Shame of the macho managers on the 18.47

A man on my London train today referred to his colleagues as mostly 'dead wood.'
His travelling companion boasted he was relishing a major restructure involving the 'low hanging fruit' in his team.
A third besuited assassin smiled as he described wielding an 'axe' to decimate his 'headcount' by 25% in the next six months.
It's not the first time I've heard employees described like this and with such obvious disdain.
Sadly it won't be the last.
Macho posturing on the 18.47pm? You betcha!
But something else too. What struck me about the very loud conversation across the aisle was the realisation that someone somewhere had given these three men responsibility to manage people in their respective organisations through difficult times.
Can't imagine this terrible trio of horrible bosses doing that with any sense of leadership.

Here are some tips for communicating a restructure the right way http://bit.ly/zaDJPI 

How do corporate despots survive?

The fabulous eye of cartoonist Tom Fishburne is in spot on focus with this amusing array of corporate characters. If I was a talented artist like Tom I might add the Talk To The Hand guy and Mrs Shssssh You Have Nothing Interesting To Say While I'm In The Room - both of whom I have encountered. And let us not forget Mr Jump-Up-And-Down-On-The-Spot-Ranting-In-The-Middle-Of-An-Open-Plan-Office whom I met on one, very memorable, occasion along with 150 aghast colleagues. Now, I hasten to add, I have worked with many brilliant, inspiring people but there have been a few really, really bad ones along the way. And I am not alone. One such baddie is the bane of a good friend's life. 
My pal is pretty resilient but has extreme challenges with one of those 'Unique Individuals' who everyone seems terrified of, who has single-handedly added triple digits to the sick leave stats, yet whose budget and organisational power remain solid and growing, year-on-year. (Think Edward Tufte's Stalin doing a PowerPoint presentation for more of a pen picture).

In his three million years of service with the organisation, scary, unpleasant, upward managing, nightmare Head of Function big cheese has clawed his way up and all the while successfully avoided any attempts at leadership support, training, performance management and Decent Human Being immersion courses.
Yet it's my pal who is being coached on how to handle this despot and all to improve communication! It's a complete mystery to me what these fiendish folk are good at apart from filling dead men's shoes or roles left by better people having babies. Yet how do they survive? If there's a war for talent, if CEOs are generally wanting to embrace employee engagement, and if research shows people leave their manager not their company, tell me how do they get away with it? If anyone knows, then do please put me out of my misery. 

Read more about 'horrible bosses' from body language guru Carol Goman.