I Hate My Boss!: How to Survive and Get Ahead When Your Boss is A Tyrant, Control Freak, or Just Plain Nuts!

by Bob Weinstein

Whether you work for a tyrant, a control freak, or a bona fide psychotic, this book gives you permission to hate your boss and still manage to be productive. Upbeat and offbeat, this cure for the common-dictator explains why we hate bosses, why the "perfect boss" is a pipe dream, how suffering under a bad boss can improve your work, why it's advantageous to be a smart follower, and how to get along--even emphatize--with even the most power-crazed ruler.

192 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1997

Reviews

[Rachael Howard · Rating 3 out of 5]

- Different types: Mind-controlling abusers, alcoholics/drug abusers, psychological sadists, predators who prey on weakness, schizophrenics (Jekyll-Hyde), manic-depressives, low self-esteem/insecure, crisis-driven, compulsive-obsessive, incompetent, manipulative, hypocritical, con artist, or cutthroat bosses.
- We rarely take responsibility for the good or bad in our boss-subordinate relationship
- Few people got training on how to be a boss. They likely just performed well in an executor role and got promoted to a management role where they don't really know what they're doing.
- Doing nothing (i.e. complaining, commiserating, goofing off, or beating yourself up) is not a good solution for those trying to build a career.
- (1) be a tough-skinned person because it's rarely ever personal and (2) concentrate on the job
- Never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence or lack of interpersonal skills.
- Validate your assumptions: Things that make a good boss: a leader, inspires confidence, sets tone and pace for projects, decision maker, coach and motivator, handles crisis, how does management feel about him, how secure is his job, is he ethical.moral, ability to take risks, stand by his employees who took chances or messed up a project?
- Think of them as a negative role model: create a log of an analyze their behavior
- Consider modifying your behavior so you can work more harmoniously with them.
- Understand your boss: What does he actually do (beyond "managing x team with y people, setting workloads and project scope and making sure the work gets done - that's not really specific and say nothing about his workload or priorities)? What are his work styles, goals, objectives, values (i.e. do they start early? Do they goof-off? Is he a perfectionist? Does he only care about getting the work done/meeting the quota?)? How does he handle pressure? What's his management style (hand-off or micromanager)? What exactly does he need (big fish little pond or little fish big pond ego-type issue)? What are his strengths and weaknesses (how can you help make up for those? what impact do those have on you? Like a negative, tyrannical boss or weak ineffectual) boss)?
- Should you decide to confront them (which is not advised): Plan ahead. Write what you wanna say on paper, but not a script. little bullets on a notepad (the convo needs to seem casual and authentic). Are the approachable? Is this the right time? What is the intent of the meeting? Stick to "This made me feel" because they can't dismiss that? Yet, have concrete specific examples of the grievance. Never attack. Never alienate. Never blame. Never burn a bridge. (GREAT EXAMPLE: I'd like to tell you about a problem I'm having. I need your help. Yesterday, you asked me to come to the staff meeting with two ideas for improving the engineering project. When I started speaking, you cut me off three times. I was just wondering what was going on. It made me feel like I wasn't very important. I need your help in trying to understand what happened. What did I do wrong?) The only goal is to get them to think about his bad behavior.
- Honesty is not always the best policy.