You Have Only 3 Strategies to Avoid Career Stagnation
Bad bosses are like bad sex. They leave you feeling unsatisfied, unappreciated, and desperately searching for a better option!
A bad boss can derail your career, cost you money, and make your professional life totally miserable. Not only are bad bosses the ultimate roadblock on the professional development super highway, but their reign of terror can spill into other areas of your life, and even lower your overall happiness and life satisfaction in your personal life as well.
The Wicked Stepmother Won’t Let Cinderella Go to the Ball
You have an upcoming idyllic 2-week honeymoon in Bora Bora that you meticulously planned, financed, and dreamt about for 2 years. Yeah, your bad boss recently put you on a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP), so don’t forget your work laptop - so you “won’t fall too far behind” and “can hit the ground running” when you return. I hope there’s good WiFi by those remote waterfalls.
You won’t be attending your son’s Saturday baseball games this season because your bad boss has decided that you have to work the weekend shift for the next 3 months to “hold down the fort”. Forget the fact you had prior approval. Your bad boss is also the company owner and this is your first job in nearly a year.
Remember the dream kitchen remodel you promised your wife for her 45th birthday? Well, she might have to wait until she qualifies for AARP for that dream kitchen because your bad boss has given you such a nitpicky and less-than-impressive annual review - that now you don’t qualify for a raise this year.
What About Labor Laws?
Labor laws only work if you can prove a transgression took place. You can’t even surreptitiously record abusive employers in 11 states - even to obtain evidence. Unless your bad boss is dumb AF, they won’t write anything untoward or implicating in emails to give you a smoking gun for a labor lawsuit.
Moreover, who will stand with you against a bad boss as your witness and risk being targeted out of reprisal? Even your so-called “work wife” ain’t choosing you over her regularly scheduled, biweekly paycheck! Your work wife will quickly move on to another rat racer to have overpriced Tender Greens salads at lunchtime with - like you never existed.
Death by a Thousand Cuts
Bad bosses don’t need to flagrantly break labor laws or disregard corporate policies to make you their bitch. Also, you are not too cool, cute, or fearsome enough to thwart a bad boss who is determined to undermine you. You are a replaceable clock-puncher, so get over yourself, peon! Here are perfectly “legal” ways your bad boss can sabotage you in plain sight:
* Boring Assignments: You are easily overlooked for plum projects and instead assigned tedious and complicated projects to grind you out of your job via daily, mind-numbing drudgery.
* Lack of Support: Bad bosses may fail to provide the necessary support and resources you need to excel in your role - on purpose. Try to prove that. Be my guest.
* Chopping Block: Who do you think will left out of corporate musical chairs when someone has to be laid off? Certainly not the bad boss’s favorite suck-up!
* Impossible Standards: You better be perfect, because a bad boss is “sitting on ready” to write you up over the slightest infraction to build a detailed paper trail of all your mistakes to oust you eventually.
* No Opportunities: You are never considered for promotions or raises and are likely chained to your desk. If your bad boss could mandate you to wear a Depends diaper to keep you under their thumb, they would!
* Micromanagement: Bad bosses often exhibit micromanagement tendencies, excessively monitoring and controlling your workflow. They may constantly intervene over menial matters, question your decisions, and dictate how tasks should be done, disregarding your expertise and autonomy. You feel like a scolded, red-headed stepchild. Take Your Power Back
When your immediate reporting supervisor has a clear problem with you and is wielding their power against you, you cannot let this situation fester for long. You have one of 3 options to combat the situation.
The good news is, that there are many different tactics you can employ under the 3 main strategies I describe below to save your career at your current employer.
1. Change It
First, schedule a one-on-one meeting with your bad boss to hash things out. It’s easier said than done, but you need clarity before you can fix the situation. You might luck out if your bad boss doesn’t realize how terrible they are treating you, and now feel bad about it - and subsequently back off you.
Be open to the possibility you did something to initiate the bad blood. Maybe, you irked your boss unwittingly and got on their bad side? By owning your part and rectifying your inciting offense, you might be able to lessen the negative dynamics of your relationship.
If that isn’t the case, ask for concrete ways to improve your performance to meet expectations and make yourself more valuable to the team. Attempt to make your bad boss an ally via reverse psychology. Then, go “all out” per the blueprint your boss gave you and raise your game. You want to be sure that your performance is spot-on to best protect your job, especially before potentially escalating the matter up the chain of command.
You might try ingratiating yourself by volunteering for an undesirable project, working overtime, or prioritizing your bad boss’s pet projects. Maybe, this is a situation where you can “prove” yourself with a new boss and earn points for going the extra mile with a good attitude.
Solution: A little humility, competence, and communication can go a long way in disarming a foe. Sometimes, we are to blame for the fractious relationship with a boss. Other times, there is an unresolved miscommunication or misperception causing problems.
Nonetheless, if your boss’s issue with you is performance-based and not personal, there’s hope for a turnaround through a renewed dedication to your job, clarity of expectations, and a newly established communication channel.
Your one-on-one meeting should give you crucial insight to determine if this situation is a workable misunderstanding or symptomatic of a graver problem.
2. Accept It
Often, the only power to change our perception is to reframe it. Your mind can be your best friend in dealing with a rotten situation.
If everything else about your job is awesome, you can do mental gymnastics to rationalize putting up with the machinations of a bad boss. Those who can practice patience and reframing while working under domineering and overbearing people have a real superpower in their midst.
Maybe, you realize your bad boss is a tool to everyone, which can make dealing with this sour individual easier, as you discover the persecution is not personal. If your bad boss is acting out over experiencing a recent distressing life event, such as divorce, it’s also easier to empathize with their bad behavior. You might reason this mistreatment is just a passing phase. There are times when we have to eat feces and like the taste of it, especially if we have no other viable options and we have a cadre of dependents who survive off our dime.
In such dire cases, focusing on supporting your loved ones or tolerating this job as a stepping stone to a bigger goal, can help you weather your bad boss, until things change on their own (Ex: the bad boss transfers to another role) or you find a new opportunity elsewhere.
Limit all non-essential contact to maintain sanity. No small talk even, lest your bad boss senses weakness, thinks you are a soft target for his or her tirades, and decides to ride you even more.
Solution: Sometimes by shifting our perception and reaction to the problem, dealing with a bad boss becomes more manageable. Also, an uncomfortable situation can be overcome, if we rediscover why we must endure it in the short term. 3. Leave It Some bosses are not humane, rational, or logical. These terrors use their position to abuse underlings who can’t or won’t advocate for themselves and fight back. Yes, this can be done for pure amusement, simply because they can! If you improve your performance, ignore what BS you can, and respectfully advocate for yourself - and your bad boss doubles down on their abusive behavior, it’s time to draw a line in the sand. a. Start your own “Bad Boss” file that outlines how you feel targeted, outcasted, or minimized by your bad boss; so you can approach HR down the line when you have enough compelling evidence or anecdotes to file an official complaint.
b. Go to HR to mediate the situation Your bad boss may not be emboldened to pick on you if they know you will fight back and escalate the situation to Human Resources. Ask them to investigate and mediate a resolution. This way, you have a neutral party to document this situation for an official record to prevent retaliation from your bad boss.
c. Report your Bad Boss to their Boss Unless you have the misfortune to have the company owner or CEO against you, your bad boss has a boss. By emailing a detailed account of your bad boss’s unacceptable behavior up the chain of command to your “boss’s boss”, you have drawn a clear line in the sand that you will not tolerate this abuse of power any longer. This tactic of “mutually assured destruction” will let your bad boss know that “if I am going down, I am taking you with me”. Your bad boss could likely find a new patsy to harass and avoid you as much as possible because bullies typically choose weak targets who don’t fight back. d. Change Your Workstation. Try to spend as little face-to-face time as possible in the orbit of your bad boss. If you know your bad boss’s chain of command values you, ask to work remotely at least 4 days per week or see if you can move your desk out of your bad boss’s orbit. Lawsuit-averse companies with space may accommodate you. e. Transfer Out. If your company is big enough and you’re viewed as a key cog in the corporate wheel, you can ask to be moved to another team, department, division, or even a different facility. They would rather move you than lose you. f. Start Your Covert Job Search. Finding a new job takes time. Thus, if you’re still suffering under a bad boss, with all your options exhausted, it’s time to hit the bricks. Refuse to have your career stunted by this miscreant. Solution: Fighting fire with fire can often force offenders to back off. Other times, both sides get torched and fight to the end. Never let anyone run you off your watering hole without exhausting all your options. It’s a thirsty job market out there!
Ultimate Solution Depending on inter-relational dynamics, the power structure, how valuable your bad boss is to the company, and other office politics - your days might still be numbered at this enterprise. If your bad boss is the top salesman, the owner’s nephew, or has everyone else fooled by their dazzling good looks, you have no choice but to start a new job search. If you are working for an ogre who has power over you, doesn’t like you, and isn’t afraid to use that power to make you feel like a serf - you can’t subject yourself to emotional abuse over the long term.
Sadly, a very bad boss CAN force you out of a company - often with little or no recourse to their reputation. If your bad boss’s endgame is your termination, whatever you do…DON’T QUIT!
If they decide to fire you or lay you off, you can qualify for unemployment benefits. At least you still have 6-months of income coming in…and of course…your self-respect!
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