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7 Unintentionally Condescending Things Bosses Say
“I already told you this!”
My old boss didn’t like that I lost track of one of his excessive new rules for conducting business.
Instead of just telling us again he had to throw in what we heard as “I told you this already! How can you not remember these things? What is wrong with your brains? Fine, I’ll repeat it again, idiots.”
Every mistake, difficulty, or issue in his eyes required a new policy to fix it. It wasn’t good enough to learn, discuss, adapt, improve, and move on. Instead, a new official rule had to be implemented and we soon became much more inefficient in conducting normal business and responding to customers — we succumbed to death by policy with the added insult of condescension for not recalling that catalog of new policies flawlessly.
After feeling belittled and over-managed we became despondent. Instead of being a dynamic, problem-solving team we just waited for his specific direction on everything. Our initiative died along with our effectiveness and he couldn’t understand why — so he kept making new rules.
I’ve been in leadership positions for 25 years and have seen how some condescension, even if not intended, can do damage to morale.
