Bad Bosses: Coping (and Ranting)
A recent survey by Robert Half International and CareerBuilder.com suggests most of America is happy with their boss. I was astounded. Were they asking monks? The survey also suggests that employees aren’t as satisfied with top executives, however. Now that makes a bit more sense, but not entirely.
Here’s my bias. I’m not the biggest fan of authority. In fact, I’ve been known to portray bosses I’ve had as demonic, deranged, diabolical, brain-dead and/or hateful of all humanity. Maybe it’s just bad luck with bosses, but really I’d rather be my own. I’m also a creative-type, and working for corporate America is not my thing. Maybe that’s everyone who posts on Workrant.com.
Now and again I need some advice dealing with bad bosses so that I can keep my job that’s paying the bills. Thankfully Yahoo! had another winner of an article this week called Bad Boss Blues: Tips for Surviving Challenging Supervisors. Take a look at the five types of bad bosses. Which one is your boss? How do you cope? Please share.
Yahoo! hotjobs presents these five bad bosses:
1) “The Box of Chocolates: As with selecting a bonbon from an assortment, you never know what you’re going to get with this boss. The manager may confide in you one day and turn a cold shoulder the next.”
2) “The Bully: This boss has a consistent disposition: overbearing. This type of supervisor also tends to be gruff with others and is easily frustrated.”
3) “The Control Freak: This person wants to know every detail of every project. He or she also has trouble delegating tasks, and may not give you very challenging assignments.”
4) “The Mute: This manager lets staff members “figure things out on their own.” Because this person relies on email — and works behind closed doors — you rarely have the opportunity to clarify ambiguous messages.”
5) “The Best Friend: This person is afraid to set standards because he or she wants to be liked by everyone. This manager frequently relinquishes responsibility for the sake of friendship, compromising the team’s ability to function.”
All of the coping advice offered by the Yahoo! article is helpful, but not complete. Your bad boss may be a combination of a few or all of these. I’d love to hear how you cope. And if your bad boss is beyond coping, please feel free to share your rant.
I had a boss who was a combination of 3 and 4. So I insisted he give me priorities on the tasks he assigned (he needed me more than I needed him, so I could get away with that). Oh, he would struggle like a hooked bass to get away from actually setting priorities; but I kept at him until he did.
I suspect he disliked me even more than I disliked him.
I’ve had a version of #3 (control freak) who would periodically have me change the way I was doing things from one reasonable way to another reasonable way. (Example: stop naming your correspondence “lastname.let” and start naming it “lastname.correspo”–and rename all the correspondence you’ve ever written.) It was a complete waste of time, but since the new way also allowed me to do my work properly, I just dealt with it. Mostly this boss just ignored me, so mostly I could just do things however I wanted to. One time I did have to go over that boss’s head about something (vacation time denied three times), after which the boss suddenly had new respect for me–for sticking up for what I wanted. It was very strange.
As a camp counselor, I had a lite version of boss #2 (the bully) who could even snatch the fun from getting a snack. (“Get your magic elf candy and go to bed!”) I tried to stay enthusiastic and hoped that would rub off on her, but I’m much more easily influenced than influential–I started getting gruff myself!
Most of my bosses just ignore me, which is fine, because I can just get direction from my clients. For example, when I was a typist, I just did what the people who wanted me to type for them asked and didn’t need any information from my superior once I knew where all the tools were.