by William Barclay | Aug 13, 2026 | Culture, Management, Teamwork
Toxic Staff – The Five Trouble Traits
Many managers new to their roles assume that if they perform well, treat staff fairly and provide good leadership, they will receive a positive response. Often they do—but by no means always. Several managers I have worked with have found that certain negative behaviours persist regardless of management style, and sometimes even in response to exemplary leadership. Management literature frequently examines toxic leadership, but pays considerably less attention to toxic staff behaviour.
Based on personal consultations with managers in the English public service, there are five recurring staff traits (staff qualified up to and including degree level) that managers have reported as particularly problematic. Such traits are usually displayed by only a small minority of staff and are not all-defining of their workplace contributions. Nevertheless, their negative impact can be disproportionately large.
- Entitlement thinking
Some staff develop a strong sense of entitlement: they believe they inherently deserve particular privileges, regardless of their contribution to the organisation. Managers have sometimes reported that this behaviour became more prevalent with Generation X staff. Entitlement can cause resentment amongst other staff and damage teamwork when individuals expect favourable treatment without demonstrating a corresponding level of contribution.
- Factional behaviour
Some staff consistently show an internal us versus them mentality, creating divisions between groups, individuals and management. What may begin as a small disagreement can become an increasingly pernicious workplace development. Factional behaviour diverts energy away from productive work, limits creativity and damages teamwork. It can also spread beyond the original participants, as colleagues feel pressured to take sides.
- Poor emotional intelligence and manners
Some staff repeatedly annoy or alienate others through disrespectful, inconsiderate or socially insensitive behaviour. They may fail to recognise how their words or actions affect colleagues. If the behaviour is directed toward line managers, disciplinary measures may become appropriate. The consequences can include unnecessary stress, impaired collaboration and declining morale. Although individual incidents between staff may appear relatively minor, repeated behaviour can gradually undermine working relationships.
- The barrack-room lawyer
Some staff regularly broadcast their critical interpretations of what management is doing, while making little constructive contribution to resolving the issues they identify. They may present themselves as amateur experts on procedures, despite having only a partial understanding of them. This behaviour can escalate disputes, generating unnecessary drama and spreading dissatisfaction. It can be particularly damaging during organisational change, when uncertainty already creates opportunities for misunderstanding.
- Gossip
Some staff habitually circulate information about the personal lives of colleagues, often in an unkind way. Gossip can appear harmless, but it consumes working time and can seriously damage relationships. It can also create an environment in which people become wary of colleagues and disrespectful behaviour spreads.
Dealing with the Toxic Traits
None of this removes the manager’s responsibility to address poor performance whilst taking proper account of individuals’ personal circumstances. A considerate and proportionate approach remains essential. However, managers—particularly those new to the role—should also recognise that toxic workplace cultures are not necessarily created by poor leadership alone. Damage to culture can arise even where management is competent, fair and supportive.
Managers should therefore expect to encounter these behaviours, rather than being surprised when they do. They should develop practical, situational strategies for responding to them and, importantly, should not allow problems to drift without intervention. Some situations will inevitably be complex. Seeking advice from experienced managers can help.
Handled constructively, dealing with difficult staff behaviour need not simply be an unpleasant part of management. It can also be an interesting intellectual and practical challenge: understanding what is happening, identifying the underlying dynamics and choosing the most effective response.
by William Barclay | Dec 22, 2025 | Management, micromanagement
micromanagement adding value
It’s time to ease up on criticisms of micromanagement! While it’s true that when leaders and managers delve too deeply into the minutiae of daily operations, they risk dampening the enthusiasm and creativity of their teams, it’s essential to recognise the other side of the coin. In many organisations, leaders possess specific insights into work processes, organisational culture, and internal dynamics. If this knowledge is coupled with a talent for innovation and organisation, it naturally positions leaders to play an active role in shaping processes and driving change. Striking the right balance is key. Of course we must encourage contributions from staff, though their technical skills may vary widely and some team members may be more inclined to preserve existing approaches rather than push for improvements. And when staff do provide valuable proposals, it is crucial for management to spearhead their implementation to ensure they take root and flourish.
Responsibility and accountability accompany involvement. It’s far better to be criticised for micromanagement than to succumb to doggo management where improvements are sporadic and lack cohesion. By appropriately engaging in the development process, leaders can inspire their teams and foster a culture of continuous improvement. #micromanagement
by William Barclay | Mar 20, 2025 | Management
Definitions of effective management often run along the lines of ‘the achievement of goals through the organisation and oversight of resources and people’. And very often there is a focus on planning, organising, directing, and controlling—principles first articulated by Henri Fayol, a French mining engineer and management theorist in 1916. Managees tend to regard a good manager as someone who nurtures positive working relationships but while this is likely to be beneficial, it is no guarantee of success.
Three observations can help provide a clearer picture: (1) successful managers utilize a range of approaches and have various personality types; (2) what successful managers do can rarely be copied so as to allow others to be equally successful; (3) the success rates of those chosen for management positions varies widely.
Management Field Theory recognises that good managers navigate the complexities of guiding people and managing resources amidst a constantly changing environment—a field in the scientific sense —to achieve goals established by the field. The field is shaped by many factors which can include the viewpoints of stakeholders, clients, and staff, along with external influences. Necessary management responses may involve delivering outputs, maintaining and improving customer satisfaction, controlling costs, addressing employee attitudes, responding to social and environmental factors and managing internal politics, historic organisational issues and recovery situations nd in addition to setting the requirements, the field can impose constraints on the means by which they can be met.
Effective managers exhibit sui generis characteristics that connect strongly with their field, facilitating their success. They do not need to embody every ideal trait or possess a comprehensive Fayol-type skill set. Crucial strengths may include customary skills such as organisation and planning but will also encompass some other qualities such as drive, motivational skills, creativity, sound judgment of individuals, the ability to foster trust, resilience, emotional stability, and a strong set of values and behaviours. Some of these abilities and traits may be challenging to identify in the short term and are often impossible to fully replicate. But one or two of them can be crucial for a field connection. The personality type of a manager is of lesser significance.
To maintain their effectiveness, managers must remain responsive to the evolving dynamics of their field. The process of hiring and assessing managers frequently falls short because many leaders and recruiters lack a solid grasp of Management Field Theory. Such misunderstandings can also lead individuals to pursue managerial positions whilst having a limited understanding of what the role involves. And the complex nature of the fields often leaves employees, particularly those new to the workforce, struggling to judge management accurately.
What makes a manager effective?
Ultimately, the major determinant of effective management is not the possession of a standard and constrained skill set —it’s the possession of specific and distinctive atrributes providing for effective functioning in the field!
by William Barclay | Jan 11, 2024 | Management
Accidental Managers Will Happen
A report from the UK Chartered Management Institute (CMI) has identified that 82% of bosses have not had any formal management training. The survey, reported by The Guardian, questioned 4,500 workers and managers. It pointed to wide concern at the poor quality of these ‘accidental managers’. The CMI Director of Policy, Anthony Painter, said that better management is required to prevent the development of toxic workplace cultures, to improve the UK’s economic performance and to aid public services reform.
The two major reasons in the view of Real-World Management are that many leaders do not recognise the importance of skilled specialist management, and that many individuals wish to become managers for the wrong reasons and attach limited importance to the development of expert management skills.
The management function does not provide a one-way ratcheted path to progress. It is a swinging hammer that can propel an organisation either forwards or backwards – so it must be properly deployed and aligned. Excellent managers through their skills and behaviours greatly benefit top-line performance: productivity, profit, customer satisfaction, staff satisfaction and retention, growth, and societal contribution. But delivered poorly, management can start a spiral of decline. As the saying goes, people more often leave managers than leave organisations. In the worst cases, personality-unfitted managers exhibiting negative characteristics including aspects of the dark triad identified by Delroy Paulhus and Kevin Williams – Machiavellianism, psychopathy and narcissism – can cause untold damage.
Individuals aspiring to management roles can be motivated more by the financial compensation, perks and perceived status than by the opportunity to develop vital specialist skills. Forward looking organisations develop parallel development avenues with matched compensation so that skilled individual contributors can remain in direct operational work. Staff can see status deriving from the possession of a reporting function on other staff (and the avoidance of becoming a reportee to a rival) and from generally being more in-the-know. Individuals who practice schmooze can see the management ladder as easier to climb than others. It is not unusual for patronage to be a major factor in appointments. Staff desiring management roles for the wrong reasons are unlikely to have training at the top of their agendas. The identification of genuine management potential and the putting in place of professional on-boarding and development programmes should be central to human resource planning and talent strategies.
The absence of training is symptomatic of a more general cavalier attitude to the appointment of managers. Management in the UK is still seen far too widely as administration, as keeping things going. A belief exists that generally intelligent and well-educated individuals automatically make good managers: they don’t. The culture of the gifted amateur has not been eradicated.
Management in the UK remains too little understood. It seems that there is a pervasive incuriosity it. Anne Francke of the CMI identifies that management does not appear to be a priority for politicians and does not feature strongly in policy announcements. Excellent managers are stars but have a weak profile in the public consciousness.
This issue is not chopped liver. Managers – proclaim the importance of your role from the rooftops! There are still far too many Accidentals waiting to happen.
by William Barclay | Dec 21, 2023 | Management
What Makes a Good Manager Good? Management Field Theory Explains
Good managers get results. But why is it often unclear how they have done it? What makes a good manager good? Why is it difficult for someone else to copy what a good manager does? Why is selecting people for management posts problematic? When we contemplate management we seem to encounter dimensions of the mysterious.
The answers are connected with the complexity of managers’ work and the variety of attributes that are required for success. Real-World Management have developed a model termed Management Field Theory© to address these issues. The model provides a scheme directed towards an understanding of the deep mechanics of management.
The general concept of a Field Theory was introduced by the American social psychologist Kurt Lewin. He defined a field as the sum of the external forces and influences that interact with people’s traits to cause their behaviour. He said ‘to understand behaviour, the person and his environment have to be considered as one constellation of interdependent factors’. This interdependency gives rise to an organisation’s culture and emotional tone.
Management Field Theory regards managers as working in a field of forces and influences that vary with time. They derive from a variety of sources including the priorities of leaders, the needs of clients, the attitudes of staff, the views of stakeholders, the impact of past organisational events and the wider social and economic environment. They give rise to obligations for managers and workgroups which may include levels of achievement in respect of outputs, profits, turnover, costs, timeliness, client satisfaction, client retention, staff satisfaction, staff retention, and societal contributions.
Good managers and their workgroups meet these obligations. A variety of personal qualities enable managers to do it, and crucially they usually include, alongside direct knowledge and skills, their values and behaviours. Good managers are rare because of the complexity of management fields and the range of attributes needed to fit with them. Particular strengths may enable a manager to engage sufficiently strongly: organisational skills, planning abilities, motivational abilities, the capacity to communicate a vision, an understanding of people, political skills, and the ability to engender trust. Different limited sets of these attributes may be enough for managers to be effective: they can be effective for different reasons.
It is because fits with the field are often highly characteristic of individual managers and because the values and behaviours of managers are often significant ─ attributes that may be recognisable only over long periods of time ─ that attempts to copy their approach often fail. Furthermore it means that some effective managers may not outwardly present characteristics conforming to an ‘authoritative norm’. Managers may succeed in some organisations and situations but not others because of the difference in the fields they encounter. And the dynamic nature of the field means that managers can lose effectiveness over time when their attributes are no longer so well adapted. Field complexity may also mean that managers themselves may not always fully understand how their achievements are derived and so may not be able to fully explain their success to others.
The theory has implications for the selection and personal development of managers. Person specifications should be based around all the predominant qualities needed to achieve a fit with the field. Personal development plans need a correspondingly wide scope.
An understanding of their underlying mechanics is required to allow management roles to be effectively deployed. Such understandings do not widely exist. It is why so many different answers are heard to the question ‘what is a good manager?’. Management Field Theory can help illuminate the management panorama. For managers, every day is a Field Day!
by William Barclay | Oct 21, 2023 | Management, management inspection
When an Inspector Calls
Anthropologists tell us that a major reason for the success of the human race is our ability to communicate with and learn from each other. So what’s not to like about workplace inspections? It is hard to avoid them: process compliance; public service delivery; health and safety; fair trading; facilities; IT security; hygiene. We can surely learn from the experience and wisdom of others who look at the way we are doing things. And certainly some inspections do result in improvements or even transformations. But sadly in many others a shadow falls between the idea and the act – a shadow dark enough to produce climates of fear and deep foreboding.
Effective inspection requires a depth of knowledge and experience on the part of the inspector which includes the constraints and exigencies of the working environment as well as the direct organisational processes. Inspectors with such a breadth of skill can be difficult to find. Unawareness may mean that an inspection is shallow and confined to comparing work centres, devoid of more fundamental scrutiny. It can also lead to the absence of proposals about paths to improvement – a major missed opportunity.
The inspector-inspectee relationship often has a major power imbalance. Psychologists tell us that power diminishes a person’s capacity to take the perspective of others and perceive emotions accurately. It may also cause those possessing power to have stricter standards for others than for themselves and even to dehumanise those down-power to them. Inspectors require maturity: they face the considerable challenge of working with power compassionately and skilfully.
On some occasions, inspectors can be under external political pressures that favour negative outcomes – for example when leaders perceive a need to demonstrate to stakeholders a confrontational internal management approach or to respond to apparent reputational difficulties. This can seriously skew an inspector’s approach and can increase the likelihood that headlines of reports will be based on a small unrepresentative number of outcomes presented in a manner designed to create impact.
Here is a Real-World Management instrument for judging an inspection. The TT rating is a continuous scale, ranging from (i) transformative for highly beneficial to (ii) tragic for highly damaging.
Start on the basis that the inspection could be 100% transformative. Then consider each of the features below. They may or may not apply to your inspection. If a feature does apply, subtract a proportion of effectiveness from 100% that you judge to be appropriate. Possible ranges for these factors based on the experiences of Real-World Management are indicated.
Driven by higher political imperatives 20-100%
Inspector lacks knowledge or experience or exigence-awarness 20-80%
Inspector lacks capability to deal with inspector-inspectee power imbalance 20-80%
Headline outcome based on unrepresentative features 20-100%
No reference to means of improvement 20-100%
A positive final rating means the inspection has some degree of effectiveness; above 80% could be transformative. A negative rating indicates a tragic inspection. Ratings of different minus magnitude may be obtained – measures of the extent of the tragedy.
Disquiet about inspection is not new. The famous words of the American president Theodore Roosevelt in a 1910 speech are worth remembering:
‘It is not the critic who counts: not the person who points out how the strong person stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the person who is actually in the arena….’
