“An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.”

-Winston Churchill 

Last week at Jaipur, I was conducting a program on Cultural Transformation for the leadership team of a conservatively managed large Indian enterprise. Late evening at the terrace of that heritage resort, while atmosphere was festive and the air was curried with the aroma of local culinary, I was quietly staring out at the majesty of the dimly illuminated facade of the hypnotic Amber fort at far side of the road. Abruptly, one contemplative looking elderly participant startled me with an innocent question, “Sir, have you experienced a bad boss?” And I told him “Unfortunately not, but counselled many who have. Not just few skeletons, but entire gallimaufry of them.”

Let me ask you the same question, “Do you think you have ever experienced a bad boss in your career?” If yes, please join the club!

A lot has been written about the theme over the last couple of decades. What is clear with most of the  dissecting discussions in the literature is one: To be cautiously insightful in dealing with such a matter. I am sure there is a lot to be learned from all the works. But I have a radically diverse recommendation and if nothing else, I would want young professionals to learn to stand for their convictions.

Yes, I know that difficult bosses are obviously the most destructive influencers in overthrowing a subordinate’s triumph at work. For many, even with the blurriest sound of the word ‘bad boss’, their mind rapidly twitches to paint a picture of a dreadful creature. A person who keeps you at your boiling point, yells, criticizes, intimidates, terrorizes, snatches (your hard earned) glory, deflates your enthusiasm, curbs your rightful expressions, and so on. Likewise, you also often listen to a grumble deep within you for such a character, “Oh God! How has this monster stretched to where he is today”? “Why he is not taking unending leaves”? “Why only he has to be my boss in this entire world”? And many more similar expletives.

Bad bosses exist in every organization. We all have oodles of spicy episodes of that one (or if you are “the chosen one” then even more) inexcusable boss at work. Unless you are really blessed, in all likelihoods you have certainly experienced the extent of the harm a tyrant or intimidator or an irresolute boss can inflict upon a naïve subordinate. Regrettably, too often, an intrusive boss would certainly asphyxiate your aspiration and involvement to give your best at work. It is no revelation that people quit their bosses and not necessarily the job or the company. A bad boss is a foulest nightmare for any employee. Because, he has that idiosyncratic art to turn even a vibrant working environment into a potholed and calamitous place of work for you.

Why are there so many unscrupulous bosses? I have personally witnessed how number of affable, brilliant, and emotionally intelligent individuals, progressively start behaving as arduous, sneering, and nit-picking bosses to their teams. They increasingly become impervious and oblivious towards people around them. They firmly develop a caged vision, become less compassionate, and get entombed in an interminable twists of fabricated rectitude. They cherry-pick favourites and also cover up for their blunders. All at your cost.

Possibly, over a period of time, unrestrained and unrelenting corporate gravity, adulterates the endurance of even the best of the professionals. Besides, the very fact that many organizations knowingly discount dissents against such difficult individuals (tolerating them to promulgate in the system), further emboldens them to exhibit their callousness towards human dignity. I am sure, such organizational obliviousness would further make survival in that milieu absolutely excruciating for any sensible professional.

In past couple of decades, being an HR professional, I’ve been often approached by numerous distressed professional confrères with a request to recommend them to a better organization (at times, even at the cost of monetary loses). Expectedly, all for a very common reason: “I have a horrible boss”.

You could have the most exciting job with attractive earnings, but if your quirky boss is making your life miserable than you will also do the same. Whether you would like to confess it or not, you do often pay dearly for your boss’s exploits.

The symptoms typically activate surreptitiously. The early impetus generally hovers around belittling your performance without any explicit trigger. But over a period of time it becomes an overarching pattern. More you attempt to defend your work or argue your point of view, more it infuriates the boss. It is quite predictable but a self-fueling archetypal vicious circle. Moreover, your boss not only chooses to frequently engage in skewed opinions and harsh gesticulations, but also ludicrously demonstrates highly irksome, uncivil, and contemptuous demeanour towards you. Please remember, most often it has nothing to do with your performance or sincerity at work. It could just mean that you are growing too incompatible to his dysfunctional impudence towards work and management.

For once, I am not advocating that the subordinates are always competent and well–intentioned. It is a different story that subordinates are generally believed to be amenable individuals and victims of the corporate atrocities. Yet, there are enough scornful dead-woods in any corporate system. They tend to devalue the hard side of being a boss. At times, they overplay.  It is quite imaginable that your most of the convictions against your boss are unprovoked and driven more by stealthy misapprehensions (or resentments) than factual reasoning.

However, every so often these admonitions do have some merits.  There are bosses who do revel tyranny and boom on nervous individuals who are effortlessly petrified by such despotism. As fear psychology works wild in most of the corporates, they cleverly engineer their conduct to entice your embryonic fears. You feel literally beguiled by their clout and therefore surrender to their intimidations. It hurts you deep, especially when you are not at fault. You feel like a squeezed vertiginous prey in such circumstances. You whine, you gossip, but finally you grieve for someone’s blooper.  You do not realize that your surrendering has a far-reaching consequences not only for you but for your organisation also. In fact, few shrewd bosses will opportunely attribute dysfunctionality in association to you and even forever publicly tag you as a debauched fellow team member.

So what do you do when you do not get along well with your boss? In my opinion you should first question yourself, “Have you countered well to the slaughtering of your boss?”  Just because you have an overshadowing boss does not mean you can’t stand up for yourself. Even in tough circumstances, you choose how you want to respond and often, there are sumptuous paybacks to you if you choose to respond squarely. In many occasions, it is just the ‘bad chemistry’ responsible for your sick performance. Otherwise, you will not witness someone, who is branded as pathetic and inadequate in one set-up, does extremely well in another company. Let me just list down few well reflected and conceivable responses for dealing with a difficult boss:

Be Enduring and Practice Forgiveness

Being incapable to let-off deep-seated molten (like, stocking timeworn hatreds, powering antagonism, bitterness), coerces you towards disquiet and inner turmoil. Learn to forgive. Be unruffled and be fully aware that inaccuracies are common. Impulsively hurtling a retort is likely to amass reeking muck around you only. Confirm your notions. Are you sure you have a bad boss or you are overdramatizing your experiences and being gratuitously hard on him? Be tolerant and gracious to let-off his eccentricities. Try to be an objectively observant.  Look for a pattern in the behavior –if any. Are there some obvious tell-tale signs or you are conjuring-up unreasonably? Evaluate if he is really behaving odd or there are things beyond his control. There are possibilities that even his well-intentioned decisions are inadvertently causing disturbing consequences in your work life. So, if you’re unsure then give little more time to reconfirm your hypothesis without any prejudice. Own-up your circumstances. There are no ‘good’ bosses or ‘bad’ bosses”…they are all mortals…bundle of inadequacies. Like many, wonderful but wrecked; craving for conquest but enslaved by ego.

Evaluate and Appreciate 

 

Is your heart hammering because your boss just cut you off during the departmental meeting or ignored you during your presentation? Think and try to figure out what is actually unsettling you. Summon up your power to choose your responses. Develop an insight. Identify what provokes his intolerable behavior. If you can stay composed, you are more likely to decide on a practical option. Reflect upon your boss’s ulterior motive to behave in the way he is behaving? Probably he may not know that you are feeling bad about his behavior. Probably he is overwhelmed by the role and commensurate work pressure. Rather than judging him ask him how you can assist him in accomplishing his role obligations. Try to differentiate between his latent and manifested behavior. Why he usually asserts or swears about certain ways/ things/practices at work? Most often, when bad bosses misplaces their perceived sense of control, they act immaturely. Therefore, at times, wisdom is in holding your stifled retorts than taking a challenge head on.

Focus on Efforts

Rather than worrying about your boss, use your energies in mastering your job. You need to understand that most of the bad bosses are primeval and stereotyped. Their behavior pattern is amazingly predictable. You should always do your job well. Avoid letting emotional weights shake your buoyancy. Your reliance over self-awareness and sense of self-worth will only enable you to remain at the top and give your best regardless of obstructions around you. Consciously counter that mounting itch to give up. Keep working diligently even if it is not valued by your boss. Take on more responsibility for your success and learn to compete with your own excellence. Proactively address anticipated tasks/activities to circumvent unwanted meddling of your boss. Document all possible critical decision points. It is good to dodge verbal instructions as he may later conveniently wash-away from the outcome. Cover yourself by reconfirming his voiced demands through a communication charting-out the trail of tasks.

Dare to confront

Please stop paying for your boss. Don’t undervalue your happiness. I am great campaigner of sincerity and candor in your character. Have courage to discuss the failure in an open dialogue. Be straightforward (frankly but politely) in expressing it to your boss if he has made a mistake. Demonstrate courage to negotiate expectations and draw-up boundaries with your boss. Be prepared to ask tough questions to your boss and also to absorb stiffness of the aftermath. It might appear like a hazardous strategy that could exacerbate the issue, but standing-up to a bad boss can actually save your work life. You will psychologically feel less victimized if you hit back to a bad boss for a convincing reason. If you unaffectedly dare to take-up your cause to your over-interfering boss, I am also pretty sure that it would not hurt your future career prospects, . Be prepared, because conflict with a boss typically boomerangs. In our work culture, hierarchy matters. As a student of Organizational Design, for me, hierarchies often turn out to be uncharacteristically wasteful for leveraging creative expressions. Bad bosses love hierarchy. This also means that your voice may be crushed by the weight of the hierarchy while proving your point. So, be certain that you are emotionally and strategically protected in case of any adverse consequences. Otherwise, just think, who will make him aware of the bearing of his loathsome behavior towards you and others. In fact, He would have no inducement to change. Someone has to question.

Obviously, fighting back with your boss isn’t precisely a normal counsel from majority of seasoned professionals. Many of your well-wisher would advise you to rather move on. Do not waste your time to correct your boss or the situation. Further you would be also advised to use your best discretion to either flight (move on) or compromise (diplomatically surrender and privately grieve).

Nonetheless, if your boss is a compulsive intimidator, there appears to be encouraging returns in countering. It pays off. Even though your boss holds many strings when it comes to cornering you, it is you who has to be prepared to stand up and fight for your rights. No one else will do that for you. You may try your luck with higher ups or HR department. Everything you can have control over, you must do. Definitely you wouldn’t have control over getting sacked, but you must decide on how you would like to be disconnected from your job. Making an allowance for the circumstances, that’s the best to be hoped for. But, don’t pay for your boss. Leaving with your dignity is much better than leaving without it.

As Kin Hubbard said, “Lots of folks confuse bad management with destiny.” Honestly, I am not concerned about your bad boss, I am more alarmed about your dying self esteem. Based upon my experience and observation, I would dare you to fight…before you take your flight…That option is always yours!

Let me leave it there to get myself another cup of hot ginger tea….!