The things bad managers value in their employees?
- Technical skill
- Lack of complaints about stupid ideas managers foist on staff in their bid to be relevant, innovative, responsive to the market
- Obedience
- Initiative aligned to organization goals, but not too much
- Patience while company takes forever to adopt what is obvious
Those are my takeaways from watching managers work. But I like this bit of wisdom from Doug “Blue Skunk” Johnson:
…[it is not] the best worker (engineer, teacher, mechanic, nurse, etc.) that gets ahead, but the person who is able to manage and lead good workers and so create an effective workplace.
Goal setting, project management, problem resolution, budgeting, evaluations are done by educated people - not trained people. source: Blue Skunk blog
Update
Special thanks to Cass M for the suggestion of the word “bad” above