The boss from hell! How to deal with a bad boss

Yesterday, I wrote about dealing with coworkers from hell. In keeping with our Halloween theme of office nightmares, today we’re going to address the far scarier problem of dealing with a boss from hell.

The bad news is that if the toxic person is your boss, then you have a very, very tough situation. The good news is that it’s not impossible. You do have options (though none are really great).

Got a boss from hell? Well, you've got a few options...

In any workplace, it’s smart to “manage up,” which means you should manage and establish a relationship with your boss in a mutually beneficial fashion. You need to make the boss look good and do what it takes to be in his or her good graces. There is nothing wrong with a little ingratiation, which is not the same thing as brown nosing. If you’ve established a good relationship with your boss, you may be able to talk the problem through. But if not, you've basically got four choices, none of which is great, but two of which are certainly doable:

1. Leave the company.

2. Try to change your boss’s behavior.

3. Change your situation at work by getting a new job within the company. If you like where you work just not for whom you work, investigate the possibility of switching teams or moving into a different position. This may be the spur you need to move up or around.

4. Accept the situation and develop strategies to unhook yourself emotionally from your boss’s behavior. Here’s how:

•Reframe how you see things. Change your mental model about what is going on. Instead of seeing your boss as an insensitive jerk, try to see him as someone who is scared and in over his head.

•Hope for the best, but expect the worst. Stop expecting your boss to be someone he/she isn’t. Prepare for worst-case encounters.

Try to minimize your interactions with your boss if he's a jerk.

•Practice emotional detachment. Stop linking your self-worth to jerks at work. Find another way to value yourself.

•Limit your exposure. Meet with your boss as rarely as possible. Do whatever you can to create buffers.

•Build pockets of safety. Find people with whom it is safe to vent and create strategies, a sort of victim support group.

Dealing with a bad boss can be a nightmare. You really have to decide if your job is worth it. If it is, then you have to determine the best way to deal with it. The above tips should help, and here are two good articles for more reading:

”How to Deal with a Difficult or Bullying Boss,” by Ronald Riggio, Psychology Today

"Dealing with a Bad Boss," John Beeson, Harvard Business Review

Coworkers from hell! How to deal with bad apples, gossips, jerks, and other difficult colleagues

The Saboteur. The Demeanor. The Bad Apple. The Gossip. These aren’t costumed Halloween characters; they’re the people you work with.

And they’re not alone. There’s also the Jerk, the Complainer, the Victim, the Micromanager, the Know-It-All, and the Competitor. These are the difficult and obnoxious coworkers who drive you to distraction, impede your productivity, poison the atmosphere, and even hurt your company’s bottom line.

Got an annoying coworker? Here's how to deal with them.

Unlike Halloween, these ghouls won't be gone Nov. 1, so you have to learn to deal with them. Here’s how:

•Use your EQ.

The first thing to do is use your emotional intelligence (EQ) to discern the motivation behind the bad behavior. Some people just like to vent. Some people like to cause trouble and make others miserable. Some are simply stunted emotionally. Others get corrupted by power. Some may be in over their heads, which makes them stressed and fearful.

Still others are replicating behaviors that have made them successful in the past, but which now serve to undermine the workplace. Some are just overly ambitious and are trying to get ahead at any cost. Try to understand the motivation behind the behavior before you do anything.

•Assess, strategize, and act.

Very often, we are terrified to confront others in situations where we really should. In many cases, we enable people to behave poorly by not standing up to them and asking that the behavior stop. This is because most people don’t have an effective model or paradigm for making clear requests and delineating clear boundaries. But dealing with difficult people can usually be handled in just a few minutes using a well thought-out and simple request. The right way to do this to assess, strategize, and act. Here are the steps:

1. Don’t take it personally. Detach yourself emotionally from the situation. Take a walk, calm down, and sort through your emotional landscape until you can look at the situation clearly and objectively.

2. Assess the situation and determine what behavior you want changed or stopped, or whether you can live with it. Ask yourself, What is really bothering me? Why does it bother me? What value of mine is being trampled? What boundary is being crossed? How is this hurting my job or ability to perform my job? Can I ignore the behavior and do my job? Try to pinpoint exactly what you want to change.

3. Explore your contribution to the behavior. How are your actions, opinions, perspectives, or behaviors impacting the situation? Do you gossip, complain, or criticize right along with them? You have to be willing to change your own behavior before you seek to change others. Name your contribution and own it, so that you can change and stop.

Do you encourage or contribute to your coworker's bad behavior?

4. Think about and practice how you will speak to your coworker. You must find a way that will resolve the situation and not perpetuate it. Remember, don’t phrase it personally. You do not want to come across as attacking the person, just seeking change in a behavior. Make the request in a calm, clear, non-personal and unemotional manner. Do not judge or use the word “should.”

5. If you are a manager or supervisor, use business tools to make the request and follow up. This includes memos, e-mails, follow-up meetings, performance reviews, etc. Bring in HR if you have to.

Even with the above tips you may still need help. Here are three books I highly recommend for further study: Working with You Is Killing Me by Katherine Crowley and Kathi Elster; The No Asshole Rule by Robert Sutton; and Crucial Confrontations by Kerry Patterson.

Dealing with difficult coworkers doesn't have to be a nightmare if you understand why someone may be acting the way they are, how it impacts you, and what you can do to change or ignore it. With a little understanding, a little detachment, and some practice, you can figure out the problem, the source, and what to do about it. Good luck!

Essential skills for modern living: More Google, less knitting, but you still need to know where the water is

Put down those knitting needles. Stop darning. Reading a paper map? Forget about it.

Those are just three of the skills you no longer need to survive or thrive in the twenty-first century.

That’s according to the Daily Mail in Great Britain, which conducted a poll to determine what are—and are not—the essential skills for living. Turns out typing, Googling, and being able to navigate every manner of online services are pretty much all you’ll need.

Google your way to success in the 21st century.

Even though I write about workplace issues, I found this article interesting. These are the skills for living successfully and productively right now, and they apply in many ways to the workplace as well. I’m not sure I agree with all of them, but it’s an interesting exercise to look through them. Are you up-to-date?

The top 20 essential skills to know:

1. Googling

2. Operating a mobile device

3. Connecting to the Wi-Fi

4. Online banking

5. Learning to cook

6. Being able to turn off the water at the mains

7. Knowing what goes in which recycling bin

8. Knowing about privacy settings online

9. Using a calculator

10. Using a self-service checkout

11. Searching and applying for jobs online

12. Using Google maps

13. Updating/installing computer programs

14. Being able to use satellite navigation

15. Touch typing

16. Reheating food in the microwave

17. Online airport check-in

18. Uploading photos

19. Communicating via Facebook

20. Changing settings on the thermostat

And the 20 skills deemed no longer essential:

1. Darning

2. Knitting

3. Polishing brass and silverware

4. Baking fresh bread

5. Putting up a tent

6. Writing postcards

7. Sewing

8. Knowing the phone numbers of friends

9. Servicing the car yourself

10. Understanding pounds and ounces

11. Dinner party etiquette

12. Writing letters

13. Speaking a foreign language

14. Knowing capital cities

15. Understanding feet and inches

16. Putting up a shelf

17. Learning car journeys in advance

18. Being able to change a tire

19. Neat handwriting

20. Knowing how to spell long words.

Of the top 20 essential skills, three are decidedly low-tech and old-fashioned: #5, learning how to cook; #6 being able to turn off the water at the mains; and #7 knowing what goes in which recycling bin. There is something comforting that in the digital age, you still need to know how to shut off your water and make dinner (and no, I don't think reheating in the microwave, #16, counts).

Google's great, but you still need to know how to shut off the water.

I was surprised to see navigating your own thermostat as a new essential skill, until it occurred to me that gone are the old-fashioned, super simple dial thermostats, where with the simple turn of your wrist or flip of a little switch you could adjust the temperature. If your thermostat is like mine, you need a PhD to operate it. In fact, I must admit I have no idea how to work it.

On balance, I think the essential skills are spot on. Typing is more important than ever; being able to do things online instead of in person or making a special trip is smart (banking, checking in at the airport, paying bills, etc.); using the Internet to network and find work is essential; etc.

But some of skills the Daily Mail deemed non-essential still seem absolutely critical to me, especially in the world of work. For example, dinner table etiquette. The ability to converse intelligently, politely, and congenially with others—whether you are around a dinner table, conference table, or at an event—is absolutely essential. Not everything is digital; we still have to get along in person, and etiquette should always be an essential skill.

Writing, too, is an essential skill, and that goes for actually putting pen to paper as well as electronic missives. Whether it’s a postcard, a letter, or a short note, the ability to write a good note is essential. If you’ve ever been on the receiving end of well-crafted handwritten thank-you note, you know what I’m talking about. And until there is no more ink or paper on the planet, I expect every smart working person to send a handwritten note whenever appropriate.

And come on. If you drive your own car you MUST know how to change your own tire!

But, all in all, the list is pretty accurate, and it speaks volumes about the way we live today. Our lives are online. We stream and synch and digitize and download. And I am all for doing as much online as possible and availing yourself of as much technology as you can. But call me old-fashioned; I still think you should be able to write a decent thank-you note and change your own tire.

Here’s a link to the article:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2413664/Forget-darning-baking-fixing-car--skills-REALLY-need-21st-century-setting-satnav-putting-rubbish-right-bin.html

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To watch Mary on TV or listen to her radio shows, please visit

Careerstone's Media Page. 

For more information, please visit Careerstone Group's web site.

Hate your job? How to change careers

You hate your job. You hate your field. You hate your career. Maybe you’ve been furloughed and it’s given you a new perspective.

Hate your job? Don't quit just yet.

Whatever the case, there is a right way and wrong way to go about changing careers. Here are the top questions to consider and some practical advice to get your started on changing careers:

Question 1: You're in a funk and hate your job. What’s the first thing you should do?


The first thing to do is not quit! Stay where you are if you can. We will come back to this later, but don't quit until you have a plan.


The second thing to do is a thorough personal and professional assessment. You have to determine if you hate your job because you truly hate your profession, or if you hate your life or your lifestyle. Maybe you love what you do but just not where you do it. Maybe you just don't like a particular co-worker or aspect of the job. Maybe things at home are bad and it carries over to your work.


The most important thing is to determine that it's really and truly your career, job, or field you hate and want to change, and not something personal that is creeping into your professional life. So, do some soul searching. Make a list. What's going on? Be honest.
 


Question 2: You do a critical assessment and determine that yes, you hate your career. Then what?


If you've been absolutely honest with yourself, performed a rigorous assessment of your current situation, and determined that it is your career, then the next thing to do is another critical assessment of your professional likes and dislikes and figuring out what you should do professionally.


This is a good time to consider professional career coaching or counseling or a workplace-oriented test like Myers-Briggs. Either will help you assess your likes and dislikes, and what you are best suited for, professionally speaking.

What job are you best suited for?

If you don't want to go a professional route, ask yourself some questions: What energized you at the office? What enervated you? What projects or assignments did you love working on? What specifically did you enjoy about those projects? Do you like to write? Do you like to sell? Are you an introvert or an extrovert? The key is to really determine what it is you love to do and are well suited for.

Question 3: You take Myers-Briggs or determined what you love or hate and what you should be doing. What next?

Once you have determined what you really love, what really interests you, and what you are well suited for, make a list of those careers and research them. Research the field, what the issues are, what the state of that industry is, what the salaries ranges are.

Find out everything you can about your preferred field, and find some local companies and talk to people in that field. Find out how they got started and how to get in the door. Can you do an internship there? Can you find a mentor in the field? 

Question 4: Will I have to go back to school or start at the bottom?

That depends on the job. Some may require special degrees or certification, but you may already have skills that can be leveraged and transferred to your new field. You may already have what it takes. That's why research and networking is so important. You probably already know people in that field. Talk to them. If you do have to go back to school, start slowly; you may change your mind once you get going.

Question 5: What about my current job? Should I quit?

No. You want to get your feet wet before taking the plunge, so start slowly. There are several other issues to consider:

First, if your new career choice requires a new degree, you will have to decide if you can do it while still working.

Second, you may be able to work in your new field concurrent to your current job. Consider an evening or weekend internship or a part-time or temp job. 

Third, you may find that you can use your current job to catapult you into a new career. For example, let’s say there is a new skill you need for a new career, and it is one you can learn in your current job. You should stay put, but be careful—your current employer may not like you working there if they know you are getting ready to leave. You should take advantage of educational opportunities where you work, but don’t be duplicitous. Your boss may not like it if he knows you are using him to go elsewhere.

Question 6: Speaking of my current job, can I use my connections there? Can I use them as a reference?

You should definitely leverage your professional and social networks to find the career you like. Networking is one of the best ways to find a different job.

Networking is always key.

You can land informational interviews, internships, and mentors through your network, so work it. It’s also possible that you can find a more suitable career within your organization, so in-house networking is key. But be careful: You may not want to tip your hand that you are looking elsewhere for a job.

Question 7: How do I change careers within my organization? Should I tell my boss or supervisor I want to work in a different branch?

Maybe. Whether to tell your boss depends on your relationship. Your boss may not like the fact that you are looking elsewhere, but a smart company wants to keep good employees. Your boss may be the type who wants to help people move along.

Your boss will probably find out about you looking around, so it is prudent to let them in on it first so you can control the spin. Lay the groundwork that will mark you as an asset: volunteer for projects, extra assignments, mentoring, etc.

Finally, determine how things like this are done in your organization. What is the protocol? If its perfectly acceptable, tell your boss and meet with HR. FInd out what is available. Find a mentor. Maybe your boss will even help you along.

 Question 8: What else should I consider?

In addition to brushing up on your job hunting and networking skills, you will need to:

• Update your resume.
• Clean up your e-life.
• Get up-to-speed on the state of the industry you are linterested in.
• Update and practice your interview skills.

There is lots of advice out there on the Web, including personality tests and other assessments. The Wall Street Journal has a good guide, as do many other publications. Do some soul searching, do some homework, make a plan of action, and move forward. Good luck!

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To watch Mary on TV or listen to her radio shows, please visit
Careerstone's Media Page. 

For more information, please visit Careerstone Group's web site.