The greatest management clips of all time: how does your manager compare?

Managers in social care often come in for flak from their staff. Social workers regularly complain of being overworked, under-supervised and sometimes even bullied.

Recent contributors to CareSpace were less than complimentary about some of the managers they had worked with:

“My last manager was an absolute waste of space. His entire focus was on keeping senior management happy.”

“Because there is so much pressure on all levels of management to meet budgets, eligibility criteria and targets there is little space left for creativity and making a difference.”

“Many excellent footballers go into team management and fail disastrously, much to the fans disgust. I’m afraid it would appear to be the same for practitioners.”

“To be fair there are good and bad examples of any kind of worker in every job in the world, however i must say that i am appalled by how many examples of bad management I have seen in social care.”

But what are the attributes that make a good or bad manager? The BBC has recently offered some pointers to inspiring and leading the troops to excellence, which you may find interesting. Can private sector profit-driven boss values be transferred to the caring professions?

However, here at Community Care we believe that the best way to learn is by studying the best. We’ve collected our top 10 video clips, featuring some of the finest examples of management ever committed to the screen, for your enjoyment and education.

Let us know how these fictional bosses compare to your real-life boss and suggest other management clips we might have missed by logging on to CareSpace.

1. Watch this cracking scene featuring Alec Baldwin “motivating” the sales force in Glengarry Glen Ross

2. Basil Fawlty is a man who knows how to treat his staff. Watch him deal with all manner of workplace problems with his customary style and grace in this compilation of clips from Fawlty Towers.

3. No-one likes appraisals, they’re rubbish, and one has to feel slightly sorry for David Brent as he valiantly attempts to review Keith’s performance.

4. Motivating staff to do something they don’t want to do is never easy, but to Sgt Bilko it is child’s play

5. Some say the problem with management these days is they don’t say what they really think. They should try the old-school approach, a la Gene Hunt.

6. If you’ve not been watching Mad Men, why not? Check out the management culture from the “good old days” of 1960 when men were men and women were typists.

7. Steve Coogan takes a no-nonsense approach to managing his bureau de change which we could all learn from, in The Day Today.

8. Are you suffering from stress? Then you need a proactive manager like Chris Morris in the IT Crowd to deal with it.

9. Finally, let’s not forget sometimes it’s not easy being the manager, especially if no-one likes you, as this sketch from Big Train demonstrates

10. Sorry we haven’t actually got a 10, can you think of one?