Some bad PMs are easy to spot. They miss deadlines, lose track of budgets, forget who's doing what. Those ones get found out eventually.
The harder ones to spot are good at sounding busy, great at sounding confident, and somehow always on the receiving end of help.
How it went
A while back I was in a small team. A couple of us were carrying far more projects than everyone else and, frankly, drowning. So I went to another PM to ask if they could take a bit of the load.
By the end of the conversation, I was helping them with one of their projects.
I'm still not entirely sure how it happened. I walked in with a problem and walked out with a different one, which wasn't mine. The reason I'd started the conversation never really came up again.
It wasn't a one-off, either. It quickly became clear they were mostly talk. Projects got delivered, but it felt more like luck and other people's effort than anything they were steering.
They've since been promoted above senior PM. I genuinely can't explain it.
Why this one's hard to spot
From above, this kind of PM looks great. Projects land. Updates sound confident. They're always "so busy". They're brilliant at talking about the work.
What you don't see from above is the direction help is travelling. And with these PMs, it only ever travels one way.
Every conversation somehow ends with someone else taking something on. Every crisis gets solved by whoever was nearest. When credit's handed out, they're standing right next to it.
How to spot it
Watch who leaves conversations with more work than they arrived with. If it's consistently everyone except the PM, that tells you something.
Ask what they've taken off someone else's plate recently. Not delegated or handed back. Actually taken on themselves. A good PM will have a list. A bad one will tell you about their own workload instead.
And pay attention to how people talk about them. Not in reviews, where everyone's polite. In the gaps. A slight pause before answering. "Yeah, they're... busy." Teams always know first.
Why nobody upstairs notices
This pattern doesn't just survive in organisations. It gets promoted. Confidence reads as competence from a distance, and delivery gets credited to whoever's name is on the project, regardless of who did the work.
Which means the people quietly propping these PMs up are often the ones who don't get noticed. Their effort makes someone else look good, and the more effective they are, the less visible they become.
If you're reviewing PMs, judge them by what their team says, not just by what got delivered.
A good PM gets help when they need it. A bad one has turned needing help into a career.