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Are You A Bad Boss?
How to tell when you're becoming one of those bosses
By Chris Freeburn
Jim Sheridan, a loan approval officer at a large Boston bank, realized that his boss was clueless about how his staff viewed him when Sheridan overheard him tell another bank manager how good he was at delegating tasks. "I shook my head, I just couldn't believe it," Sheridan says, recalling the incident. "That guy never let anyone do his job. He had to sign off on everything, no matter how trivial. He'd stand over you and dictate every single action." His boss's inability to let others make the decisions they were qualified to make led to a slowdown in the entire loan approval department, frustrated employees, and ultimately produced a high turnover in personnel.
"It was terrible," Sheridan says. "It took forever to get anything done, because everything had to go through him. It didn't matter that the bank had specific guidelines for loan approval, or that before he was put in charge of the department we'd kept one of the lowest bad loans rates of any branch of the bank. He just couldn't let anyone else make a call on their own. It was a shame because he was really a nice guy. He just didn't know how to let us do our jobs." Ultimately, Sheridan said, the manager was transferred to another branch, to the great relief of his former employees. "It was like Independence Day," Sheridan laughs. "We felt like there should be fireworks." Sheridan notes that that performance in the branch's loan department soared as soon as the non-delegating manager left.
Kathy Galivanes, a buyer for a prominent retail chain, encountered the opposite kind of bad boss, the one who refuses to make any decision at all. "It was pretty well known that the chain was being shopped around for new owners," she said. "So everyone in management was a little scared." But her boss badly complicated the situation. "She was so afraid of making a bad decision that would hurt her standing," Galivanes says, "that things we needed just didn't get done." Galivanes explained that her boss would just postpone big decisions until either no action was possible or someone else would make the decision for her. "We had an offer from a new distributor. They had a new product and it seemed like a great fit for our stores, but I couldn't get her to approve a preliminary order. Finally, I told her we needed to place an order before other stores snapped up the whole stock," Galivanes recalls with frustration. "She said I could go ahead, but that it was my decision and not hers." Galivanes says she purchased the products and they sold briskly.
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Worst of all, Galivanes says, her boss seemed entirely unaware of the discontent among her employees. "She was so focused on what was happening above her that she didn't even notice how things were breaking down in her own department." Eventually, the company was sold and Galivanes' procrastinating boss was fired by the new management. "She really couldn't believe it," Galivanes said. "She was hysterical. She had no idea why they canned her. She'd never made a bad decision." Of course, Galivanes pointed out, she'd never made any decision and her department had suffered for it, something the company's new owners figured out pretty quickly.
Employers desperately want to be seen as confident and competent, demanding but fair, by their employees, but very often that just isn't the case. Some bosses are bad without realizing it, and some are bad and just don't care, says Gini Graham Scott, author of A Survival Guide for Working With Bad Bosses. Scott says that employee perceptions can be difficult for a boss to judge because employees are naturally-and understandably-reluctant to criticize their employer's behavior, even when asked to do so. "Getting reliable feedback from your employees will be very hard," Scott says. "Even if they like you, even if they trust you, the are still dependent on you for a paycheck and most won't risk that to tell you the truth."
This is a particular problem for small business owners because the smaller the team of employees, the greater the impact employee disaffection with the boss can have on the day-to-day functioning of the company. In large companies, the effect of a single bad boss is mitigated by the sheer size of the firm. But in a small business, tension between the owner and just one or two employees can dramatically hurt the entire business by reducing those employees' productivity. In their book, First Break All the Rules, authors Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman analyzed the results of a Gallup survey of 80,000 managers and one million employees. Their conclusion was simple: Bad bosses hurt their companies. The worst effect of bad bosses was to drive good people away from the company. "So much money has been thrown at the challenge of keeping good people-in the form of better pay, better perks and better training-when, in the end, turnover is mostly a manager issue," Buckingham and Coffman write.
So how can you avoid becoming a bad boss? Without an objective way to get accurate feedback from employees, the best way for business owners to judge their employees' view of them is to watch their behavior. Rapid employee turn-over can be a sign of management problems, especially in a small office. If you notice that your business has a revolving door with regard to workers with whom you directly interact, that may be a sign that you are difficult to work for.
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Bad Boss Types
Bad Boss behavior falls into many different categories. For convenience, here are five basic categories covering the most common misbehavior, along with some simple solutions for avoiding the most prevalent traps.
The Dictator
Simply put, the dictator is the boss that won't let his or her employees do their jobs. The dictator is a micro-manager, who requires his employees to obtain his permission for every last action. Such behavior results in frustrated employees and a stagnant office.
"No one starts out with the goal of micro-managing their employees," says management consultant C. Davis Fogg. But small business owners are particularly apt to fall into this trap. "The small business owner has probably built his business from scratch, and maybe spent a good deal of time running it all by himself. So when the business expands and more people come on board, sometimes the owner finds it hard to leave others to make the decisions he's been making himself for so long." Since establishing and building a business can be such a painstaking task, Fogg says, small business owner's reluctance to delegate power is understandable.
Nevertheless, properly delegating power is critical to running a successful business, Fogg says. "Smart small business owners understand that they can't do everything themselves. If they don't when they start, they learn it fast," he adds. "The best way to avoid falling into the dictator trap, according to Fogg, is to hire the best people, and then let them do their jobs. "If you have confidence that you have the right team in place, you'll be much more willing to let them do their jobs without hovering over their shoulders. On the other hand, if you honestly don't think your employees can make good decisions, then you should probably be looking for new employees," Fogg advises.
The Critic
Offering critiques of an employee's performance is a necessary part of being a boss. But criticism must stay within certain parameters, says Gini Graham Scott. "The best thing an employer can do is to be aware of what they say all day long. Never cross the line between criticizing the work and attacking the employee personally." This means avoiding statements that begin with the word "you"-as in "you're too slow" or "you never do that right." Always keep criticism focused on the action, not the personality.
Also, she says, if you find yourself only making critical remarks, there's something wrong. "It's natural for people to make mistakes, but no one gets it wrong all the time." Examine what you say to your employees during the day and remember to praise good work as well as criticizing less-than-adequate performance.
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The Abuser
Related to the critic, but not necessarily the same, is the abusive boss. Abusers don't need a mistake or miscommunication to set them off. Abuse can range from openly humiliating an employee for any or no reason to maliciously cutting benefits or refusing to approve vacations for no reason other than to punish the employee. The worst abusers resort to fits of screaming or inappropriate language to demean employees.
Columbia University Professor Emeritus Harvey A. Hornstein, Ph.D., author of Brutal Bosses and Their Prey, studied 1,000 U.S. workers and found that 90 percent had experienced some form of abuse from an employer during their careers. Dr. Hornstein attributes such bad behavior to a "me verses them" mentality espoused by abusive bosses. He says that such bully bosses are usually aware of their behavior, but mistakenly believe that it increases productivity. In fact, he says, the opposite is true. "Employees who leave firms do so because they feel alienated by their managers. But not every employee can leave their job just because they have a bully for a boss. Those employees tend to strike back by deliberately lowering the quality of their work." He explains that when the employee realizes that he or she will receive abuse regardless of the quality of his work, the employee will usually let the quality slide.
Hornstein's findings are supported by a 2002 study by University of North Carolina researchers Kelly L. Zellars and Bennett J. Tepper. The study found that abusive behavior by supervisors-public humiliation, screaming or yelling, derogatory remarks-directed at subordinates significantly reduced the willingness of those subordinates to act in a way that promoted organizational effectiveness. In short, abusing employees leads to less productive workers.
For small business owners, avoiding abusive behavior comes down to policing their interaction with employees. Hornstein advises employers to take special care to treat all employees equally. Obviously, he says, employers should never use pejorative names or abusive language with employees. Not only does that do little to enhance employee performance, but, increasingly, it can lead to harassment litigation.
The Fratboy
Getting too close to your employees can be worse than not getting to know them at all. "Employers have to always remember that the relationship between them and those working for them is inherently unequal," Scott says. Well-meaning questions about an employee's personal life-benignly intended to show interest-can be misconstrued as an intrusion, since the employee may feel compelled to answer. "It's a delicate balance," Scott acknowledges, "between being polite and friendly, and being perceived as sticking your nose where it doesn't belong." Complicating this, people have decidedly different takes on what constitutes an intrusive question.
Nevertheless, a good rule of thumb is to always keep things professional and not broach personal matters with employees. This is a good rule to observe inside and outside the office. "Don't get drunk with your employees," Scott advises bluntly. "You would think this too obvious to have to say, but some employers do it." Sometimes it happens at office parties, and sometimes after office hours. Inebriated people say and do things that they ordinarily would never even consider. "You can't take some things back," Scott says. "Even if it doesn't result in an employee leaving-or worse, a lawsuit-you can ruin the trust and good working atmosphere of an office with just one unfortunate event or remark." Michelle Kist formerly worked for a small Manhattan-based clerical firm. Her boss, the company's founder went out regularly with his employees after work and made it a practice to get quasi-drunk. "He wasn't much older than we were," Kist, a recent college graduate explained, "and he really wanted the other employees (mostly recent college graduates, too) to like him." But it didn't work out that way. "When he was drunk, he'd tell these horrible, sexist jokes. Really offensive stuff," Kist recalled. "And he would hit on the female workers." Company employees didn't want to go out with him, and would lie when he asked if anyone was going out after work. "We were all uncomfortable around him, even in the office," Kist says. "It was hard to take him seriously after we'd seen him pass out on a bar." Adds Kist: "The sad thing was that he'd built a successful company and really knew what he was doing work-wise." Kist says that a lot of good employees, including herself, eventually left the firm because they were embarrassed by the owner's behavior.
The Procrastinator
The boss that puts off making critical decisions can be the most frustrating type of bad boss. Employees depend on their boss for decisions that directly impact not only the business for which they work, but their personal lives. Few things infuriate employees more than when their employer drags his or her heels on decisions that effect the employees themselves.
"Letting decisions about raises and vacations or benefits slide, will backfire against you," warns Scott. "Those are decisions that should be made with all possible speed. Don't let your workers twist in the wind about these things, because they affect their life the most, and they will resent you for making them wait," she says.
But it's also important to be reasonably prompt with other non-employee related decisions too. Business owners who procrastinate about important business decisions tacitly convey the impression that they don't take those decisions too seriously, says C. Davis Fogg. "Continually putting off decisions sends a message that your workers pick up pretty fast," Fogg notes. "Once they realize that nothing is urgent to you, they will reflect that behavior in their work."
Bad Boss Hype
Of course, the news for employers isn't all bad. Though horror stories about bad bosses are legion among workers-and have spawned a myriad of web sites dedicated to exchanging tales of the worst examples-truly bad bosses are less common than one would think from visiting such sites. In fact, a 2003 study of 600 workers, commissioned by Ajilon Finance found that 79 percent of workers surveyed said they respected their bosses. The largest number of workers in the survey said they wanted their bosses to "lead by example" in terms of behavior.
Such genuine leadership in the office can reap rewards for the employer. "A huge factor in whether an employee stays with, or leaves a company is how they feel toward their boss," says Neil Lebovits, president and chief operating office at Ajilon Finance. And, as every small business owners knows, finding and retaining good employees is critical to the success of any business.
Bad Boss Sidebar:
The bad boss checklist
1. Do You Have High Employee Turnover?
A revolving door of employees is sure sign of discontent with an employer.
2. Do You Do Everything Yourself?
If you hire qualified people, let them do their jobs. If you need to make every last decision, no matter how small, you're probably micro-managing.
3. Do You Criticize All the Time?
If your only communication with employees is to give orders and criticize performance, then your interaction is one-sided and likely to alienate them. No one does a bad job all the time.
4. Do Your Employees Give You Bad News?
Every business faces challenges and problems. Your employees are likely to notice them before you do. But if the are reluctant to bring problems to your attention, it's probably because they are afraid of your reaction.
5. Do You Get Too Close?
If you find yourself discussing deeply personal matters with your employees, you are probably crossing the line.
