Worst leader that I had was the boss of my first workplace. Having to work under him had me undergo a great change in mindset as to how badly things can be coordinated and done. Pretty much 2 years had to go by before I've let the job go away due to simply a lack of leadership in the organization.

It is difficult to work under someone who has really no idea where they are going at without any sense of purpose of direction, not even talking about inspiration. Communication was at zero levels.

As to this day, I take that as an example of the worst leader that I have had.

Worst boss I ever had was at my first workplace, I had 4 shift managers and I always had to work with one in each shift. 3 of them were great, I learned from all of them whenever I did a mistake they would teach me to how to solve it and how to avoid repeating the same mistake and in many cases they covered for me. The other boss never taught me anything, when I did a mistake he would just berate me and wouldn’t teach me the right way of doing things and sometimes he would blame me on his mistakes taking advantage of the fact that my word was worth less than his. He always took advantage of his position as boss to take credit of things his employees did and to blame his employees with his mistakes.

I'm a football enthusiast, I mean it originated from England, my birthplace. Now, there was a time my friends and I organized a 5-aside football tournament. It was for employed peeps who don't have a lot of time dedicated to playing sports. We chose a colleague who was popular among the target group we wanted to participate in the tournament to lead us through the tournament Little did I know that popularity and influence do not necessarily translate to better leadership. That guy was the worst leader I ever had. He had no intentions to cooperate, and worse, he did not understand the purpose of the tournament. All he saw was an opportunity to have fun, bend the rules for his friends and act like the god almighty. He expected us to do anything as he said, and not to mention on matters football when it came to women he was sexist. Needless to say, the tournament was a failure but the lesson was learned, influence over people does not translate to a good leader. I rue the decision to make him the leader to this date.

The worst leader (boss) I have had in my 38 year career was the owner of a company I worked in for 5 years. The level of arrogance was breath-taking. He was unwilling to listen or consider any advice as his agendas were already set. He had absolutely no interest in his staff and their well-being. He was determined to pay the absolute minimum possible and would never have considered any kind of financial reward in years where expectations were exceeded. He would never have considered playing to a staff member's strengths but seemed to take pleasure in focussing on their weaknesses and forcing them into doing the things they were least comfortable with within their role. He couldn't even manage to wish his staff a Happy Christmas and to thank them for all their hard work during the year. Inevitably, morale was truly appalling - I have never worked with so many unhappy people and that definitely stemmed from the top.

I remember my first job as an English teacher. I had a boss who checked all the characters of a bad boss. It was an English course and she’s never taught a single class or even learnt to teach. She’s the boss because she put the money to build the course. It’s not wrong to be a boss for a business you didn’t know about, but it’s not right to make decisions when you’re not fully informed about it yet. She only saw the commercial part of it, but not the humans inside it. The teachers, workers, students. At the end, she went out of business.

Probably the worst leader I've ever had was my boss in a former job (unless I count some high school teachers). Although she had graduate foreign school management and managed a large, multi-industry corporation, I often felt she did not understand the people working for her. She was highly performance-oriented, and people were like powerful machines for her. Because she worked 24 hours a day and could not sleep at night, she could not understand that one needed space for his/her private life. It was no exception that she called for some work assignment even at night. She gave a very low salary to her employees. My job positions included a lot of activities, and although I have been alerting myself to the fact that the center of my work is at least for two people, I was not heard. Everything was solved by my departure for maternity leave. And how do you think that lady is going on? People still have a little money, a lot of work, and my job was divided into three different full-time jobs ...

I wouldn’t say I have had a bad or for that matter worse leader yet. Every leader I have worked with has given me tons to learn in terms of things I emulate and things I would want to avoid when I lead a team. Here are certain characters that I learned one should avoid while leading a team:

1. Micromanagement: leaders who nitpick and establish too much authority and control over your work, curtailing autonomy might be prone to undesirable aversion from followers
2. Querulousness- leaders who keep complaining about the areas of development and failures of followers can be hard to work with
3. Laissez- faire- leaders who abdicate from responsibilities and avoid taking decisions give followers a hard time in terms of lack of clarity, specificity and direction