Last night I played a show at one of my favorite conference centers in St. Louis, and had a horrifically bad experience with one manager there. Everyone else at the place was wonderful, but all it took to ruin everyone's night was having one incredibly inept, egotistical person in charge.

I learned a lot last night about how to be ineffective as a leader, tick people off, and generally make everyone's life a little more difficult. Fortunately for you, I've boiled these nuggets of wisdom down into 9 easy steps so you can put them to use right away:

1. Do Whatever The Client Wants

It's your job to give your client whatever he/she wants, at any cost. That means that you should constantly demand that your staff provide for even the most bizarre requests. If your client wants someone to feed him grapes while standing on the throat of an employee, then that's what should happen. It doesn't matter how much it hurts your team- all that matters is your client's temporary happiness.

2. Micro-Manage

Your employees are idiots, so treat them accordingly. They'll never do anything right on their own, so be sure to hover constantly.

3. Criticize

At the first sign of incompetency, critique your employees as viciously as possible. They need to know they're no good at their task, and they need to be told as frequently as possible. Corrections aren't good enough: demand perfection every single time, or else.

4. Guilt

Find ways to guilt employees into staying later, working harder, and expecting less. If you're stuck on things to use for guilt, I'd recommend vacation time, rescheduling shifts, or anything when you've shown even the tiniest bit of kindness.

5. Compare

When someone isn't working hard enough, publicly compare them to your hardest worker. Use phrases like "why can't you be more like. . . ".

6. Intimidation

This is vast subject that is too broad to cover in this note- try to think simple, like making references to hiring next month from a temporary agency. You'll be stunned at the productivity boost you'll get.

7. Compliments

Don't do it. Ever. You'll only make them think they're worth more than you're paying them.

8. Unrealistic Goals

Make sure that if the team has a goal, that it is impossible to actually reach. You'll get so much more work out of them if they think they're constantly in crisis/deadline mode, and you'll be amazed at all that overtime all your salaried employees will be willing to do for free. As an added bonus, hint that they'll be layoffs if the goal isn't reached.

9. Just Don't Care

Make sure your employees know how little you care about them as individuals. Better yet, don't remember their names, and make sure to not remember anything about their personal lives. To accent just how little you care, make everyone in the office wear name tags, then very carefully inspect your employee's name tag when you first greet them. This will highlight that you have to refer to their name tag just to remember who they are, even though you may have been working together for decades.

Okay. Thanks for letting me rant, guys. Have a great weekend!