Bad Bosses Will Poison Your Mind And Make You Look Incompetent
Practical guides that will help you manage bad bosses
“Any position of power, if not checked by strong principles and purpose, corrupts and ruins people” — Seneca.
Emperor Caligula ruled Rome through fear and terror from AD 37–41.
He embodied all the attributes of bad leadership. His reign achieved feats of waste and carnage. He instilled fear in citizens and famously noted that “let them hate, provided they fear.”
During his reign, he declared himself as God. It was a period that his tyranny and cruelty reached a new level. He used prison trials to eliminate enemies, perceived or actual.
Non-living things did not survive during Caligula’s era. So, in a rare show of madness, he declared war against the sea. He commanded his troops to attack the waves with their swords.
Caligula’s behavior was so bad that people believed he suffered from madness. However, it did not matter to him. Instead, he threatened people that, “remember I have the right to do anything to anybody.”
It was a reign of absolute power, cruelty, and tyranny.
There is a Caligula in every bad boss you encounter in your career. Bad bosses kill the morale of the workplace. They get people to do things their way by intimidation, physical or otherwise.
A lousy boss sees leadership as having a solid grip on the employees. However, leadership is not about the authority of dominance. These are traits of a tyrant and terrible leader.
Leaders must influence people to follow their plans and vision to execute organizational tasks. Very little can be achieved using force or coercion. People will not perform when you make them feel small.
Bad bosses are not alone. The environment shapes them. The workplace has idiots, intelligent alecs, snitches, and back-stabbers struggling to get the boss’s attention.
When cornered, the boss has little control over his actions. He unknowingly creates a circle of the safety of people who tell him what he wants to hear. They become powerful and influence things, including who gets what.
Traits of bad bosses
“Show me a brutal tribune or centurion, and I’ll show you the one who makes soldiers desert — pardonably”- Seneca.
So, what makes a bad boss?
In his book, A Survival Guide for Working with Bad Bosses, Gini Graham Scott defined a lousy boss as “essentially, any boss who is difficult and hard to deal with or who has trouble directing and guiding employees to do the work.”
You may have come across both categories of bosses in your working life. If you haven’t, please consider yourself lucky. I will explain why.
Successful leaders lead by example through persuasion and logic, employing collaboration and empathy. Conversely, the trademark of bad bosses includes incompetence, blaming everyone, taking credit, and passing vague instructions.
They want to look good and care less about the team. Loyalty to them is about being liked by the gang. This situation leads to a loss of authority and control.
A leader that has no control and authority will lack courage. Therefore, courage is a vital ingredient required by every leader.
According to Nassim Taleb, “courage is the only virtue you can’t fake.” He states further that “courage is everything……Courage to speak the truth. Courage to stand alone. Courage to try a different thing, even if it might not work — the courage to change your mind. Courage to defend something on principle. Courage to do what’s right”.
Bad bosses micromanage, are reckless and abusive. They slave-drive employees to get results without caring about them. All that matters is their success.
Working with a bad boss can turn the best job into a terrible experience. Here are some of the negative attributes that bad bosses exhibit in the workplace:
Bad bosses know everything.
They are egotistic, condescending, and claim to know everything. They cause so many pains and sorrows for their employees that they use as tools. Being detached makes them lose touch with reality.
We can draw an example from Emperor Nero of the old Roman Empire. He was so despotic that the courtiers and power mongers elevated him to the status of a god. Out of fear, they addressed him as Divinity, Master of the world, and Divine Pontiff.
He was the be-all and end-all.
The Roman Empire lived in fear of Nero. Finally, things got so bad that Citizen Petronius wrote a letter to him from his deathbed stating that “to be born in your reign is a miscalculation, but to die in it is a joy.”
Bad bosses share similar traits. They carry an air of superiority that completely disconnects them from their employees.
How do you reach, motivate or lead others if you can’t relate to their needs? A leader’s role is to interact with his people and correct those who make mistakes by showing them where they went wrong.
Humility and self-awareness are where the true strength of a good leader lies.
Bad bosses don’t know when enough is enough.
Alexander the Great conquered nearly the entire world at the age of 32. He was brilliant, brave, generous, and wise, but he ignored Aristotle’s advice and died. Rumor has it that his men killed him.
Such is the nature of overconfidence that it can cause men to go beyond their mark.
In the words of Syed Sadiq, “Ego and overconfidence are the ultimate parameters of self-destruction.
Bad bosses never plan for succession. Instead, they prefer that one of their cronies or loyalists succeed if they must leave.
To achieve this, they make life hell for those seen as their likely successors. They cut their career short, frustrating them in any way they can to leave and make way for their cronies.
In most cases, they will not prepare, and succession becomes a problem.
When his death was imminent, Alexander the Great did not know who was going to succeed him. He didn’t have anyone in mind and gave this response, “to the strongest.”
Consequently, the empire collapsed utterly, and in twelve years, twenty different rulers ruled, each with his plan.
Bad bosses are victims of Ego.
Regardless of their power, bad bosses are easy to manipulate. People play to their egos and delusions by telling them what they want them to hear.
In this position, they think they are better and unique. Such leaders become so self-absorbed.
Victims of Ego suffer from the ‘Disease of Me’ described by Ryan Holiday in his book; Ego is the Enemy.
According to him, “they think that their problems and experiences are so incredibly different from everyone else’s that no one could understand.” This attitude has caused many people, teams, and projects to fail.
Bad bosses suffer in the end due to their pride and Ego.
To avoid straying away from reality, John D. Rockefeller engaged in conversation with himself every night. He would say out loud or write that, “you think you are quite a merchant; lookout or you will lose your head — go steady.”
Like Rockefeller, people who love their careers understand that pride is a distraction. It leads to arrogance, removes humility, and breaks interaction with others.
Pride consumes our ability to learn, adapt, be flexible, network, and build relationships. It blocks the asset we need to succeed from accepting reality — the mind.
The famous conqueror and warrior Genghis Khan likened pride as more complex to subdue than a wild lion. While grooming his successors, he told them that “if you can’t swallow your pride, you can’t lead.”
Types of Bad Bosses
If a boss is good, the chances are that he is a good employee. Does this imply that bad bosses are bad employees? This topic is debatable.
An article by John Brandon titled “10 Worst Boss Traits (Ranked in Order of What Makes People Quit Most) found that 44 percent quit their jobs because of a bad boss.
The writer presented a new survey by a company called BambooHR that polled 1000 employees. The top three results showed that 63% quit because the boss takes credit for their work, 62% indicated cited lack of trust in them by the boss. The third reason was that the boss doesn’t care whether employees are overworked or not.
Additional reasons include micromanagement, lack of clear expectations, focusing more on weaknesses, vague direction on tasks/roles, promoting the wrong people, and caring less about staff welfare.
When discussing good and bad bosses, context matters because things are never in black and white. One person’s bad boss may be a good boss to another person. There are common traits exhibited over time that earn someone the title bad boss.
Bosses that continuously engage in criminal behaviors with no regard to organizational rules fall under this category. With no accountability, a culture of impunity can rear its head in the organization.
John Hoover, in his best-selling book, “How to Work for an Idiot: Survive & Thrive Without Killing Your Boss,” organized the entire world of bosses into ten categories. Let us look at each one.
Good bosses
Among the top reasons people leave their organizations is because they want more money and benefits. Some are, however, likely to stay despite the poor remuneration to work with a good boss. Similarly, people decline higher pay packages and opportunities for the same reasons. Good bosses not only exhibit great social awareness, but they also understand how to treat people. They have the common sense to decipher that people want respect. The attributes of good bosses include clarity in information sharing, being receptive to feedback, and treating all team members equally. In addition, they must prioritize communication to keep every member of the team informed. Therefore, a good boss is likely to be a good employee and leads his team with transparency and fairness.
God bosses
Bosses with narcissistic and delusional tendencies play God to those they lead. Emperors Caligula and Nero are typical examples of Roman rulers who equated themselves to God. They ruled by spreading fear. Any resistance to them costs lives. Theirs was the absolute rule; either you are for them, or you are against them. When dealing with God bosses, keep your Ego and pride in check, or else they destroy you.
Machiavellian bosses
“The end justifies the means” — Niccolo Machiavelli.
The cardinal rule when dealing with Machiavellian bosses is never to take anything personally. It is never about you, but about them. They manipulate and exploit others to advance their agenda to maintenance dominance over them. A Machiavellian boss sets his sights on that one position at the top and will do anything to achieve it. He will cheat, play dirty, bend, break the rules, and use whatever means necessary to gain power. Their common trait is employing ruthlessness in pursuit of power. The end game is to remove any obstacles from their paths. They eliminate internal rivals through immoral deeds to maximize their influence.
Sadistic bosses
This category will inflict pain on you, stretch you to the limit of abuse but will not break you. To them, your opinion does not count. Through their actions and comments, they constantly remind you of who has the power. Bullying is their stock-in-trade. Recently, a newly recruited employee fell ill before resuming work in her new workplace. She reached out to her boss to report her situation and requested additional days to sort out her problem. The boss rejected her plea and asked that she resume on the indicated start date, or the next candidate will replace her. According to Jonathan Hoover, Ph.D., “a truly gifted and creative sadist can demand that you work from your hospital bed.” He reminds us further that “understand that to a sadist, pain is power.” Your pain gives power to a sadist boss.
Paranoid bosses
“He who indulges empty fears earns himself real fears” — Seneca.
Paranoid bosses perceive everyone and everything as a threat. Everyone is about to get them and bring them down. In their minds, there are thousands of conspiracies theories against them. A paranoid boss spends time trying to fish out his enemies, real and imaginary. He becomes a prisoner of his delusions and chaos. Because the paranoid boss trusts no one, they waste time required to provide leadership looking for saboteurs. As a result, achieving organizational objectives becomes problematic. Paranoia is not a sign of strength but behavior that represents weakness, insecurity, and instability.
Reluctant bosses
Dr. Gini Graham Scott, Ph.D., refers to the reluctant boss as “The No-Boss Boss.” She states further that “one of the most frustrating kinds of bosses is the boss who isn’t there: ‘the no-boss boss.’” The reluctant boss leads by not leading. He hardly knows what is going in his unit; therefore, decision-making becomes a chore. He has the title but lets things flow until someone takes the decision. I call it the laissez-faire management style. This kind of boss leaves decision-making to employees but only shows up when benefits are involved. Reluctant bosses survive by creating flat organizational structures of their own. In this respect, intelligent employees exploit the freedom presented by a boss who is missing in action. Lack of management creates a leadership vacuum.
Unprepared bosses
Manson rose through the ranks due to his hands-on technical expertise in his organization. Leading a team of five technicians, he was unprepared for the next challenge that came his way. After the Chief of section retired, the mantle fell on him to lead a team comprising of 150 personnel. The enormity of this new role dawned on him when he realized that the buck would stop at his desk. Unprepared, lacking in man-management and leadership skills, it became a steep learning curve. He tried his best to carry the team along using his charisma, but that was not enough. With time, his management ignorance became noticeable. The team helped him because it was not his fault that he lacked adequate preparation for the role. Besides, the leadership of the organization gave him the authority to lead.
Buddy bosses
“Put the boundary where the boundary belongs” — John Hoover, Ph.D.
Some new managers tend to be friendly to be liked by those they supervise. In most cases, this happens when a technical person gets promoted to a higher level.
Such managers create a circle of safety around former buddies. They get involved in their personal lives outside of work.
The danger with buddy bosses is that they struggle to impose discipline when there is poor performance. Familiarity breeds contempt.
When those you supervise take you first as a friend, before being a boss, an imbalance is created and can jeopardize your authority in the workplace.
The loss of control empowers the protected guys to usurp power and move their agenda forward. Informal interaction with employees is healthy for morale, but they must establish boundaries.
Keep the workplace fair and collaborative.
Masochistic bosses
“You cannot hurt a masochist” — Mokokoma Mokhonoana.
According to John Hoover, Ph.D., “masochistic bosses make sure their departments fail so that upper management will mete out punishment which of course the Masochist cherishes.”
These bosses never feel good about themselves. This way, they make it difficult for anyone else to achieve anything. Success can be an attempt to take over their position.
William Winston, Kerry Carson & Paula Carson, the authors of Defective Bosses: Working for the Dysfunctional Dozen, posited that “the key to recognizing masochists is their tendency to ‘self handicap.” They whine and justify why they failed.
It is always a case of, “I tried my best, but I guess my best wasn’t good enough.
Idiotic bosses
At a point in your career, you may have been clueless about certain things which may have hindered your performance as a manager.
You did not allow this cluelessness to hinder you; instead, you took steps to learn.
John Hoover, Ph.D., described the I-boss as “someone who wandered into a nearby office to use the toilet and, before long, was running it — the office.”
Idiotic bosses prefer to live in a state of denial. So, they hardly accept their mistakes and continue to do things their way.
This attribute allows them to protect themselves from having to do things they never want to do.
Takeaways
Irrespective of which type of boss you have encountered in your career, organizations differ in their rules of engagement. Therefore, it is your responsibility to study your work environment and learn how to relate with your boss.
Everything comes down to managing your boss and colleagues successfully.
Relationships will play a big part in helping you rise in the organization. The golden rule is never to harbor any resentment towards your colleagues, peers, and superiors in the workplace.
The chances of stopping people in a position of power and authority are next to nothing. Thus, they will always do things that will trigger a reaction from you.
Control is, therefore, important over your internal triggers to reduce the effect of anger when you are annoyed.
John Hoover, Ph.D., aptly sums it up as “consciously disarming your triggers is the best way to build immunity against aggravation, tension, and anxiety. You’ll still experience aggravation, tension, and anxiety, but they will no longer eat your lunch.”
