Management Anti Pattern - How to Demoralize Team Members Without Doing Anything

I have discovered a wonderful anti pattern for absolutely demoralizing team members in a remote context and it is drop dead simple:

When you are someone's manager, simply don't respond to the things that they send you.

The magic of this is as follows:

• It requires that you do absolutely nothing!
• It works whether you are not responding to Email, Slack or another method
• It entirely demoralizes even experienced, motivated team members

Not Recommended.

Note: If you're a manager, it is easy to fall into the trap of saying to yourself "Hm… This is interesting. I need more time to respond to it" and then lose track of it in the ever growing flood of Slack / Email / Etc. I'm sorry but that's just a bullshite excuse. If something is actually interesting then your responsibility as a manager is to acknowledge it with "Thanks. I need to think about this; will get back to you". And if it isn't interesting to you then simply say that explicitly. Leaving people hanging and wondering is a horrible approach to management.