How To Deal With Bad Boss | Fusion - WeRIndia

No one is bad to anyone without any reason.

Try to understand why your boss does or cares about certain things can give your insight into his or her management style.

If the rules are totally out of control, try to figure out your boss’ motivation.

Maybe it’s not that he really cares about how long your lunch break takes; he cares about how it looks to other employees and their superiors.

Maybe he is not getting the results is wants. Try to find out the reason; 

• What keeps him up at night?
• What does he care about?
• What would he love more of and what would he love less of daily?  
• What frightens him?
• How much importance does he place on impressing others? 
• How does he measure success and what does he think about failure?

No matter how bad your boss’ behavior, avoid letting it affect your work. You want to stay on good terms with other leaders in the company.

Don’t try to even the score by working slower, or taking excessive “mental health” days or longer lunches. It will only put you further behind in your workload and build a case for your boss to give you the old heave-ho before you’re ready to go.

 

Here are few tips to deal with bad boss:

Document Everything

Make sure to document interactions with your boss. When your boss asks you for something, get it in writing.

Keep all of your negative email correspondences, save memos that show that your boss is giving mixed messages, and just do whatever you can to document all of the problems you have had in your professional relationship.

You need to create a paper trail of all requests as well as everything you produce. If your boss is the type who gives you directions verbally, follow up with an email that outlines the discussion to ensure that you heard everything correctly.

Cover yourself at all times and be prepared to pull out your documented proof if your boss questions your outputs.

Work with your boss

Work with your boss, not against him or her. Though it may feel good to undermine your boss or to make him or her look foolish or incompetent, in the long run, it’s far better to help your boss look better and to achieve goals that are good for you and the company.

If you spend your time making your boss look incompetent at meetings or sabotaging your boss’s efforts to get work done, then you’ll only be poisoning your relationship and your work environment.

Instead of making things work for yourself, try to help your boss achieve goals and everything will run more smoothly.

You may want to do is to work with someone you don’t really respect all that much. But this is far better than constantly being at odds with someone you work with.

Don’t bad mouth

Co not bad mount your boss to your co-workers. Saying negative things about your boss to your co-workers will only fuel the fire at best or get you in trouble at worst.

Though you may feel tempted to vent about your boss’s managerial style, you should keep your negative feelings to yourself.

Having your co-workers join you in complaining about your boss won’t make the problem go away, and if the wrong co-worker catches word of what you’re saying, it may get back to your boss in a very unpleasant way.

Remember that you want to look like the agreeable person who gets along with everyone, not like the crank who is always complaining about everyone in the office.

Support their success

Work around their weaknesses. Exposing your boss incompetence will only compound your own misery and may even damage your reputation.

One way is to help your boss focus on his natural strengths.

Another is to proactively work around his weaknesses. If you know you have a boss who’s disorganized, then help him to be on top of things rather than whining about his lack of organizational skills.

If you know your boss is often late to meetings, offer to kick off the next meeting for him. If he tends to change his mind frequently, or is outright forgetful, be sure to document interactions so you can refer to them if he ever contradicts himself.

If you know your boss is slow to respond, continue to work on a project while you wait to hear back from him.  Making yourself indispensable and someone your boss can rely on to help him do his job is a asset when you start to look to ‘what’s next?’

Praise your boss

Praise your boss when he or she gets it right. Many managers never receive praise because somehow, it is mistakenly believed that praise should only flow from managers to employees.

You may be nervous about approaching your manager to offer advice, but good managers are truly grateful for constructive, useful feedback, and will appreciate any opportunity they get to learn how to do a better job.

However, be careful not to flatter a bad boss, because that won’t get you anywhere.

Your boss will be impressed at your attempt to make him or her feel more positive about his or her managing style and everything will run more smoothly.

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Image Reference: https://unsplash.com/photos/CpH2BusVAgI