A few years ago, I wrote an article about bad bosses. I wondered at the time why bad bosses still exist after all the books and classes that have taught us that being a bad boss is bad for the organization and doesn’t work anyway. By being a bad boss I meant being a boss who doesn’t care about people and who only cares about his or her personal success.
Since then I’ve taught a number of classes on public works leadership and management. In those classes I teach the “right” way to do things. I don’t teach these classes alone. The other instructors also teach the “right” way to do things because it’s all they know. It’s how they got to be successful. People taking these classes love this stuff because it gives them a sense of hope.
What continues to concern me is something that has happen to me in almost every class I’ve taught. At some point in the class, someone will come up to me during a break and tell me that this is great stuff and he wishes his boss were taking the class. When I ask him why, he tells me that his boss does the opposite of what we teach. There is another version of this question that I also get frequently. In that version the person asks me how he can tell his boss that what the boss is doing needs to change. I usually explain the risks involved in telling something to someone who doesn’t want to hear that thing. I also explain that it’s hard for me to give someone advice on how to deal with someone that I don’t know because I’m not a trained psychologist and even the Dr. Phil’s of the world shouldn’t do that.
It’s not just in classes that this comes up. I have a friend who’s thinking of leaving the agency he works for because his public works director is a real jerk. He also believes that her behavior will lead to almost half of the management team leaving before long. How can this be happening in this day and age?
Abraham Lincoln gave us a clue with that fooling some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time quote. He was describing politicians but he could just as easily be describing the bad boss. I was recently talking to someone about his bad boss and why this person is now looking for a job change to get away from the bad boss. I asked him about the bad boss and he said that the bad boss was someone who you immediately distrusted but that he was a pretty good salesman. Apparently, not everyone took an immediate distrust to this guy. And there’s the answer that old Honest Abe was onto.
The bad boss is good at fooling people. We often make the mistake
that people are hired to manage organizations because they are good managers.
On the contrary, many high level positions are filled by people who are fast-talking
salesmen and women. Some elected bodies do a good job of filling key positions
but not all. I’ve said a number of times that there are three things that
local elected officials don’t do well. They don’t hire a Chief Executive
Officer well. They don’t evaluate that CEO well. And they don’t do
a good job of firing the CEO. This usually applies to City Managers and the
reason City Councils have a tough time with these three things is that they
don’t have a City Manager to help them. Many of them do a good job even
without help but those who got elected for other qualities than managerial skill
will have little experience to drawn on for this part of their jobs. They’re
the ones who are susceptible to the fast talking con artist. I once was helping
an elected board select a new CEO and they had narrowed the field to two candidates.
I had narrowed the field to only one candidate because one of the people they
were impressed with was a real jerk and they didn’t see it. The candidate
was really good at sucking up to the board and he was quite knowledgeable. However,
he treated the employees involved in the interview process like dirt. If that
experience hadn’t made its way into the interview process the board might
have hired someone who would have almost immediately destroyed staff morale.
I might be wrong about that almost immediately prophecy. The other reason there
are still a lot of bad bosses out there is that they also tend to be control
freaks who will make you pay for speaking out of turn. Therefore, employees
don’t come forward and complain. I know of one instance where the boss
was a micro-manager who should have been in some other line of work. Her employees
didn’t complain to senior management about her because she had been around
for a long time so their logical assumption was that if they complained nothing
would happen. Nothing that is except that she would find out they complained
and retaliate. So they didn’t complain. They just looked for other opportunities
and left as soon as they could. Agencies with high turnover rates could have
other problems causing this to happen but they might want to look at which divisions
experience the highest turnover to see if patterns develop around particular
supervisors.
But that’s not the whole story. There are also good bosses
who tolerate bad bosses who work for them. I know this is true because I’ve
done this. We don’t think we’re tolerating them; we think we’re
working with them to change their behavior. We also think that we’re the
safety valve because if things get too bad the unhappy employees can always
come to us to complain. Our door is always open so this should work. However,
we already discussed why those unhappy employees wouldn’t show up. But
it gets worse. The employees who do show up are the outspoken ones who have
problems of their own and they could easily put you in the position of supporting
the boss they complained about. On top of that they might react negatively to
your lack of support for them and become a problem requiring discipline, which
will be interpreted as retaliation, which will end badly for all concerned.
If you have a file of things to never do, make a copy of this paragraph and
put it in that file and look at it periodically.
And then there are the bad bosses who were brought in to make heads roll. Upper
management or elected officials decided it was time to clean house and brought
in someone who could do it. If you work in such an organization be sure you’re
not in the room when you see the broom. Or better yet, make it easier on them
and you and get out before they get you. If you think you can weather the storm
be sure to look at the new boss’s job history to see how long you have
to hang on. The next boss will probably be someone who has a reputation for
calming the waters because that’s what will be perceived as needed after
the hallways have been clogged up with rolling heads.
As much fun as it’s been to regale you with stories about the problem I
feel I have to offer a solution. I don’t think there is a real solution
because this is more of problem with human nature and how organizations work
in general. So the best I can come up with is a solution that’s not real.
My solution is to get a couple of friends together and develop a class called:
“Deprogramming the Bad Bosses in you Organization”. It would be a
scam because it can’t be done. Therefore, we’d have to charge a huge
fee for the class because we’d be attempting the impossible. Our clients
would not be the bad bosses but rather the people for whom they work. We need
to involve the enablers in this process. So they’re the ones who need to
select people to take our class. We would take our huge fee up front and our
clients would have to sign a legally binding document (prepared by a bad attorney)
that absolved us of any responsibility for what went on in class and acknowledge
that the whole thing probably wouldn’t work.
I expect this venture to be a huge success and it should provide me with more
money than I’ll ever need in the first year or two of operation. However,
the market for this class is infinite so I run the risk of having too much work
for too many years. I’m prepared for this possibility, however. Think franchising.
As usual, comments or questions can be fielded at ostrowj@pacifier.com.