Bad bosses cause stress, lower productivity, and make the workplace an all around misery. Here are some more tips to handle these bad bosses and possibly improve your relationship with them—and keep your sanity intact.
5. Make yourself indispensable. If bad bosses know that you are there to make life easier for them, it may go a long way toward improving the relationship.
“If you can shift priorities when there’s an urgent deadline or when somebody’s sick and everything’s going crazy, you become indispensable to your boss,” said Melody Silberstein, Senior Vice President of Human Resources at Woodruff-Sawyer & Co.
6. Document everything. Just as good managers will keep a diary of their employees’ performance throughout the year so that they can reference it later, good employees with bad bosses should do the same.
“Document what your manager has said about what is expected of you,” said Saul Macias, Director of Human Resources at the Stupski Foundation. “That way, if the manager chooses to have selective memory about what expectations were set, you can remind them of what those expectations were.”
7. Don’t suffer in silence. If you need extra support, don’t hesitate to speak to human resources, or—if your company culture supports it—the manager at the next level (a process that is known as a skip level meeting). But proceed with caution, because you could be entering into a political minefield if you decide to handle the problem this way.
“If you are going above your manager’s head, you’d better have a really good reason,” said Macias. “The higher you go, the more politically challenging it can get. The risks go up the higher up you go.”
8. Be proactive. You may not get the results you want when trying to deal with your bad boss problem, but doing nothing will guarantee that nothing will change.
“Sometimes people wait for the other person to take some action that will help make things better, but really as adults, we can take that action,” said Christine Silver of Silver Business Solutions. “So if you have a boss that you would label as a bad boss and you want to stay in that organization, do something positive about it.”
Part One: When bad bosses happen to good employees: 8 ways to handle a bad boss
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