Bad Boss

What to Do if You Work for One, Manage One or Are One

Michelle Gibbings

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780730383963
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Communication & Public Speaking

In a tough or toxic work environment, are you brave enough to challenge your own thinking and shift your own perspective to make relationships work?

Bad Boss is for anyone who is in — or who is keen to avoid — a negative workplace environment characterised by ineffective leadership. Believe it or not, bad bosses are not bad people, and there are concrete steps you can take to improve your situation.

Inside, author Michelle Gibbings shares wisdom drawn from decades in corporate leadership. It takes teamwork at every level to create an environment where everyone can flourish. If you dare to examine your own role in your current situation and take action today, you stand to gain better relationships and greater career satisfaction.

Challenge the standard leadership practices and transform a tough situation to the benefit of all. Learn how to:

• determine where the problem really lies
• identify your role in the bad boss situation
• strategise your best option forward
• take action using concrete tools
• reflect and monitor progress for long-term gain.

Bad Boss will take the edge off your stressful work environment and provide you with key actionable steps to turn things around.

PART I
What to do if you …: work for one

I once worked for someone who was super lovely. He was kind, generous and very supportive. However, he was off-the-chart disorganised. His office was buried under piles of papers, folders, books and an overflowing desk inbox, which is what caused me the most distress in my role.

It was before the days of email (ha, yes, I really am that old!). Items would pour in, but nothing would go out. Memos and requests would get lost; very little was actioned or delegated. Due dates would come and go … and go. Then the phone calls from executives would start: Where's that report? How come we don't have this data yet?

Those urgent requests, which needed to be turned around in a day, would then land on my desk. So my day would be one long panic as I rushed around collecting whatever was needed. Of course, those details had to come from other people in the organisation, so I would have to disrupt their day in order to get the material together. I felt the impact because I looked disorganised, and I was worried about how that would dent my reputation.

One time when my boss went away on vacation, he asked me to manage his inbox. This was awesome, because then I had ample notice of what was due. When he came back, I just kept that process going. I pretty much took over his inbox, and each day I'd look at what would come in and work out what I needed to do and what I'd leave with him.

Now, you could argue that wasn't my responsibility — and it wasn't. But I couldn't change his operating style. What I could do was change mine to make the situation work for me.

The problem you face may not be so simple to solve. What is common, though, is that you have a choice either to hope your boss will change or to step up and find a way to make it work for you.

You play a huge role in solving the problem.

This is your career. It's your choice about what you do and don't do. The fact that you've picked up this book shows you want to find a way forward. That's what the following chapters will help you do.

1
ASSESS: your position

The cult HBO historical drama Chernobyl lays out the catastrophic sequence of events that led to the nuclear disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine in 1986. In the series, the deputy chief engineer, Anatoly Dyatlov, who supervised the test at the plant that ultimately set off the chain reaction, is cast as one of the main villains, along with his two superiors.

The power plant is scheduled to carry out a safety test, which has already been delayed by 10 hours. Dyatlov is impatient because of the expectations of the more senior plant officials, including plant director Viktor Bryukhanov and chief engineer Nikolai Fomin. It's now late in the evening. The shift has changed and it is well past midnight. The control board technicians, one of whom is inexperienced and is being coached through the process by his supervisor, are ordered by Dyatlov to carry out the test, despite it breaching standard protocols.

In the show, Dyatlov is seen yelling at the team, berating them for their stupidity, threatening them and rebuffing their concerns when they suggest aborting the test. The test is carried out, the reactor stalls and experiences a massive power spike, and when the emergency shutdown process is activated a design flaw in the reactor's control rods spikes the power further — and the reactor explodes.

Apparently the writers took some creative licence in the portrayal of certain characters, but the drama offers a powerfully graphic illustration of the damage caused by toxic bosses who yell, belittle, bully and don't listen. Those toxic bosses, however, were also working in an environment where failure to deliver had real consequences for them, and not good ones, which was very likely to have influenced their decisions. That doesn't excuse their behaviour, but it does help explain it.

It's very easy to classify and box people as good or bad, hero or villain, victim or culprit. It makes us feel good. It can also absolve us of our responsibility for what happens. But reality is never that one-sided or simple. Life is complex. People are complex. And they are rarely all bad. Clinically diagnosed workplace sociopaths or psychopaths are uncommon.

There are at least two sides to every story!

Fact versus fiction

When you get home from work and walk in the door and your housemate or partner asks, ‘How was your day?' do you launch into a long commentary on what your boss said or didn't say, or what they should or shouldn't have done?

Perhaps they didn't give you credit for your work, or they stole your idea, telling their boss it was their own. You may feel your efforts are ignored or unappreciated. Maybe you saw them lavishing attention and rewards on the team member you believe is their ‘favourite'. Or you've spent hours working on a report that has garnered you only unfavourable feedback. And they've just sent you an email with an urgent and long to-do list with no consideration of your already heavy workload. You feel like they are setting you up to fail or are creating a toxic environment in which you are being pitted against other team members. Or they've simply stuffed up and you feel you are being left to clean up their mess.

Whatever the situation or trigger, after their actions comes your interpretation of them. You'll ponder and deliberate, over and over:

• why they said it
• why they did it
• what it means for you
• how it demonstrates what they think of you
• what it means for how you see them and your relationship with them
• how unfair, unhelpful and typical it was of them
• how it just reinforced why they are a bad boss.

Perhaps you have judged your boss to be ineffective, unethical, power-hungry, a bully, a narcissist, a perfectionist, a micro-managing control freak, or some other not so nice word that defines how you see them.

They may be all that and more, or perhaps there's more to it than this.

What is fact and what is fiction is in the eye of the beholder. You'll have your interpretation of what's playing out, and your boss is likely to see things differently. The truth will usually lie somewhere in the middle.

Own your impact

Finding that middle ground starts with looking into YOU. Now you may be thinking, ‘Damn, I was hoping I could blame them — it would make it so much easier.' Sorry, you have to understand, challenge, accept and likely adjust your part to make this dynamic work. It's almost impossible to assess a situation accurately if you don't understand the part you are playing in what's happening.

Are you really bringing your best self to work every day?

The answer may well be ‘yes', or it could be a ‘maybe', a ‘don't know' or a ‘no'. When situations at work aren't working, it could be that you are in the wrong role or that your boss or or...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Epigraph
• Title Page
• Copyright
• About the author
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• Introduction
• PART I What to do if you …: work for one
• PART II What to do if you …: wmanage one
• PART III What to do if you …: are one
• Where to next?
• A message from Michelle
• Sources
• Index
• End User License Agreement