Today I want to write about a valuable lesson I’ve learned from my own experience and from a lot of chats over drinks with managers I’ve been lucky to meet.

More than once, the hot topic of ‘accidental managers’ came up. I knew the situation very well, because I also once worked with a hotel manager who got to thsi position because her father owned this well-known boutique hotel in Zurich. Those chats gave me some eye-opening insights, and we kept coming back to how tough, and sometimes toxic, the situations around accidental managers can be. they can drain creativity, kill motivation, and make good people feel small.

Before sharing with you these lessons, lemme explain who are "accidental managers":

An "accidental manager" is someone who ends up in a management role by accident, which means, when someone becomes a manager without preparation, training, or even sometimes intention. That can happen in a few ways:

• Promotion for technical skill: for example a great software engineer becomes a team lead, even if they’ve never managed people before.
• Inheritance / family business: for example the case that I went through! where the daughter is made manager not because her abilities but because of family ties.
• Necessity / circumstance: a manager leaves ( or passes away) suddenly, and someone has to step in, ready or not.
• Investor installs a trusted lieutenant: An investor buys a controlling stake and appoints their trusted ones in the management position to run the company.
• High commitment, Low expertise: Someone with strong dedication and loyalty being placed in a management post despite lacking the knowledge or experience.

No matter how these accidental managers end up in their roles, they all share one thing in common: they find themselves in a position that doesn’t really belong to them.

Now here are my learnings based on what I’ve seen and heard; these are some of the behaviors I’ve noticed quite often among Accidental Managers:

1) Scattered Decision-Making

Their choices don’t usually follow a clear pattern; priorities keep shifting without a clear logic, leaving employees confused. One day they’ll pour resources into a department, and the next they’ll completely forget about the unit for months. consistency is missing.

2) Easily Swayed

Because they don’t know how to lead—and don’t keep a clear, up-to-date picture of what’s happening across the organization—they’re quick to adopt the opinion of whoever spoke to them last; they echo the last person they talked to. and mostly in these situations, the loudest voice wins, not the rational one.

3) Impulsive Moves

The make impulsive decisions. They easily hire and easily fire people. They promote or sideline people just as quickly. There’s rarely a long-term strategy behind their moves, and their choices are unpredictable.

4) Seeing Everyone as a Threat

The often look at most employees as potential rivals. they live with the fear that someone is always trying to take their seat, so instead of building trust, they guard their position.

5) Obsessed with Internal Spying & Gossip

They love to set up little “spy networks” inside the company. they prefer it when employees constantly report on each other. They rely on gossip and informal spying to stay in control. they like it when employees pass them bits of information about other colleagues; so they make sure there’s a “watcher” for every worker.

6) Loyalty over Expertise

for these managers, the main criteria for choosing their circle isn’t skill, it’s loyalty! specialists can feel threatening, because their knowledge might expose the manager’s own weaknesses. but surrounding themselves with loyal (yet less competent) people gives them a protective shield they can rely on.

7) Keeping Their Distance

They often isolate themselves from junior employees and on-the-ground teams. since they don’t really understand the organization’s realities (the struggles, the daily challenges, the real concerns) they end up without a shared language with their teams. the gap grows, and so does the disconnect.

8) Fond of Endless Meetings

They LOVE having lots of meetings. in those sessions, they can pick up new buzzwords, get a surface-level feel for the work, and stash a few phrases in memory, to reuse later, or to scold people when it suits them…

In my case, I chose to leave. she wasn’t mature enough to face reality, and when I told her I wouldn’t stay for a longer project, her reaction was something I’d expect from a 15-year-old. there was no real path to improvement, so I stepped away. but if you’re in a similar spot, I hope you can find a better way through it.