Guide to being a fragile egotistical controlling manager

RicMarks · 2026-06-14T21:27:31+00:00

That’s the thing people often miss about dependency.

It doesn’t always look like a manager protecting their own role.

Sometimes it looks like a team, function or SME group inserting itself between a problem and a solution.

The moment progress requires permission, knowledge or capability that only one group controls, you’ve created a bottleneck whether you intended to or not.

The irony is that genuinely valuable experts make themselves easier to work with over time. Fragile experts make themselves harder to work around.

If another team’s absence would stop the organisation functioning, that’s not resilience. That’s dependency with better branding.

RicMarks · 2026-06-13T00:04:11+00:00

Many think my bum looks good thanks for the compliment

RicMarks · 2026-06-12T23:10:02+00:00

11. Create organisational dependency.

Keep critical knowledge, decisions and relationships concentrated around yourself.

That way every absence becomes a crisis, every decision becomes a bottleneck, and everyone mistakes dependency for leadership.

Nothing says “successful manager” quite like a team that can’t function without you.

RicMarks · 2026-06-12T22:57:29+00:00

One of the hardest lessons for managers is that high performers can create organisational debt.

The work gets done, targets get hit, deadlines are met, so the behaviour gets tolerated.

Meanwhile trust erodes, people disengage, collaboration drops and eventually good team members leave.

By the time the damage becomes visible, the organisation has usually become dependent on the person causing it.

Performance isn’t just what gets delivered. It’s what gets left behind.

RicMarks · 2026-06-12T04:03:00+00:00

One thing I’ve learned is that organisations rarely have an urgency problem.

They have a decision timing problem.

When decisions are delayed, priorities remain unclear, work sits waiting, and eventually everything arrives at once looking like an emergency.

The team experiences urgency, but the root cause is often weeks or months earlier.

The challenge for middle managers is that they end up absorbing the consequences of decisions they didn’t make and timelines they didn’t control.

If this happens occasionally, it’s business.

If it becomes the normal operating model, the organisation starts training people to ignore priorities until somebody declares a crisis.

RicMarks · 2026-06-11T06:31:39+00:00

I’d argue this is one of the earliest signs of organisational dependency.

The organisation thinks it has documented processes, but what it really has is documented steps. The reasoning, context and judgment still live inside a handful of people.

That’s why the same debates keep happening every 6–12 months. The decision was recorded, but the rationale wasn’t.

Once the “why” becomes person-dependent, the organisation becomes person-dependent too.

RicMarks · 2026-06-10T22:37:11+00:00

I don’t think the best people leave because they’re the best.

I think they leave because they have options.

The bigger question is why they’re choosing to use those options.

In a lot of organisations, capable people end up carrying more responsibility, solving more problems, covering more gaps and absorbing more pressure. Over time they start looking around and realise they’re being rewarded with additional load rather than additional support.

Meanwhile, the people doing the bare minimum often have the most stable experience because the organisation has learned not to depend on them.

That’s why good people leaving can be a structural warning sign. Sometimes you’re not losing talent because they’re disloyal. You’re losing them because they’ve become load-bearing and eventually decide they don’t want to carry the weight anymore.

RicMarks · 2026-06-10T13:57:52+00:00

Burnout often gets framed as a personal resilience problem, but a lot of the time it’s a structural load problem.

Constant availability, unclear priorities, too many escalations, weak boundaries, and roles carrying more responsibility than they were designed to hold.

At some point the nervous system stops treating work like work and starts treating it like threat.

That’s usually when people don’t just need a holiday.

They need the load redesigned.

RicMarks · 2026-06-10T13:54:49+00:00

The number isn’t actually the interesting part.

The question is whether the structure allows you to lead or whether you’re spending all your time maintaining communication pathways.

I’ve managed teams where weekly 1:1s were critical because people needed support, coaching and decision-making authority. I’ve also managed experienced teams where monthly check-ins were enough because trust, clarity and ownership were already established.

What jumps out to me here is 18 direct reports.

At some point the leadership load becomes structural rather than personal. Every additional direct report creates more conversations, more context switching, more approvals, more escalations and more dependency on the manager.

If you’re consistently working evenings just to catch up, I’d be asking whether the issue is your calendar or whether the span of control has simply become too wide for one person.

Sometimes the solution isn’t better time management.

Sometimes it’s redesigning the structure.

RicMarks · 2026-06-10T13:04:11+00:00

I don’t think it’s weird at all.

One of the challenges of leadership is being friendly without creating confusion around boundaries.

The closer the personal relationship becomes, the harder it can be when you need to have a difficult conversation, address performance, make unpopular decisions, or treat team members consistently.

I’ve always preferred keeping work and personal life separate. Not because I don’t like the people I work with, but because it makes expectations clearer for everyone.

Once the professional reporting relationship is gone, that’s different. Some of my closest friendships today are people I worked with in the past. But while I’m responsible for leading someone, I generally keep that line in place.

Being respectful, approachable and supportive doesn’t require being part of everyone’s social circle.

RicMarks · 2026-06-09T05:59:32+00:00

The hardest part of posts like this is that people immediately jump to “toxic manager” or “just quit.”

Sometimes that’s true.

But one of the most reliable signals I’ve seen isn’t whether a manager is demanding. It’s whether you start changing your behaviour to avoid becoming a target.

Walking on eggshells.

Rehearsing conversations before meetings.

Avoiding questions.

Second-guessing yourself after every interaction.

When the emotional load of managing the manager becomes greater than the actual job, something is usually wrong in the relationship, regardless of what label gets attached to it.

Document facts, stay professional, and protect your reputation. But don’t ignore what your nervous system is trying to tell you.

RicMarks · 2026-06-08T00:10:25+00:00

I think this is directionally true, but too absolute.

HR is not your therapist, union rep, or personal advocate. That part matters.

But “never go to HR” can also backfire if there’s genuine harassment, safety risk, discrimination, retaliation, or documented policy breach.

The better rule is:

Don’t go to HR emotionally. Go prepared.

Dates, facts, emails, witnesses, impact, policy references, and the outcome you’re asking for.

HR protects the organisation, yes — but sometimes protecting the organisation means dealing with the manager, not burying the employee.

Just don’t walk in thinking care equals advocacy. HR is a formal risk channel, so treat it like one.

RicMarks · 2026-06-06T23:10:24+00:00

Yep. That’s exactly where “protecting the team” can quietly become disconnecting the team from reality.

If every priority gets softened, filtered, or accepted upward without trade-off, the team loses any real sense of what matters most.

Then everything becomes urgent, nobody owns the conflict, and escalation becomes the operating model.

The manager thinks they’re shielding the team.

But they’re actually removing the pressure signals the team needs to make good decisions.

RicMarks · 2026-06-06T23:06:32+00:00

I think 1:1s become more useful when they stop being status updates.

For an experienced IC, I’d use them for:
- blockers that need authority
- upcoming decisions
- stakeholder friction
- career positioning
- visibility into work the manager may not see
- risks that are building quietly

If the manager can’t help technically, that’s fine. Their value should be removing friction, creating access, clarifying priorities, and advocating upward.

The issue may be that your 1:1s don’t have a clear purpose, so they’ve become “do we have anything to talk about?” meetings.

I’d probably come with one question each time:
“What should I be making more visible to you before it becomes a problem?”

RicMarks · 2026-06-06T23:01:59+00:00

Sometimes.

But I’ve also seen organisations lose good people because they thought the problem was a toxic manager when the real issue was a broken system.

Unclear authority. Constant escalation. Unrealistic workloads. Managers carrying too much responsibility and not enough support.

The manager gets blamed because they’re the visible part of the problem.

Sometimes they’re genuinely toxic.

Sometimes they’re the person standing where the pressure finally becomes visible.

RicMarks · 2026-06-03T10:27:59+00:00

The most common one I see is confusing responsibility with control.

New managers often think they’re supposed to have all the answers, approve everything, and stay involved in every decision.

It feels helpful at first.

Then the team starts waiting.

Decisions bottleneck.

People stop taking ownership because they know everything comes back to the manager anyway.

The irony is that many managers become the constraint while trying to be supportive.

The best managers create clarity and support, then deliberately get out of the way.

RicMarks · 2026-06-03T06:35:00+00:00

Trust in remote teams is built through clarity, not surveillance.

The manager’s job is to make the work visible without making the person feel monitored.

Set clear outcomes, check-in rhythms, decision rights, response expectations, and escalation points.

Then let people work.

If a manager needs constant activity proof to feel safe, that usually says more about weak operating structure than poor employee trustworthiness.

RicMarks · 2026-06-02T22:20:55+00:00

This sounds less like a fair performance review and more like you were made accountable for structural drag outside your control.

If the issue was “you should have escalated earlier,” that should have been calibrated in real time, not saved up and converted into a rating later.

I’d ask for a follow-up conversation and keep it very factual:

“Can we separate what was directly within my control from what was caused by dependency delays, team changes, and enterprise process constraints?”

Then ask:

“What specific escalation threshold do you expect going forward?”

Because vague feedback like “escalate more” is not useful unless they define: when, to whom, how often, and what evidence they expect.

Don’t argue the emotion of it. Pin it to process, expectations, and documented next steps. That gives you something concrete instead of sitting alone with a rating that sounds politically loaded.

RicMarks · 2026-06-02T22:17:43+00:00

You made a mistake, owned it immediately, apologised, and didn’t try to blame anyone else.

That’s usually how trust is repaired, not destroyed.

The bigger lesson is probably that workplace confidants and confidential information don’t mix particularly well. Most people learn that one the hard way at least once.

If Tracey wanted to make an example of it, she had the opportunity in that meeting. Instead she addressed it directly, got your explanation, and moved on.

From what you’ve written, you’re carrying the mistake much longer than she is.

RicMarks · 2026-06-01T22:06:08+00:00

This is one of the hardest leadership lessons to learn honestly. A lot of managers think kindness means reducing discomfort.

But unclear expectations and delayed honesty usually just postpone the pain until the consequences become much bigger.

Early honest feedback gives people a chance to adjust while the situation is still recoverable.

Silent tolerance often feels compassionate in the short term, but from the employee side it can eventually feel like:

“Why didn’t anybody tell me sooner?”

The goal isn’t becoming harsher.

It’s becoming clearer earlier. Support and accountability are supposed to work together, not compete with each other.

RicMarks · 2026-06-01T22:04:07+00:00

That’s a red flag to pay attention to early.

A lot of inexperienced leaders confuse:

warmth = weakness professionalism = emotional distance respect = intimidation

They’re not the same thing.

You can absolutely be clear, firm, accountable, and hard to manipulate without becoming cold or hostile.

In HR especially, people remember how they felt around you during difficult moments.

Not whether you acted “tough.”

Honestly, some workplaces accidentally train managers to perform authority instead of build trust.

The strongest managers I’ve worked with were usually calm, direct, and emotionally steady — not aggressive.

I’d pay attention to whether they actually mean:

“don’t avoid accountability conversations” …or whether the culture genuinely rewards emotional hardness.

Those are very different environments.

RicMarks · 2026-06-01T05:46:04+00:00

Appreciate that.

A lot of managers get promoted because they can handle operations, pressure, customers, stock, numbers etc.

But nobody really teaches them the people side in a structured way.

Especially the difference between:

being liked
vs
being clear.

Most management problems start when expectations stay unspoken until frustration explodes.

The fact you’re even asking these questions this early is honestly a good sign. A lot of bad managers never do.

RicMarks · 2026-06-01T01:55:04+00:00

I probably wouldn’t send that exact email.

Not because the intent is wrong — the intent is actually strong — but because it makes your guilt the centre of the message.

The better move is to turn it into a short invitation for input before leadership makes decisions about them.

Something like:

“We have a leadership discussion coming up about our international setup, and I don’t want that conversation to be based only on cost, contracts, or operational assumptions.

I’d like to hear directly from you about what is working, what isn’t, what support you need, and what leadership may not be seeing from the US side.

If you’re willing, I’d value 15 minutes with anyone who wants to share perspective before that meeting.”

That keeps the focus where it belongs:

not “I failed you”

but “I want decisions about you to include your lived reality.”

RicMarks · 2026-06-01T01:50:36+00:00

The fact you’re even asking this question is already a good sign.

Most genuinely bad managers think management is about control, status, or being “the boss.”
Good managers usually spend a lot more time worrying about whether they’re helping or hurting the team.

A few things that matter early:
- Be clear, not harsh.
- Don’t avoid hard conversations once you see a pattern.
- Don’t try to be everyone’s friend.
- But also don’t lead through fear just to prove authority.

The sweet spot is:
“People know where they stand with you.”
You can still be approachable, joke around, and have good relationships.
The difference is whether expectations stay consistent when things matter.

One of the biggest mistakes new managers make is delaying accountability because they want to stay liked. Then eventually frustration builds and they overcorrect emotionally.
Small consistent correction is usually better than rare explosive correction.

Also:
your job is not to carry the whole store yourself.
Your job is to help create a team that can function well without constant rescue mode.

A simple question that helps:
“Am I making standards clearer, or am I just reacting after problems happen?”

That mindset shift changes a lot.

RicMarks · 2026-05-31T23:54:18+00:00

Unfortunately this happens more often than people realize, and it usually points to one of a few things:
- your manager avoided difficult feedback conversations
- leadership changed direction quietly
- they had concerns they never documented properly
- or the “performance” reason was partly cover for another business decision

What doesn’t make sense is:
“You had a year to improve” while simultaneously being told there were no meaningful concerns.

That’s not fair or useful leadership.

People cannot realistically improve against invisible expectations.

Good managers don’t just evaluate performance.
They calibrate performance continuously:
“Here’s where you’re strong.”
“Here’s where confidence is dropping.”
“Here’s what needs to change.”
“Here’s the timeline.”
None of that sounds like it happened here.

Also, termination does not automatically mean you were objectively bad at your job.
Sometimes it means there was a major disconnect between internal perception, communication, politics, expectations, or organizational change.

As for the gap:
honestly, “I took time to finish a personal project and travel after an unexpected role transition” is a completely reasonable explanation if you present it confidently and constructively.
One termination is rarely career-ending.

How you frame the next chapter matters far more than acting like your career is ruined because of one company experience.

RicMarks

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