8 Signs of a Toxic Manager: Behaviours, Not a Character Sketch

Almost every list of signs available describes a person: he shouts, he lies, he's incompetent, he's a narcissist. That kind of description has three defects. It isn't verifiable; it isn't datable; and it can't be handed to anyone — not to an employee representative, not to a doctor, not to a lawyer, all of whom will ask you the same thing: what happened, and on what day.

The eight points below therefore describe behaviours and their effects on the work. Each can be recorded with a date. None of them says what the person is.

In the article that follows, I explore workplace stress and self-doubt. If you recognise yourself in this theme, the tests on the platform help you take stock of what the situation is costing you.

1. The moving instruction

What happens: the brief changes between the moment it is given and the moment the work is delivered, without the change being announced — and the result is criticised against the latest version. Effect on the work: nothing can ever be finished, time goes into redoing, and above all you lose confidence in your own understanding. How to record it: the original brief (ideally the email), the date, the final brief, the gap.

This is the behaviour against which systematic written confirmation is most effective. Not to catch anyone out, but so that you have an external reference point when you start doubting your own memory.

2. Information withheld

What happens: information you need to do the job isn't passed on, or arrives too late — a change of priority, a decision taken in committee, a deadline, a new stakeholder. Effect on the work: you discover things at the same time as their consequences, often in front of others. How to record it: the date you learned it, the date it was already circulating, and the effect (unsuitable deliverable, a meeting prepared for nothing, a commitment made on a false basis).

Information is a lever of power, and one of the quietest: nothing shows, everything is felt.

3. Scope quietly removed

What happens: projects, topics and contacts gradually leave your remit. None is announced as a removal. Each has a local justification — "it's simpler this way", "he has capacity right now", "it was urgent". Effect on the work: six months later, the job being done bears little relation to the job description, and the person concerned is usually the last to realise the scale of it. How to record it: a list. What I led in January, what I lead today, with the dates of each shift. This is the behaviour for which a chronology is most conclusive, precisely because each episode looks trivial on its own.

4. Appraisal without criteria

What happens: judgement on the work rests on no criteria stated in advance, or on criteria that keep changing. "That's not what I was expecting", without what was expected ever having been articulated. Effect on the work: improvement is impossible, since no correction can be identified; and success is impossible, since the target moves. How to record it: ask for the criteria in writing, beforehand. The answer — or the absence of one — is itself an item.

In organisational psychology this falls under procedural justice: it isn't the severity of an appraisal that damages people, it's the fact that it is ungrounded and uncontestable.

5. Disproportionate control of detail

What happens: sign-off demanded on decisions at the level of the role, form corrections on interim drafts, progress reports nobody does anything with, replies expected immediately. Effect on the work: production time contracts in favour of reporting time, and autonomy shrinks — including in people who exercised it without difficulty before.

This is the most common of the eight, and it usually comes less from a desire to crush than from the manager's own anxiety. That doesn't change what it costs, but it does change what can shift it. It has its own article.

6. Stable unequal treatment

What happens: in comparable situations, the same people get the favourable calls — visible projects, flexible hours, leniency on lateness, direct access — and the same people don't. Effect on the work: beyond the lost opportunities, a specific kind of erosion tied to the fact that effort no longer relates to outcome. How to record it: comparable, dated facts side by side. Two similar requests, two different answers, two dates.

⚠️ One important caution: if that difference in treatment tracks a protected characteristic — origin, sex, age, health, disability, pregnancy, union activity, sexual orientation, belief — it falls under a different regime, which is not covered here and is discussed with a national equality body or a lawyer. Ordinary favouritism has its own article.

7. Unpredictable availability

What happens: access to the manager follows no rule. Unreachable for two weeks on a blocking approval, then messages on a Sunday evening. Meetings moved the day before, cancelled in the morning, rescheduled at an impossible time. Effect on the work: planning becomes impossible, and a permanent vigilance sets in that prevents you from switching off in the evening — a central mechanism in the onset of burnout. How to record it: response times on blocking issues, and the timestamps of requests. Both series are already in your inbox.

8. The group used as an instrument

What happens: correction happens in public, information travels through third parties ("the team feels that…", with the team never identifiable), positions are taken in meetings without any prior conversation. Effect on the work: progressive isolation, and mistrust of colleagues who have done nothing — which cuts you off from the one resource that genuinely helps in these situations. How to record it: the meeting, the date, who was present, what was said. The public nature of the fact is the item here.

The criterion that matters: regularity, not intensity

None of these eight points means anything on its own. Any manager, including an excellent one, produces each of them occasionally: under pressure, at quarter-end, during a reorganisation, or simply on a bad day.

Three things separate them from an established pattern:

• repetition — the same behaviour, with the same person, over several months;
• selectivity — it doesn't happen the same way with everyone;
• the absence of repair — the episode is never revisited, acknowledged or corrected.

That is why a dated record is the central tool on this subject, far more than any list of signs: it makes regularity visible, whereas memory only keeps the peaks. ScanMyJob exists for exactly that — putting facts in series, without concluding.

Three things this article does not do

It does not characterise your situation. Recognising several of these behaviours says nothing about what the law would make of it. That is a question for a lawyer. It does not describe a person. A manager can produce six of these eight behaviours with no intent to harm at all: under pressure they don't control, without any training in management, or by reproducing what was done to them. What it costs you is identical. What might shift it is not — and the blind spots of management deserve to be understood. It does not replace medical advice. If these behaviours have lastingly changed your sleep, your appetite or your general condition, that is a health matter, and it is discussed with a doctor.