Your questions answered, Inside Track, July 2011
I’ve got an awful boss, what shall i do?
Alas this is a question we come across too often for comfort. There are basically three types of answer, which depend on the one hand on the nature and degree of awfulness of the boss, and on the other on your own resilience and what is at stake for you.
Answer 1 – get out. Life is too short to work for an awful boss. If their behaviour is damaging (not just annoying) and beyond reconstruction, go.
Answer 2 – accommodate. This is the ‘learn to live with’ answer. Try and understand them a bit better and what drives some of their less attractive behaviour, build an understanding of how to duck when you see that behaviour coming, consider your own behaviour and relationship with your boss and what you might be contributing to their behaviour, learn the tactics to deal with them.
Answer 3 – convert. This puts you on a mission to help your boss improve. You need to be strong for this one and prepared to take some risks, e.g. in calling their behaviour, offering them constructive feedback, befriending them, coaching them and showing them better paths (without challenging their authority), engaging others in the campaign. This all requires a good degree of skill and knowledge of how to make personal interventions.
Alas none of these answers answer the real questions, which are:
- Why are there so many awful bosses?
- Why do so many people suffer their awful bosses in silence?
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