a project manager. Every recruiter in this article can get clear directions on how to distinguish between a great project manager and a bad one.

We ‘re sharing the 6 traits each great project manager would have:

The Project Manager should be honest and trustful

• Recruiters should look for a trustworthy, honest project manager. These two traits are crucial. If the project team is not honest, they can bring the project to collapse. So, if there are challenges or errors throughout the project, a good project manager would take action.
• Good project managers also would trust and empower their team members to be truthful while making a mistake.

Suppress and resilience as a competitor trait

Each project manager is good so long as the project is running smoothly. What does help us to make a difference between good and bad project managers, however, are times of hardship? The good project manager will be resilient along the way and will surpass the obstacles.

Recruiters should be looking for a project manager with a vision

Project managers can predict project delays or hurdles. It is also important to have the vision to plan effectively every milestone and every task that needs to be completed. Leaders who have this trait are more forward-looking and can see the big picture.
A good project manager, according to his expertise, has been driven by intuition and takes decisions. So, when projects don’t go as planned managers have to trust their intestines to make the right choice.

The best project managers provide an understanding of the whole project-the dream. They also have a handle on the smallest detail-allowing the vision to execute.

Project managers at Mediocre appear to have one or the other of such crucial aspects. The project coordinator who reveals little detail but is unable to fully imagine the outcome tends towards micro-management.

That means they love the specific work of completing the project but don’t have the overall vision to draw this into a cohesive workflow together.

Manager of projects who is versatile and adaptable

The ability to adapt is a trait of good project managers in every single situation. Individuals who are versatile and will be able to adopt the new changes quickly have the greatest chance of success.

The manager will have to play various positions over the entire project despite the type of project they are leading. Additionally, the project manager will know exactly what each member of the team is doing. So, a great project manager would be a full-time engineer, marketer, and sales representative. Having expertise in every field and aspect of the project can help improve every team member ‘s work.

Leaders go beyond micromanagement and see the bigger picture

Good project managers trust in the leaders of their team and with micromanagement never sacrifice their commitment or time. They go beyond the small things, instead, and admire the team’s effort. Therefore, brawls over why an employee wouldn’t be late for work.

Bad managers sometimes let themselves be suck in this downward spiral of micromanagement. So, instead of looking at the big picture, they risk failing with the project even though they constantly monitor every team member.

Leaders have a high emotional level

Emotional intelligence is the way we interact with others. It also portrays the power of communication, compassion, and expression of emotion. Leaders with high emotional intelligence like both team members and senior management.

Managers should learn from effective leadership who harnessed their emotional intelligence ‘s potential. Some of them are Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Group; and Indra Noori, CEO of PepsiCo, Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla.

Final thoughts

As you can see, some core personality traits distinguish a great project manager from a bad one. We are positive, fortunately, that even bad project managers can reshape into good ones unless they are working to change the flaws in their working style.

It’s essential that the project manager knows he’s the leader of the squad and they’re all working against each other instead of working together. Only by accentuating the value of confidence and integrity can each project produce a positive result. Every manager also has the potential to succeed in their careers in this way.

Recommended Reads:

• Top 9 Project Management Courses in Kolkata
• PMP certification exam cost
• TOP 20 PMP Exam Questions and Answers
• Is PMP Certification Worth It in India?
• 10 Best PMP CERTIFICATIONS IN SINGAPORE

Also Check this Video

Download ebook