How to handle an abusive boss
When I was a little kid I was scared of all kinds of things: my dad, the neighborhood bully, yellowjackets, monsters under the bed, ghosts in the closet, you name it. Now I'm a grown-up and I'm not scared of anything...except my wife.
But it wasn't that long ago that someone scared me even more than my wife did. My boss. Actually, I had a string of scary bosses. Managers definitely have a way of being intimidating, and there's a very good reason for that. It's because they can.
Bosses can bully you, scream at you, threaten you, and even terrorize you. Most importantly, they can fire you or even worse--make your life so miserable you wish they'd fire you. In fact, at-will employment gives bosses the power to do almost anything they want, as long as it's legal.
What can you do about it? Well, you can do anything you want; it's a free country. You can quit, yell at your wife, kick the dog, punch a hole in your kitchen wall, or become a monk and submit to a vow of poverty. But all that's likely to get you is divorced, bitten, a broken hand, and a shaved head.
There's really nothing consequential--like getting satisfaction, getting him or her fired, or getting your job back--that you can do. That's precisely what makes working for an abusive boss one of the most stressful things in an already stressful life.
On the other hand, you can accept the situation and learn to deal with it as best you can. There are ways to handle and maybe even outlast an abusive boss. I spent years trying to figure it out and finally came up with a three-step process that actually works.
Step 1: Understanding
Understanding what makes these people the way they are is important. The one thing abusive, dysfunctional managers seem to have in common is that they're acting out on you because of their own issues that have absolutely nothing to do with you.
That knowledge may help you sleep better at night, but it's more important that you develop some empathy for the poor bastard and gain some perspective. Remember that he's human and has faults, just like everyone else. Moreover, you just work for him. You can quit. He has to live with himself every day for the rest of his life.
Step 2: Strategy
There's an old Japanese proverb: If you wait by the river long enough, you'll see the body of your enemy float by. One way of handling an abusive boss is to wait her out. On the other hand, "long enough" can be a mighty long time. While you're waiting by the river, you should use what you learned in step 1 to gain some perspective.
If you harbor negative feelings toward your boss, they'll surely leak out from time to time. You may not notice, but others will and so will she. Try to curb those feelings. Don't go over her head and don't go toe to toe with her. If you do, you may win the battle, but you'll surely lose the war.
Instead, find a way to respect your boss for what she does well and use your strengths to complement her weaknesses. Whether she's willing to admit it or not, she needs you or you wouldn't be there.
Step 3: Practice
Next time your boss pisses you off, just remember that it's not your fault; he's only human; he has some strengths or he wouldn't be your boss; and he needs you to help him out or you wouldn't be there. Lastly, you can always quit, but he still has to live with himself. And that's probably why he's abusive to begin with.
It's hard at first, but with practice, it gets easier and eventually becomes second nature. Using this method, I survived an abusive CEO for two years until the board canned him. It really works. I'm also relatively sure that employees have used a similar process on me. That's right, I'm a reformed abusive boss.
If the process fails for some reason, remember that karma will surely catch up with your abusive manager and reincarnate him or her as a dung beetle.
If you end up losing the war and getting terminated, be sure to remember my favorite parting line, "I've been fired by better people."
Steve Tobak is managing partner of Invisor Consulting LLC. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
I'll disagree with another poster who seems to think that the "bully boss" issue is some type of politically correct trendy thing that people should just deal with. I also disagree with the basic premise of this blog post, which states that one should just keep quiet and deal with the person in a professional manner.
I've worked for a bully boss for seven years. The problem isn't an abrasive personality - far from it, my boss is one of the nicest people you'd ever meet, if you happen to be someone that can advance her career.
The real issue is that a bully boss is pathological, abusing a position of power to exert control over others that aren't in a position to fight back.
My boss constantly lies to our administration about our accomplishments, working with sympathetic staff (or forcing those that have more ethics) into generating reports containing bogus information. She collects info on other managers, taking over their areas of operations. She lies to employees about projects, withholding information or giving false information to make some look bad.
After a great deal of turnover in our organization, HR simply covered up the issues by sending her through management training for a few months. All the behaviors are still there.
This type of manager is dangerous to your well being and career. I've seen far too many employees in our organization try to just "get along", hoping she would leave or get promoted. Often, they get caught in her little political games and wind up having to leave the organization or having their reputation damaged in serious ways. It's a kind of workplace terrorism.
I took the approach you described in the blog post, hoping to just quietly move on to something else and chalk up the job to a bad experience. After looking for a job for over four years to leave my workplace, I did a background check on myself and discovered that my boss was telling outright lies to potential employers and to managers of other units at my university where I might work - what she had to say about me had nothing to do with my actual performance at the organization and was not at all like my performance reviews. I talked with others who used to work here who had the same thing happen to them.
She represents a big legal liability for the university. She's a libel case waiting to happen. She's faking financial information and data that's submitted as part of Federal grants and conference presentations. She's ruining the careers of not only people that work for her, but other good managers that stand in the way of her career ladder.
Do you really think that you can just stand in a corner, shrug, and wait for bad karma to catch up with someone like that?
I don't advise anyone to stay in an abusive environment. Furthermore, I don't simply advise empathy toward an abusive boss.
The post provides a workable method for surviving that environment, should you choose to do so.
Like it or not, abusive bosses and corporate cultures that allow that sort of thing are an unfortunate and all-too-common reality that many of us deal with on a daily basis. I found it common in my experience. The advise was intended to help those who might need it, not to advise them to endure an unhealthy situation.
Finally, when you accept an executive position in a public (or even a private) company it isn't necessarily practical or wise to simply up and quit because your CEO has issues that he takes out on people. It's not uncommon to find yourself in a position where you've made a commitment to a company, its employees and its shareholders - not to mention yourself and your own family - that you can't simply abandon. That's the perspective from which the post was written.
Steve Tobak
I have a boss that enjoys picking at every single thing that I do. Even when there is no reason, and is actually harmful to projects. Whats worse is it is largely to emmasculate me to my co workers. This man is so old. He should just retire. If I were to "Understand" why he is acting out. It would be quite clear. I do my job well, I am handsome and intelligent, and he feels the need to dominate. THIS MAKES HIM A MONSTER. pure and simple. Furthermore, the only actual release I get is from "Acting Out".
What makes this situation unfortunate is the fact that I really really need this job financially, and the fact that he is so utterly stupid and worthless to the company. If common sense would prevail, he would be taken out and thrown over a cliff rather than get in any productive member of society's way again. Useless.
I think that what you are saying is to be 'the bigger person" in reality we can't be. I have an abusive supervisor that allows my tenants to verbally, and sometimes physically abuse us. I had an incident where a lady almos hit me, it is considered assault. I reported it to the RVP and he told me it was my fault that I must have made the lady so angry she wanted to hit me. He also mentioned that I deserved it. When an emoployee was calling me 'sexy" all the time and I reported it nothig was done about it. I was left to handle on my own. I haven't even mentioned the huge problem he has with my accent and my nationality. I have tried to understand him, he does act out, I have tried to weigh him out, I have tried to quit. I think that the damage he has cause has affected my moral, my work and not to mention the horrible depresssion I fall under every time he 'acts out'. In advance I want to appologize for my grammar and thank you for letting us vent, but your tactics do not help most of us.
He carries on illegal activities on company time( I am not kidding, real arrestible offenses) Drinks on company time, and again on the company expense account at least one or two days a week, and not just a couple drinks, he gets completely hammered. He gets away with all this because we are far , far away from the home office, and he has the top management bamboozled. Oh yeah, and if that wasnt' bad enough, he is an alcolholic with giant mood swings. You can get totally screamed at for the smallest of things if he is in a bad mood. So quit your whining, I HAVE to go thru this every day.
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by Beenthere1
May 8, 2009 9:09 AM PDT
- Abusive people are mentally ill. Quit the job. I quit a job last year after only being there 8 days. I have done research on the subject of anger. I knew about this before taking the job. Abusive people are anti social. They are heedless of social rules. It's a genetic personality disorder that runs in families. They have unrealistic high expectations of others. They are delusional. The anger is inside them, but they cannot admit it, because to admit it would be a defeat and they cannot stand any kind of defeat so they create delusions in order to blame their anger on someone else. Abuse is a game that takes 2 to play. Don't play it, cut yourself off from them. I have had other bad experiences in my working life for the past 40 years. Move on and move out. There are other jobs.
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(10 Comments)About 10 % of people are like this from the many books I have read on this subject.
Here are some other signs to look for. Controlling, domineering, emotionally explosive, saying things to make you feel inferior, blaming you with their delusions, having other people spy on you, telling you to do something then redoing it or telling you, you did it wrong. Giving you advice on how to wear your hair, what clothes to wear, makeup etc. Asking you personal questions about your past work experiences, your spouse children, and friends. Often saying "You should" at the beginning of a sentence, and any kind of yelling and screaming.