TalkEnglish Logo

Tell me about the worst manager you ever had.

"Tell me about the worst manager you ever had."

Just like learning from a good manager, you should learn from bad managers as well. When you tell the reason why your manager was bad, make sure to include that you learned not to be like that.

Short Answers

"In my last position, I had a manager who didn't like to give instructions. I managed to figure a lot of it out, but I would have saved a lot of time if my manager gave a simple 5 minute overview on the project."

"I had one manager that was very disorganized. Whenever I ask a question, he would look around his desk for a couple minutes looking for information to give to me. I like to be organized so this trait really bothered me."

"One manager didn't like talking to people. He always had his office door closed and whenever anyone asked a question, he seemed disturbed. He was very intelligent and produced a great deal of work, but as a manager, I believe you should be approachable by your directs."

Long Answer

"The worst manager I had was when I was working at a database company. I didn't like my manager because he was never available. When ever he was given an assignment, he always delegated the work without explaining the details. We were told to figure it out. I believe that you can learn from figuring some things out by ourselves, but it was obvious that this wasn't his intention. But the worst thing about it was that I didn't know that he was bad until I changed to a different manager. He kept feeding us false hope saying we are close to being promoted. Basically it was a way to keep us motivated to work extra hard. Sure it worked for a while, but I didn't gain anything else out of it except what not to be as a manager."

This is a pretty easy answer that just explains the behavior of a bad manager. If you haven't had many managers, then it might be difficult to think of one. But you should definitely think of an answer even if you have to bend the truth a little. Although my example was ordinary, you can make a better answer by listing out what you learned through your bad manager.

previous lessonnext lesson
