Q: What is lousy leadership? Goran Milic, Zagreb, Croatia

A: Now, why would you ask that question? Certainly not because you want to be a lousy leader yourself!

It can only be because you’re checking your instincts about someone you know. Maybe even the person who writes your paycheck.

And in that, you’re not alone. We have written in a previous column about employees who are inveterate “boss haters”—one of our most controversial commentaries, by the way—but we’ve never given bad bosses their due. So herewith are a few of the most familiar ways leaders can get it wrong, and too often do.

The first, and perhaps most frustrating way, that some people blow leadership is by being know-it-alls. They can tell you how the world works, what corporate is thinking, how it will backfire if you try this or that and why you can’t change the product one tiny iota. They even know what kind of car you should be driving.

Sometimes, these blowhards get their swagger from a few positive experiences. But usually they’re just victims of their own bad personalities. And you and your company are victims, too. Because know-it-alls aren’t just insufferable, they’re dangerous.

They don’t listen, and that “deafness” makes it very hard for new ideas to get heard, debated, expanded or improved. No single person, no matter how smart, can take a business to its apex. For that, you need every voice heard. And know-it-all leadership creates a deadly silence.

If know-it-alls are too much in your face, a second kind of lousy leader is too little. We’re talking about emotionally distant bosses—the type that are just more comfortable behind closed doors than mucking it out with the team. Sure, these remote leaders attend meetings and other requisite functions, but they’d rather be staring into their computers. And if possible, all the messy, sweaty people stuff would be delegated to human-resources managers on another floor.

Like know-it-alls, this breed of leader is dangerous, but for a different reason. They don’t engage, which means they can’t inspire. That’s a big problem. Leaders, after all, need followers to get anything done. And followers need passion for their fuel.

A third category of lousy leadership is comprised of bosses who are just plain jerks—nasty, bullying or insensitive, or all three.

As a New York reader wrote us recently, “My boss is abusive, by which I mean disrespectful, finger-pointing and sometimes even paranoid.” Such leaders are usually protected from above because they deliver the numbers. But, with their destructive personalities, they rarely win their people’s trust.

That’s no way to run a business, which is why these types of leaders typically self-destruct. It’s never as quickly as you’d hope. But unless they own the place, it does happen eventually.

The next type of lousy leadership is at the other end of the spectrum: being too nice.

These bosses have no edge, no capacity to make hard decisions. They say yes to the last person in their office, and then spend hours trying to clean up the confusion they’ve created. Such bosses usually defend themselves by saying they’re trying to build consensus. What they really are is scared. Their real agenda is self-preservation—good old CYA.

Which leads to a final version of lousy leadership, which is not unrelated—bosses who do not have the guts to differentiate. The facts are, not all investment opportunities are created equal. But some leaders can’t face into that reality, and so they sprinkle their resources like cheese on a pizza, a little bit everywhere.

As a result, promising growth opportunities too often don’t get the outsized infusions of cash and people they need. If they did, someone might get offended during the resource allocation process; someone—as in the manager of a weak business or the sponsor of a dubious investment proposal.

But leaders who don’t differentiate usually do the most damage when it comes to people. Unwilling to deliver candid, rigorous performance reviews, they give every employee the same kind of bland, mushy, “nice job” sign off. And when rewards are doled out, they give star performers not much more than the laggards.

Now, you can call this “egalitarian” approach kind or fair—and these lousy leaders usually do—but it’s really just weakness. And, when it comes to building a thriving enterprise where people have an opportunity to grow and succeed, weakness just doesn’t cut it.

Surely we could go on, but we’ll end here with a caveat.

We hardly expect lousy leaders to read this column and see themselves. Part of being a lousy leader, no matter what the category, is lack of self-awareness.

But if you see your boss in the above groupings, take heart. When it’s finally your turn to lead, you’ll know what not to do.

From Small to Big Screen

Jim Libiran is not your regular commercial filmmaker and screenwriter who has a standard formula for a box-office hit and makes use of predictable plots and cliché lines.

Winning: What makes a lousy leader

Q: What is lousy leadership? Goran Milic, Zagreb, Croatia

A: Now, why would you ask that question? Certainly not because you want to be a lousy leader yourself!

It can only be because you’re checking your instincts about someone you know. Maybe even the person who writes your paycheck.

A challenger like no other

THE grip on the speakership of Lakas Rep. Jose de Venecia Jr. of Pangasinan has never been threatened since he assumed the post the first time. He has taken it effortlessly four times.

Ukiwa na udhia, penyeza rupia

The title of this piece is a Swahili proverb which means: to get rid of an annoyance, pay some money.

‘Just do it’

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Leadership that focuses on the customer–really

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Forward-Thinking Cultures

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Book Keeper

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Winning: Private-equity hoopla

Q: What’s your opinion about all the hoopla surrounding private equity lately? Dev Patel, Chicago 

A: We think it looks a lot like a movie we’ve seen before, from its exciting action scenes, to its scary parts, to its larger-than-life heroes and their headline-grabbing foes.

Removing the smoke screen

THE best salesman, they say, is one who is thoroughly convinced of his product. For a nonsmoker, it is indeed a feat that he should be at the forefront of selling some of the world’s top cigarette brands in the Philippines.

It takes a village to raise a child

Aldo, 5, did not mean to trap his mother when he asked her if God made everything, to which she answered, naturally, “Yes, He did.”

“Why did He make the poor?”

Baguio Calling

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A ‘broken people’ in booming India

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What is your company’s ‘signature’ experience?

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Strategy: private equity’s long view

What can the gods of private equity (PE) teach us about managing for the long term? If you think that their lightning reflex, do-what-it-takes approach has nothing to tell us about the long haul, you’d be wrong.

Wrapped up

Having fun and making money are two things that Rommel Juan can mix quite easily.

Winning: China, India and US economic dominance

Q: You have written about the reasons to invest in India and China, but you haven’t said whether you think those countries pose a threat to American hegemony in the world economy. Do they? Sahara Chhabra, Dallas

China Rising

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Why do presidents lie?

TO understand why presidents lie, following Herbert Spencer’s advice, judgment must first be withheld, for above all men (and women, to be gender-blind), they have different desires, hopes, fears and restraints, although it is a truth from experience that all presidents, no matter how saintly (a wrong term to use on them in the first place), lie.

As Capitalist As Ever

HONG KONG—Tim Freshwater, Asia vice chairman of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., gazes across the Hong Kong skyline from his 68th-floor window toward a rectangular building that houses the barracks of China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

How to Zap the Zombie

A company finds great success with a product or service. Makes loads of cash. Builds a seemingly strong brand. Settles in to a satisfying position of dominance. A couple of years pass and then, out of nowhere, a new player swoops in and gobbles up most of the customers, leaving little but scraps for the once dominant firm.

GREED IS BACK

Earlier this year, someone was confident that Hydril Co.’s stock was due to take flight—and very soon. During the two days ended on Friday, February 9, investors purchased options conveying the right, through February 16, to buy more than 160,000 Hydril shares for $90 apiece.

What is the color of gold?

I lost my appetite for shark’s fin soup when I learned how the shark was skinned alive and thrown back into the sea. But not entirely, for it tastes good. Some of the good and precious things in this world—including such wonders as the Pyramids of Egypt and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon—have a cruel history. It seems that civilization is built on blood for the most part. But time and the hunger for precious, wondrous things blurs the history of the process.

Toward An Independent, Fair And Fast Justice System

Adrian Cristobal: The Supreme Court has been in the news lately, principally because in these perilous times, we think of the Supreme Court as “the enemy of political persecution.” We tend to think of the three branches of government—Executive, the Judiciary and the Legislative—as contradictory to each other.

Real Leaders Negotiate

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Set Up To Fail: Economist Paul Ormerod on strategy and extinction

In his recent book Why Most Things Fail, theoretical economist Paul Ormerod argues that failure is the defining characteristic of biological, social and economic systems. But Ormerod, a former economic forecaster and now principal of Volterra, the London-based consulting firm he cofounded, doesn’t think that’s a bad thing.

Tubbataha dreaming

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The ethics of revolution

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Down in the Valley

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3 habits that hold leaders back–and how to overcome them

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Help newly hired executives adapt quickly

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Chip off the old block

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Help wanted: HK banker soaks Indian call centers in black humor

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Seeking a sea change

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The rise of confessional politics

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At Your Service

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The Force of the Weak