Bad Bosses (And What You Can Learn From Them) - CareerAlley

Bad Bosses (And What You Can Learn From Them) - CareerAlley We may receive compensation when you click on links to products from our partners. Working for a bad boss can make every moment of your working life a living nightmare. Sound like a stretch? It really isnt. Your boss has a relentless impact on your ability to do your job. They have the ultimate say in the things you do, how you do them, and their own influence on the company. If they are infuriating, difficult to work with, or opaque, then it can mean you never really feel settled. Most of us have a story or two about a boss from hell that we have worked under. Some of you reading this might even be living the nightmare right now. Its a far-too-common situation, but theres no obvious remedy. You Can Rarely Fix A Bad Boss Thats the biggest problem with the situation. If you have a problem at work, what do you do about it? In the vast majority of cases, you would take it to your boss to ask for advice. But if your bossis the problem well, youve got virtually no recourse at all. According to psychologist Matias Brdsgaard Grynderup, one of the researchers behind the study, We may have a tendency to associate depression and stress with work pressure and workload; however, our study shows that the workload actually has no effect on workplace depression. forbes.com There is always the option of going over their head, but for office politics reasons, that can be incredibly difficult. In many company structures, your bosss boss will know your boss well. They might even be responsible for hiring them. That means if you go to the next in command, they might not be willing to listen to your issues. Getting involved can complicate work for them or worse still it can feel like youre making a direct criticism of them in terms of the person they have hired. So when there is no easy way of getting out of the situation, you have to learn to make the most of it. Its a sad reality that few of us are able to just up and leave a job purely because we find out boss difficult to live with, so you have two options: Be miserable every working hour of your working week. (And your working week is a lot of time, according to the Daily Mail). Try and make the most of it. As we can generally agree that option one isnt really an option at all, that leaves us with option two. What you can learn from a bad boss can ultimately help you. Obviously not in the sense of the things they teach you and the wisdom they impart; youd be unlikely to be thinking of them as a bad boss if that was happening. No, what you can learn is for your own benefit. Think about it: youre living a working life that you dont want to lead. As you begin to climb the career ladder yourself and progress into managerial and boss positions of your own, you have a direct experience to link to. Think of your bad boss as your own personal How Not To Be A Boss guide. Does A Boss Make Everyone A Monster? Photo by Fab Lentz on Unsplash When someone gets promoted to a position of power, they might struggle with it. They might worry that they are going to be too friendly or too strict, so they try and walk a middle line that they think is reasonable but in reality is actually anything but. Sometimes, someone you know a perfectly nice, reasonable person will be promoted and you will see their personality change. Does that happen to everyone?