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The ways that senior leaders treat direct reports create numerous other ripple effects that travel down and across the hierarchy, shaping a company’s culture and performance.

…the most deeply incompetent people suffer from the most inflated assessments of their own abilities and performance.

…when the performance pressure starts heating up and things are on the verge of turning ugly, skilled bosses everywhere find ways to give people a break, or tell a joke, or just make a warm gesture…

…willingness to accept blame for future setbacks shows how, to get and keep a management job, skilled bosses talk and act as if there is a strong link between their actions and followers’ performance.

…teams with just one deadbeat, downer, or asshole suffer a performance disadvantage of 30 to 40 percent compared to teams that have no bad apples.

…smart bosses can spark performance by expressing confidence (in fact, overconfidence) in all their people.

…sometimes [bosses] encourage their people to join them in doing a crummy job. And such intentional ineptitude is sometimes the best option for enhancing performance and collective humanity.

Most bosses are expected to do so many things that it is often impossible to perform each chore perfectly – or even very well.

…bosses who expose people to shorter, fewer, and more predictable round s of distress promote both performance and humanity.

When… it is difficult or impossible to punish employee misdeeds or remove poor performers, imaginative bosses sometimes still find ways to persuade people to change their destructive behavior.