Generic ineffective behaviours - for all levels

Values and ethics

Serving through integrity and respect

• Attempts to cover up mistakes
• Avoids speaking truth to power
• Lays blame on individuals or previous regimes
• Shows little respect for diverse opinions or beliefs
• Mistreats others
• Abuses power
• Tolerates abusive behaviour by others
• Demotivates or offends others through cynicism or aggression
• Shows favouritism or bias
• Places personal or organizational goals ahead of Government of Canada objectives
• Allows emotions to sway ethical judgment

Strategic thinking

Innovating through Analysis and Ideas

Analysis

• Depends on a narrow range of expertise and opinion
• Excludes other levels or partners in framing strategy
• Ignores new information or changing circumstances
• Demonstrates insensitivity to national, regional, or PS context
• Does not analyze own strengths and weaknesses or listen to feedback

Ideas

• Abdicates responsibility for guiding or contributing to the departmental vision
• Designs response to short-term pressure without consideration of long-term implications
• Designs long-term plans without consideration of short-term implications
• Provides a vision, strategy, or advice that is not in line with the mandate
• Ignores the impact of strategies on stakeholders, partners
• Develops or promotes strategies or plans that are too detail-oriented or too abstract

Engagement

Mobilizing people, organizations, partners

• Acts as sole decision maker or stakeholder
• Hoards information
• Abdicates communication responsibilities to other levels
• Fails to work horizontally with key partners
• Fails to build behind-the-scenes support
• Alienates others through anger, aggression, over-confidence, or lack of self-awareness
• Refuses to consider and incorporate the views of others
• Avoids dealing with contentious issues

Management excellence

Delivering through Action Management, People Management, Financial Management

Action management - design and execution

• Develops an ineffective plan to achieve goals
• Retains ineffective structures, systems, or programs
• Hesitates to make decisions or take required action
• Provides insufficient, abstract, or sporadic direction
• Refuses to acknowledge poor results
• Deals ineffectively with own stress
• Focusses on one file or activity to the detriment of others
• Backs down in the face of obstacles or challenge
• Focusses solely on crisis management and the short term
• Acts impulsively
• Focusses on turf building rather than organizational stewardship
• Conducts superfluous consultation or analysis to avoid taking action or responsibility
• Micromanages

People management - individuals and workforce

• Fails to provide staff with the tools they need to work and/or develop
• Fails to acknowledge contributions and successes
• Dwells on mistakes and failures
• Fails to deal with conflict
• Builds insufficient workforce capacity
• Abdicates responsibility for HR Planning
• Does not deliver the hard messages when giving feedback
• Fails to deal with ineffective staff
• Fails to ensure complementary strengths in teams, workforce
• Designs workforce exclusively for short-term needs

Financial management - budgets and assets

• Continues to invest resources in an unsuccessful course of action
• Fails to integrate financial and management information
• Ignores audit or evaluation results
• Fails to ensure integrity of information, analysis, and reporting
• Fails to practice rigorous financial management
• Fails to ensure sufficient capacity for sound financial practices