# Why Linda the Bad Manager resonates with millions - **Episode:** [143](https://agents.truthliesandwork.com/episodes/143.md) (2024-11-07) - **Type:** other - **Tags:** bad-manager, viral, management - **Time:** 5:56–9:53 (start 356s) - **Listen:** [https://truthliesandwork.com/143?t=356](https://truthliesandwork.com/143?t=356) --- [5:56] Al Elliott: With over 100 million views, Linda the Bad Manager clearly resonates with the working population, both young and old. So I asked Kate why she thinks Linda is so popular and how she gets her ideas. I do love the way that you kind of encapsulate the— what I see a lot on Reddit or TikTok, where people complaining about HR, complaining about managers, you just seem to have just nailed it. Why does it resonate so well? [6:18] Leanne Elliott: I think because people either recognize it in themselves and slightly cringe and say, oh, maybe I'm being a bit Linda, or they either work now with somebody like Linda, or they have done in the past. And sadly, there are lots of people who— most of it is sort of hapless. Not many of the things that Linda does, or that most managers do, is deliberately Negligent, mean, and nasty things. It's born out of something. Either they don't have a good role model themselves, they've never had any training themselves, they're sort of anxious for their own jobs, so they're trying to push forward their own agenda in some way. And it's often misguided rather than, as I say, negligent or malicious. So, I suppose it's just a way to raise the conversation, I suppose. And that's what I was trying to do was trying to get it to normalize saying, actually, I don't like that. And actually, to be able to have that conversation with your manager. But what I've found is lots of people, and it's almost heartbreaking, but also heartwarming in a way, that Linda has enabled people to leave their toxic environments. So, I've had lots of people message me saying, thank you for what you do. I'm not a leader, or I'm not in a position to have coaching, but I love your message, because it's actually made me realize that this toxic environment I'm working in is not okay. And that, you know, whilst we're laughing at it, actually, I'm living that, and that's not great. So, I've had people saying, I've left and started up my own business. Me and my colleague have left and started up our own businesses. I've, you know, gone somewhere else, and now I've got a really lovely manager, and I'm so pleased I did. And it's thanks to Linda, amazingly, that I took that jump. So, who knew that was going to be a side effect of it? I thought my meaningful work was going to be guiding good people to become better leaders. But actually, some of it's a byproduct I didn't even intend, which is I'm actually hopefully raising the awareness of poor leadership and poor management methodologies in the workplace and actually questioning those and saying, hey, what could we do differently? What could we do better? And what's amazing is that people watch the comedy, And then say, oh, could this person who's aware of these glitches that happen in the workplace, could she actually help me solve those? And so, 95% of my clients come from social media and they say, oh, I've seen your Linda video and I'd like to work with you. So, who'd have thought that? Because really, I was doing it for a bit of fun to start with. I'm literally drowning In suggestions. And people are— I can't do enough videos. I mean, there's literally, I guess there's probably 40 ideas I've been sent, and that's since Sunday, and we're now on Thursday. So, yeah, it's just amazing. And I've got DMs and emails, and every one I go back to saying, thank you for sharing. Did this happen to you? Yes, it happened to me. And now I've left to go somewhere different. Or, and now I got the promotion I wanted, but they handled it in a really bad way. Um, so yeah, it definitely, definitely real life. It's shocking. Whilst Kate's character Linda, the bad manager, is clearly meant to entertain, Kate has decades of experience in management, both as a young manager herself and as a leadership consultant and coach and founder of the Leadership Accelerator, the program that has helped 200 leaders become reconnected with their role. I'll ask Kate how someone might become a bad manager