Am I a bad manager?

What this quiz measures

The word bad is a poor starting point for management. It turns a job of repeated choices into a verdict on a person. A more useful question is what it is like to work with you when priorities conflict, a deadline slips, or somebody brings unwelcome news. Do people leave a meeting knowing who decides and what happens next? Can they disagree without paying for it later? This check looks at tendencies that shape firmness, patience, organisation, care for other people, and how you respond when frustrated.

Begin with evidence your team can see. Look at one recent project: were expectations written down, were decisions made at the right level, did you remove obstacles, and did you explain changes before people discovered them themselves? Ask for feedback about a specific behaviour rather than an overall rating. 'When do I make your work harder than it needs to be?' gets a more useful answer than 'How am I doing?' A manager can be warm and still leave people without direction; decisive and still make it safe to surface a risk.

Choose one practice to test for two weeks. It might be ending every meeting with an owner and date, asking the quietest person for a dissenting view, or sharing the reason behind a change. Tell the team what you are trying and invite correction. The result can suggest where your usual style may make this easier or harder. It cannot judge a team member, repair an understaffed department, or assess a workplace whose incentives reward poor management.