Edit: I should add training to that, while I wouldn't claim to be a good manager I did have some 1-on-1 training that did make me a less bad manager (being videoed in meetings and my interactions with people analysed).
Edit: I should add training to that, while I wouldn't claim to be a good manager I did have some 1-on-1 training that did make me a less bad manager (being videoed in meetings and my interactions with people analysed).
I've only taken on trivial leadership roles, so my default assumption is that I am not a good manager. For most other skills I can practice and gain proficiency on my own, but with management, trial and error comes at the cost of others' time. I assume there is some training you can take to give you basic skills, but I think real experience has to be gained through a gradual expansion of responsibilities, which requires mentorship and an environment that supports that kind of process.
so one easy way to be (viewed as) a bad manager is to forget that your focus should be people, not product. it is absolutely your job as a manager to ask about and know the motivations and constraints of those you manage, including probing no's like that.
A lot of people also have a strong anti manager bias.
They're predisposed to hate any manager they have, unless proven otherwise.
Ee can, at best, know from experience how to manage someone that is just like ourselves, and have an idea of what to say in public to people not like ourselves, but not what to say to them in private. And that's the best case, assuming we've had good managers (and thus have good examples to draw from). More likely, we've seen tolerable managers, plus plenty of bad ones.
To your point, how do we even recognize good management when we've seen it? How do we know what to emulate and what to avoid? We're the parents that say "well my parents beat me and I turned out just fine, so....".
Management is a skill (or collection of skills) It's not a skillset that most jobs actually train, nor is it one that they do a good job of recognizing. Most of the jobs people have growing up (and beyond) reward managers that push for short-term gains over such things like "morale" or "communication" - these are the managers that are "successful" for the vast majority of experience. Just look at how many places have techies shift into management as a career development path, but don't do anything to train them or say that people are managed any differently than code.
There are plenty of reasons for people to be biased against the person (their manager) that tells them what they don't want to hear (such as "take on this extra work" or "your time off request is denied" or "don't implement your idea"), there's also plenty of reasons to expect that most managers legitimately ARE poor managers.