I recently came across an article from Dr Grace Lordan, who founded The Inclusion Initiative at the London School of Economics, sharing her latest research on ‘bad bosses’. And it was all depressingly familiar.
She talks about the decline of the old-fashioned bully boss – although recently they have had a high profile via stories from the likes of Westminster and The Met Police. The old-fashioned bully boss is the one that has tantrums, shouts and screams, is intimidating and seems to have zero shame in behaving in this way. I’m sure we all recognise this one, and thankfully, as Dr Grace points out they are on the decline.
But, it seems there is a new bad boss in town; the ‘covert’ bully boss. This bad boss is an isolator, capitalising on in-group and out-group dynamics to give them power. This evolution of the bad boss is all about subtlety; excluding people from key conversations, removing people from key projects, not involving people in meetings and conversations. And when they’re called out on this behaviour they gaslight, denying the exclusion and putting the emphasis back on the individual for being paranoid.
One of the other key characteristics of this new breed of bad boss is what Dr Grace calls ‘mirror-tocracy’, which is where people progress based on their similarities to their boss. They tend to surround themselves with people like them to avoid any challenges to their way of doing things.
Those of you that have followed People Lab for a while will no doubt have heard my ‘bad boss’ stories before. I totally recognise the characteristics of the ‘covert bully’ boss.
Many years ago I had the misfortune to work for one. Following the departure of our previous (brilliant) boss, this person was put in charge of our team on an interim basis, but thought while she was there it would be a good idea to restructure the team (despite the fact that this wasn’t an ask of her, or actually needed – there was a red flag right there). She made it clear from the off that there were not enough roles for everyone, immediately creating tension and uncertainty. She cosied up to her favourites and when she was called out by a couple of the team, she gaslighted saying we were imagining things. Her whole modus operandi was to foster in-group and out-group dynamics, and if you were like her and played the game you were in. Some of the team were destabilised by her constant switching them from the in-group to the out-group, depending on their compliance with her ways of working. Suffice to say I didn’t stick around!
Of course the connection between great bosses and subsequent experience, engagement and wellbeing is well documented and evidenced. For example, managers account for 70% of the variance in a team’s engagement. So what do you do if you’re struggling with a bad boss? Dr Grace suggests the following:
- Get into the detail of career progression opportunities and document this with your boss
- Expand your network and seek out other opportunities in your organisation or even externally
- Get some physical distance from your boss if possible
- Establish boundaries between your work and home life
- And finally set yourself a deadline to look for a new job if the relationship doesn’t improve
And of course organisations need to take steps to call out these behaviours and support employees when they raise concerns. There’s also a bigger question about how and why people who behave in this way end up in leadership roles? We’d love to hear your views on this.
Have you got a bad boss story? We’d love to hear from you if you’re happy to share it, it’s definitely quite cathartic!
