Dealing with a ‘Bad Boss’

Dealing with a ‘Bad Boss’

In the perfect world, we all will have the perfect boss who would nurture our growth, make us feel great and excited for Monday morning. Except that, unfortunately, that’s not the case always. Probably you are facing the wrath of their micro-management, favouritism, anger-management or plain incompetence. At the end of the day, you still have to navigate your way through it and get your job done or remain sane until you find the next better opportunity.

To achieve the same, you need ideas that you can implement and benefit out of. And thus, we bring the below strategies to you which we hope will help you.

Self-check:

This is the first thing to do. It is important for you to analyse your own actions and check if you can make things better by yourself before concluding on the accusation that your boss is bad. Check where the triggers are going off in between you both and see if you are doing something wrong that is ticking them off or whether it is basically poor communication between you. Change those triggers and see how the relationship gets affected. If it gets better, you don’t have a bad boss anymore.

The boss’ motive:

It is important for you to understand what they do, how they do, and more crucial, why they do it. Put yourself in their shoe and understand the reasons behind their behaviour. When you know their, ‘why’, you can better communicate with them in their plane of thinking and thus establish rapport to avoid catastrophe.

Let the work be untouched:

Don’t let the bad behaviour of the boss affect your productivity. You want to keep your job and maintain good relationships with the rest of the colleagues and leaders in the company. More crucial, you want to grow in your career, don’t you? So, it literally pays to keep your emotions aside and put your head down for work.

Make them look good:

Don’t go for open conflict and show their weaknesses in the open to defame or tarnish his image. Instead, help them harness their strengths and support them in the areas they are weak. Doing that, you become indispensable for them.

Communicate:

Maybe your boss is utterly unaware of the way you are feeling due to their behaviour towards you. It makes sense to voice out your concerns which offers them a fair chance at rectifying their behaviour towards you.

Don’t tolerate the bully:

Cowardice and going low is never the right approach to a bully boss who likes to exercise their power over you. Call them out on it in a cool-headed manner, but, remain well-prepared before doing something like that. Make your options for a potential fall-out. Risk it out by managing the risks as best as you can!

Qualify:

The best thing to always take care of in regards to this matter is to not end up with a bad boss in the first place. Do your own qualifying process where you gather information about the team culture, the management and their practices before joining a new job or moving places within your own organization. This process avoids a lot of hassle that you may potentially face.

Move on:

If you’ve done all the above and you still see irreconcilable differences and start feeling toxic about your work environment, it is time to find another better opportunity and move on. There is always plenty of opportunities out there for the resourceful people. Go ahead and find your glory!