A healthy employee – manager relationship wants a thousand things, a sick employee – manager relationship only wants one. Or so the saying approximately goes. In conversations with many of you over these past few weeks it’s clear that we learn from our all our managers, both good and bad.

Working alongside a successful leader who you can emulate is awesome. Sometimes the pain of bad management can be just as enduring of a memory. I’ve often found that some of my more formative career experiences have come from those challenged relationships.

Every manager, good and bad, can be a teacher. Everyone has something to teach us in our career journeys if we’re able to open our eyes to the education. If you’re reading this and currently going through it, I feel you. I’ve been there! Here are a few stories from my management journey navigating the good and the bad:

In one of my first roles out of college I was an assistant on a trading desk. One of my critical responsibilities was doing expense reports. So, bored one afternoon filing away co-worker dinner receipts, I threw my headphones on to help pass the time. My boss said they had never seen anything like that on a desk and sent me home for the day for “not showing enough focus”. That was so embarrassing. I promised I would never publicly embarrass anyone like that in front of their co-workers. Ever.

A new highly touted VP came in. They lived pretty far from the office. Understand that this is before remote work was really a thing. After a while their office attendance began to slip. Sometimes it was rain flooding the highway (?). Other times it was something around the house. Or the dog. Eventually they were only showing up to the office a couple times a week. Not exactly “showing up for their team”. Everyone misses some days but I promised myself I would show up for my team. Always.

There was the boss who asked me how it was going with a direct report and I shared, in confidence, an awkward conversation I’d overheard of theirs with a co-worker. Their response: “Oh you shouldn’t have told me that. Now we need to go directly to HR to settle this.” I thought this was a safe space? Aren’t we going to partner on this? Hopefully I’ve never pulled a “gotcha” on someone else like they did on me. That sucked.

We were at a high growth startup. It was my weekly manager 1×1. They looked busy when I entered the room but it was my time, right? So I began our agenda. But they were typing a chat in our shared doc that was clearly supposed to go to someone else. Are you even here? Paying attention to me? I remembered what it was like to experience a manager not at all being present. That sucked too.

Over the years there have been some personal challenges. Who doesn’t have those? I remember the boss who was there for me for constantly checking in. It meant a lot to me that they cared personally. They may have even felt too much! Caring personally about your team and checking up on your people often is an admirable leadership quality I’ve tried to carry forward. Write down the names of their pets, significant others, and family members. It matters.

Some of those bosses were the same and some were different. I’ve had quite a few over the years. Learned from all of them in very different ways and this is just a sampling!

It’s the filtering mechanisms I’ve developed over the years to build a point of view on what I liked and didn’t like for my own management style that has been the most useful. As kids we learn the difference between good and bad but the real world, companies, and people management are a lot more nuanced and gray.

Creating anchoring mechanisms about how best to navigate these waters has been paramount. How to not embarrass anyone, lead by example, be visible (even while remote), create a trusting environment, and care personally are some of the biggest learnings. From both good managers and bad.

We can learn from them all!