Self appraisal: I have been a bad manager!

Anyone who has been a leader of people; whether a manager or a president, has at some point not done it particularly well.
I subscribe to the "3 Kinds of Bad Manager" scenario.
Bad Manager 1 has no idea that she is a bad manager. No one has told her. She is only doing what she has seen done by other bad managers before her and she honestly thinks that what she is doing is the right way to do it.
Bad Manager 2 knows he is missing the mark. He knows he isn't that great and feels a bit insecure about it. But he also wants to be better. He just doesn't always know how to go about it.
Bad Manager 3 is what I like to call the Tyrant. You'll generally find them as CEOs or high-level regional or national managers. They don't care that they are a bad manager. It's their way, or the highway.
I like to think that I have been both Bad Manager 1 and Bad Manager 2. I have not yet enjoyed the perks of being Bad Manager 3 and I am not sure that I ever want to!
In the spirit of often being Bad Manager 2, here's an honest look at 4 ways that I have missed the mark as a manager.
1. I Flipped. Then I Flopped.
There are only a few times in my career that I haven't trusted my own very well-researched position on a topic. That's of course, until a fast-talking, empire-building, pushy bulldozer of a person has come to present their "much better idea" that has no research to back it. It's amazing how often I have lost confidence in what I was doing simply because I have been baffled with the fast-talk of someone with a loaded agenda and a lack of respect for how hard I work at making sure the decisions I make are right.
Considering that I have not built my career on being a tyrant or by "sucking up" to the right people, I can only assume that my career has been built upon merit and my value to the companies I have worked for. So why am I so easily rattled?
My team have benefitted when my vision has been clear and my mission has been stable and consistent. They start to fall when my mission pivots for unclear reasons and my vision is clouded by the influence of "she who yells the loudest".
Whilst I have improved greatly in this area, my confidence is still rattled from time-to-time by aggressive people who know how to talk in circles. There is clearly more work for me to do.
2. No, you go home. I'll work the weekend instead.
I have often dismissed a team member's offer to help with after-hours or weekend work and shouldered the burden myself instead. In fact, I did it this very same weekend on which I am writing this piece. I am not sure whether I have done it out of a genuine concern for them to rest on their time off, or whether I did it to be a hero. I certainly hope it's not the latter. But there have been so many times when I am sure they really did want to help. Instead of showing them how hard I work and the commitment I have to my work, I am just showing them that they are not valued enough to be part of that work and that if they want to one day rise in to my position, that they too will be expected to do the same. Is it any wonder no one in my teams have ever wanted my job?
This is an area of my management techniques that I still need to work on today.
3. I can't make the meeting, therefore the meeting is cancelled.
Of all the things I have done that completely invalidate the abilities of my team, this is perhaps the one I am most ashamed of. By cancelling a meeting simply because I can't be there, I am telling my team that none of them are capable of running a meeting and they can't make any decisions without me being present.
I can only remember two occasions when I had to over-rule decisions made my senior team members. And in both cases that was due to new information coming to hand that changed their assumptions leading in to the decisions being made. My team have watched me run a meeting enough times and have watched my decision-making process enough times now to know what my input would be and why I would make the decisions I make.
Recently I have released the running of my team's daily "stand-up" meetings to the team themselves. They rotate it through them. And they are really good at it. Im fact, a few of them do it better than I do. And I couldn't be more proud.
4. Follow-up? What follow-up?
"Sure, we'll catch up next week and put that development plan in concrete".
Those were the famous last words of a staff development plan from last year. And naturally I have all the most valid excuses in the world as to why, 9 months later, we still haven't gone any further with discussing their goals and career aspirations.
It takes 15 seconds for me to set a reminder in my Google Calendar to call or follow-up on something. I takes about 6 seconds for me set a reminder using Siri on the iPhone that is permanently attached to my body.
There is no excuse. By not following-through with my staff on matters such as their development plans, I am showing them that they are not valued, not worth my time and not really a priority to me.
Clearly this is already part of my own development plan for the next 2 months.
Speaking of which; perhaps it's time I started putting my own Staff Development Plan together. Maybe I'll even post it on here?