7 Guaranteed Ways to Annoy Your Employees

Great employees are hard to find and even harder to retain. But if you do any of the following seven practices regularly, you will not only annoy your employees, but eventually drive them away. 

1. Delegate... but don’t. 

Give them a task and then keep jumping back into it. That makes your team members feel really confident. NOT! 

2. Second-guess them. 

Ask them to do something, but then plant seeds of doubt, often! For example, ask questions that are designed to make them feel stupid rather than learn.  

3. Withhold important information from them.  

This will successfully result in damaging both trust and effectiveness. After all, what team needs more trust, right?! 

4. Do the opposite of what you expect from them.  

There is nothing like a good dose of hypocrisy to breed some really good cynicism.  

5. Work really hard to get them to be just like you.  

Employees really like that. After all, that’s exactly what every organization needs, clones of us! 

6. Be controlling and inflexible. 

It’s only reasonable to do so since the way you do things is the RIGHT WAY, right!  

7. Give employees responsibility without authority.  

Nothing will make them feel better than being asked to do a job but having no authority to get it done! 

Jay Desko is the CEO of The Center Consulting Group and brings experience in the areas of organizational assessment, leadership coaching, decision-making, and strategic questioning. Jay’s degrees include an M.Ed. in Instructional Systems Design from Pennsylvania State University and a Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior and Leadership from The Union Institute.