What Bad Bosses Can Teach Us About Leadership

When I saw the LinkedIn Learning course titled “Leadership Lessons from Bad Bosses,” of course it caught my attention!

Thankfully, it wasn’t a checklist with a names register. 😄

We’ve all worked for managers who unintentionally taught us exactly what not to do. The silver lining? Some of the best leadership lessons come from those experiences, provided we’re honest enough to ask ourselves whether we’ve ever displayed the same behaviors.

Here were my biggest takeaways after completing the course:

🌙 The Midnight Manager

Just because email works at 11:47 p.m. doesn’t mean you have to.

Best practice: Respect boundaries. If it can wait until tomorrow, let it. Model sustainable work habits.

👻 The Disengaged Boss

Employees rarely need perfection from their leader—but they do need presence.

Best practice: Be visible. Regular check-ins and genuine curiosity go much further than annual performance reviews.

🚨 The “Everything’s Urgent” Boss

If everything is Priority #1…nothing is.

Best practice: Prioritize ruthlessly. Use the Eisenhower Matrix. Protect your team’s attention by distinguishing between urgent, important, and simply loud.

☀️ The Toxic Positivity Boss

“Everything’s fine!” isn’t a strategy.

Best practice: Acknowledge reality. Optimism is valuable, but only after people feel heard and understood.

🎤 The Spotlight-Stealing Boss

Leadership isn’t about collecting applause—it’s about creating opportunities for others to earn it.

Best practice: Share credit generously and take responsibility privately. Teams remember who helped them shine.

One thing I appreciated about this course is that it wasn’t about pointing fingers at “those bad managers.” It was a reminder that leadership is a continuous process of self-awareness.

The goal isn’t perfection.

It’s catching ourselves before our team has to add us to the names register. 😉

#Leadership #Management #LeadershipDevelopment #Learning #ContinuousImprovement #EmotionalIntelligence