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This concept is a major confusion point for many managers and executives; I was actually just talking about it over the weekend on email with one such person. There’s a lot that goes into this discussion, though, and I think we can only really paint the edges of it right now. Plus: obviously everyone is unique, thinks about work differently, and considers the trappings of their own success and their own relevance in different ways.
I think the first thing we need to establish, and this is where I’ll already lose a bunch of people, is that there’s honestly no such thing as a bad employee. There are people who exist in the wrong roles, with the wrong bosses, or even in the wrong company. Now, you might recoil and say “Well, if they’re in the wrong company, they’re a bad employee then!” No. Not necessarily. You can move people to another boss, or another role, or another reporting structure (dashed/dotted lines), and oftentimes it gets better. History has millions of these examples, including some famous ones. Hell, Nicki Minaj rose out of Red Lobster because she got a boss who was into flexibility!
Sadly, a lot of employees being seen as “bad” by managers is based on 1–2 interactions the manager didn’t like, and then the manager views themselves as super harried and slammed, and they don’t really have the time to develop or course-correct what’s…
