Crappy Bosses

"People don't leave crappy jobs, they leave crappy bosses." Here are a couple of coping mechanisms to deal with crappy bosses, but ultimately the easiest thing to do is leave.

Transcript

Welcome back to my podcast, Scaling Out!

Don’t we all have at least one story of working for a crappy boss? If not, we probably all have a story of something crappy a boss did to us once. It could be as terrible as sexual harassment, or as undercutting as setting you up for failure. Its difficult to change jobs, so what strategies can we take to cope and deal? 

One of my crappy boss situations was with a boss that seemed to be holding me back, I felt like they were scared to give me the plum assignment or additional responsibilities because I would outshine them. They said they didn’t want to overwork me because they wanted to keep my job satisfaction high, but at the same time I had absolutely nothing to do. Ultimately, I ended up moving jobs. 

Today, I have a friend’s response to my questions but they chose to be anonymous. Yeah – their boss was that crappy.

So friend, what can we do if our bosses appear to be threatened by us?

While it's not your job to fix your manager's insecurities, it is your job to advocate for yourself. Some less ambitious people might appreciate the light workload.  In this situation, I would try to have a conversation with my boss and let them know I appreciate their concern about my job satisfaction and workload, but that I can simply handle more responsibilities. I'd propose some ideas of tasks or projects that I could do that could be helpful to the team & the boss, and hopefully they see that as you trying to be helpful and not as competition.   

I thought that this was a great point. I asked my friend if they had to deal with unprofessional or crappy bosses in the past, how did they deal?

They responded with ” I think most of us has had a crappy boss or two.  I've dealt with the unengaged boss who didn’t show up for meetings and left me in really uncomfortable situations with business partners and I've dealt with the angry yelling bosses, and honestly, I'm not sure which one is worse.  I know my nature is to deal with it for a bit and try to stick it out, to figure out if changes in my behavior or conversations with them can make it better.  I tried to explain to both that they were putting me in uncomfortable situations and that I was not getting what I needed from the lack of feedback or aggressive feedback I was receiving.  In both cases, I eventually ended up leaving the job because I need a more supportive environment and they both lacked a desire to change. I think most of us just want to feel like our bosses have our back and we're appreciated.

Ultimately then there are three options then right? 

1. Deal with it and find coping mechanisms.

2. Address it with the manager by providing feedback carefully

3. Leave

Unfortunately, the easiest option is to ultimately leave the position. Everyone has read the articles, ‘employees don’t leave crappy jobs, they leave crappy bosses’. So managers have to strive not to be crappy bosses, otherwise they negatively impact the customers and their business. This might not affect their livelihood immediately, but eventually it will. “

I greatly appreciated my anonymous friend offering their incredible advice. This goes right back to the 1st episode of this season, you must be careful in where you decide to work.

Thanks everyone for listening to today’s discussion, until next time stay safe.