How a Bad Manager Can Unite a Team
A manager who creates frustration can, unintentionally, give coworkers a common problem to solve. When people compare notes, share workarounds, and protect one another from avoidable disruption, the manager becomes a shared obstacle—and the team may grow more coordinated in response.
Psychologists often describe the broader mechanism as social cohesion: people feel more connected when they identify with the same group and act toward a shared goal. Here, the goal may be as practical as keeping a project on track despite confusing instructions or inconsistent decisions. Coworkers who trust one another can fill gaps, pass along useful information, and step in when someone is overloaded.
Why Performance Can Rise—and Why It May Not Last
That coordination can make a team look unusually effective. But the lift comes from employees’ mutual support, not from the manager’s poor behavior being a reliable leadership method. A capable team may compensate for dysfunction for a while; that does not mean the dysfunction improves the work.
The costs can accumulate: people spend energy repairing avoidable problems, carrying extra responsibilities, or managing stress. If the pressure persists, trust and morale may erode, and the same informal workarounds that once kept things moving can become exhausting or fail altogether.
So the counterintuitive answer is that a terrible manager can sometimes spur a team to rally around one another. The team’s resilience is doing the work—not the bad management.
