Dealing With Your Difficult Boss- How To Manage, Survive and Take Action
You may be proud of your work and happy with your performance, but your boss will try to highlight insignificant problems. The boss will outburst at you on your explanation and try to undermine your performance. You will feel humiliated dealing with a lousy boss instead of feeling jubilant about your achievement.
The entire time working with a bad boss will feel the same. The bad boss will not find anything that you do or bring to the table of value. The boss will not spare a moment to humiliate you alone or in front of your colleagues. It can be a toxic work environment dealing with a bad boss, and you are fully justified in feeling demoralized in this environment.
Some bosses try to be a perfectionist and would like you to always be faultless. It is not a possibility when you are working on a big assignment, and there are possibilities that errors can creep in even with all your best intentions. Are they bad bosses, or do they have a different style of communication?
So who is a Difficult Boss? How to know if you are dealing with a bad boss?
Some of the greatest minds in the world are known as tough bosses. Putting demanding and bad bosses on the same scale may not be suitable. You have to evaluate your boss as being just different in approach or showing destructive behaviors.
The bosses are managers and manage the work through their subordinates. Your manager is also reporting to his boss. His boss is concerned about completing the work assigned to your reporting manager. Sometimes managers work under constraints in managing the expectation of their bosses. They, in turn, have unreasonable expectations from their team members to complete the work.
There are a few traits of a bad boss, and they are mostly bad for the team. Some of the bad bosses openly behave like a bully. Other bad bosses try to cover their traits through a non-aggressive personality. They may have a good relationship with a few individuals in their team but badly behave with most team members.
Common Traits of a Difficult Boss
You can observe all or a combination of the following characteristics when dealing with an unprofessional boss.
- They are only concerned about their well-being.
- They will be careful not to leave any paper trail to avoid taking responsibility for the wrong decision or action.
- They will put their name on all successful projects and find a scapegoat to blame for all the failures.
- A bad boss will not help the team solve their problems and avoid being a messenger of bad news to top management. The bad boss will find someone to be a messenger of bad news.
- Some bad bosses act like a bully and badly treat the team to achieve their goals.
A lousy boss only considers self-interest and self-preservation without concern for the team or team members. They keep the team unstable and maintain a hostile environment to make everyone guess about their job or career.
A problematic boss often acts out of self-interest and self-preservation, with little regard for their team or individual members. They create instability and foster a hostile environment, leaving employees constantly questioning their job security and future.
These bosses tend to deflect blame and conceal their own errors, readily pointing fingers at subordinates. They often claim credit for successes while shirking responsibility for failures. Sometimes, they may not overtly blame anyone for an unsuccessful outcome, knowing that the organization will eventually find a scapegoat. By doing so, they maintain their image while leaving their team members to fend for themselves.
Your Boss A Tough Task Master or a Difficult Boss
Your initial dealing with a boss may give an impression of a bad boss. They have certain traits similar to bad bosses, but in reality, they have different work styles. So you will realize that those bosses with strict behavior are not necessarily bad, and most have good intentions for their team.
Working Style Of Your Boss and Impact On The Team
Each individual has their working style and some mature as they progress in their career. So it is natural that you will be dealing with various bosses in your career with vastly different work styles. Some of them could be friends with you and guide you as a mentor. You have worked with bosses who may need to be more friendly and have a different outlook on managing their team members. Some bosses may be leading the team but need to be more mature to be bosses. They may be a manager but still act as individual players. So each manager has their way of doing work and manages the relationship between their team.
An ideal manager will keep the team motivated and protected from undue interference to work in a predictable and organized environment. They guide, and mentor the team, share the team’s successes and failures, and promote the team members for their achievement. They try to protect them from unnecessary penalties. Loo for those traits while dealing with your boss. She may have the quality of an ideal manager but with an unconventional working style.
Some of the best managers can get the initial impression of bad bosses because they want to get things done in their unconventional way. The team members may need to appreciate this unconventional approach. They tell their team members to work in a certain way, maintain a quality level, or deliver within an aggressive timeline. Some team members may not like this approach and naturally dislike the manager.
Communication Style Of Your Manager
The managers have different verbal and non-verbal communication styles. Knowingly or unknowingly, some communication styles can be intimidating. That may not go well with the team members. The manager may have the team’s best intentions, but ineffective communication styles or gaps in communication can raise uncertainties among the team members.
Your boss is also reporting to a manager. She is also dealing with her challenges in satisfying the delivery requirements of her boss. Managers being human, have their weaknesses and strength. Most managers want to lead the team in a conducive working environment to meet the deliverables. Some are good at managing the relationship with their boss and team members. They can meet the demand of their boss and deliver the work through their team.
Some managers need help dealing with their bosses. They need help in meeting the unreasonable delivery schedules through their team. This category of managers tries to meet the demand set by their superiors by asking for more effort from their team members.
You need to observe your boss for some time and form your opinion based on your dealing. The boss may look like a strict taskmaster to you. In the end, it is your impression that counts. The bad bosses badly behave with the majority of the team members. Only minority team members remain in the good books of those bosses. The boss gets the information on the team from those trusted subordinates.
Bad bosses and good bosses have different ethical or moral values. Bad bosses need better ethics or lose moral character. A manager with a very aggressive work style may intimidate you but can have strong moral character and ethics to deal with a problem. They may surprise you to stand for you against unjustified criticism of your performance. You have to be extra careful when dealing with a boss with poor ethics or loose moral character.
How Someone Turns Out To Be A Difficult Boss?
We have gone through the traits of a bad boss and know how to recognize them. You may be asking yourself, why are they behaving like this, and what is wrong with them? What is the harm in treating others nicely or practicing normal ethical behavior? Whether you accept it or not, ethics and moral values are different for different people. Organizations also have different ethical values and work cultures. Being unethical or morally corrupt is not illegal. As such, they can follow ethical behavior suitable to them and the organizations.
We all have values and ethics that we have developed throughout our lives. Our family, friends, community, and the experiences we have helped build our values and ethics. These values guide how we live our lives and our decisions.
Two people may also react differently to the same event faced by them. The difference in reactions is due to our early experience in similar situations. The initial success through this behavior strengthens our belief in the practices.
That is also true with our bosses. Bad bosses’ early life or career influenced their behavior and moral values. They may have seen their mentor achieving easy success or achievements by badly behaving with others and practicing different moral values level. The success and power of role models around them influence their behaviors. The bad bosses viewed this behavior and practices as acceptable and keys to achieving their success. They started practicing the same ethical and moral values from the early stages of life to achieve their goals.
How Difficult Bosses Thrives In Corporate Culture
The success achieved by bad bosses sometimes makes the employer and society blind to their unethical behavior or low moral character. These reactions embolden them and become the foundation of their behavior.
As long as employees with unethical or low morale can get things done without creating a legal problem for the employers, no one bothers to reprimand or restrict them. The employees can justify their actions due to a lack of checks and balances by their superiors. The same employees going up the career ladder through bad practices view this as acceptable practices and a way of success. So it motivates them to practice more of these behaviors to achieve future success. When they became bosses to teams, they followed the same practice to get things done through the team members. The lack of close monitoring or supervision from the manager of those bosses makes things worse. The bad bosses keep on practicing the same behaviors to achieve success.
We have seen similar stories in the news of unethical or unprofessional behaviors from the litigation bought by current or ex-employees against their bosses or organizations. Sometimes, organizations tolerate successful bosses’ behavior until someone alleges instances of unprofessional behavior against the manager. In the worst-case scenario, they try to hide or suppress the complaint against those bosses.
Reason Employees Do Not File Complaint Against The Difficult Bosses
All Employers have their Human Resouce policies and process to file a complaint against bad bosses or unprofessional behaviors. The team members under a bad boss have few alternatives to them. They can file a complaint with the HR department; they try to change their department or team with the same organization or leave the organization to save themselves from working with a bad boss.
Some employers have a confidential communication channel to help employees file a complaint against their boss. It can give a sense of security and anonymity, but some employees may feel the system needs to be foolproof to protect them against retaliation. So they wait till they have an alternative job with them or decide to leave the organization.
An action on a complaint needs strong proof of unprofessional behaviors. Bad behavior is a gray area. Some of the complaints can be viewed as questionable behavior of the boss towards non-performers. The management can decide your boss’s action as controversial behavior but may not be illegal based on proof provided by the employee.
Employees may assume the organization will not act against the evil bosses’ wrong behavior. Misplaced assumptions can also influence them to avoid filing a complaint or confronting their boss. The employee’s insecurity also makes it possible for a bad boss to continue practicing unprofessional behaviors. The employee tries to play safe to take care of their family or does not want to risk losing their job during economic uncertainties. Some employees also prefer work experience to bolster their future careers. They ignore and become a silent witness to unprofessional behaviors.
How To Maintain A Working Relationships With Your Boss
Ask And Observe Other Colleagues
If you are not enjoying a good relationship with your manager, try to find the root cause. Some team members or colleagues have an excellent relationship with their bosses. Talk to them and find out how they can maintain cordial relationships with your manager. You can take them aside for coffee or beer and ask them for help.
If you are uncomfortable asking them for help, observe their interactions with your boss. How are their professional and personal behaviors with your boss? What are they doing differently from you, and how can they maintain good relationships.
Understand Behavior of Your Boss
Try to understand the boss and analyze his behavior. Humans are the most predictable animals. Even unpredictable bad bosses are predictably unpredictable. You can easily predict that they will act unpredictably. Understand their hidden agenda and what makes them react to different circumstances.
Your first course of action is establishing a good relationship with your boss. The boss may not have a personal vendetta against you. Her communication style can be different in a different environments.
Some boss tries to maintain a sense of discipline among team member by behaving in an authoritarian style in a group setting. But can be considered in one-to-one meetings. They have good intentions to help each member flourish but want to be strict on group meetings to maintain tight deadlines.
Regular Interaction OR Weekly Meeting with Boss
Make an effort to interact regularly with your boss to get feedback on your work. The regular feedback season will allow you to amend your deliverables per your boss’s expectations. The regular feedback season will also prevent your boss from highlighting the error in a later stage of work when it can be more costly and stressful to amend the work as per her expectation.
Another advantage of regular interaction is developing the relationship and clarifying misconceptions about each other. When you join a new team or a boss assigned to new team members, the new boss tries to get feedback from your colleagues or former reporting manager. They build a perception of you based upon the information they collected from you from others. The boss may have a different perception of you, and regular interaction between the two will try to clarify and correct those perceptions.
Regular interaction will give you enough time to understand your boss. You will know the boss could be better as a person or better in communication and team management.
Dealing With a Difficult Boss – Steps to Protect Your Job and Survive
Once you are confident that your boss is unprofessional, you must protect your interest and job. Try to play safe and survive the boss if you need a solid base to fight with your bad boss and have an exit plan. Make a plan to change your department within the organization. Meanwhile, regularly interact with your boss and be extra careful with your work. Your objective now is to reduce stress, maintain or increase your productivity, and simultaneously plan for a change.
Please remember that you will not work under the same boss all your life, and you can never be sure that your next boss will not be a jerk.
One of a lousy boss’s traits is to avoid any responsibility for failure and blame it on the team/team member or the organization. You have to keep that in mind while dealing with your bad boss. Regular interaction with the bad boss will give you sufficient time and information to protect yourself from undue blame or justify your actions.
Keep a written record of your meeting and feedback received from your boss. The bad bosses carefully keep a paper trail of their unethical behavior through written documentation. Single e-mail communication may not mean anything to anyone, but more e-mails with the same practices can be solid proof to support your view.
Keep a record of your bad boss’s unethical or unprofessional behavior. We sometimes remember the overall picture but need to remember essential facts. You can avoid this situation by keeping a detailed record of your observation of bad behavior by your boss.
Understand the employee grievance process at your organization. The HR policy demands each organization have an effective system for the employee to inform Human Resources about unprofessional or unethical workplace practices. You can check the HR systems and evaluate their employee grievance process. The knowledge will help you take action and follow the Human Resources policy.
HR can rectify the boss’s bad behavior through awareness training or punitive action. The HR Complaint can protect you against retaliatory or nefarious action by a bad boss.
When Is The Time To Say Enough Is Enough
You may want to respond to your boss’s unprofessional behaviors but are still determining if the time is right. Is there still time to react without giving your boss or yourself a chance to amend? Or, are you too late to protect your job and career?
There are some indications that things are going from bad to worst. You can plan to take action or look for a change in the organization without any hope for change in your present situation if you face one or more than one of the following conditions:
- You have seen consistent unethical and unprofessional behavior by the boss without any end in sight. You cannot improve relationships after regular weekly interactions in group and individual settings.
- The situation at the workplace is the reason behind your health and psychological problem. The stress at work and falling health affect your relationships with your family and friends.
- Lousy boss behavior hurts your confidence, regular performance at work, and career prospects within the organization.
- Your documentation on dealing with your bad boss shows a significant number of unprofessional and inexcusable behaviors each month without any notable reduction.
All the above indicates that the bad boss will misbehave even after trying to reconcile the relationship. You will not see any changes in the future.
What To Do with A Difficult Boss And Your Career Plan
Start implementing the plan to change once you recognize that you are dealing with a lousy boss and there is no scope to improve the situation.
Remember that you will be in an advantageous position by being proactive and not reactive to the situation. Once you decide enough to work under the current boss, plan to change your department or employer. Whatever the case with you at work, you will always have options to implement your own decision per your plan. Do not go for a change just for the sake of change.
You have some options below to avoid dealing with your boss and progress in your career:
- Leave the department or boss and go to a new department within the same organization.
- Leave the employer after giving due notice, without any job in hand.
- Secure a job and then leave the employer with due information.
- Secure a job and negotiate with the employer for better options with the organizations.
You can also take action against your boss:
- Follow the Human Resources policy for employee grievances and submit a formal complaint against your boss. You can use your documentation on the unprofessional behaviors of your boss. It will give a timeline and details of bad behavior.
- Follow up with HR after a few weeks to know about the progress of your complaint.
- Prepare for the exit interview with all your written records. You will have all the facts in notes to show the cases of your boss’s unethical and unprofessional behaviors.
Do not expect immediate action from your employer on your boss. They will do the due diligence and take action based on their findings. That takes some time. You should find out if the management has taken any action or not against your boss.
Please do not badmouth your employer in a job interview. In general, badmouthing during an interview is not a good practice. They may ask you for references from your last employer. You are free to ask them not to contact your most recent employer to keep your job search confidential. The prospective employer will understand your position. They will understand you are reluctant to talk about your employer. They will keep the discussion on your most recent employer to a minimum. Your achievements in your past employments are more crucial to the hiring managers.