National Boss Day is Tuesday, but chances are, you may feel in no rush to buy a Hallmark card for your supervisor.
In fact, poll results released today suggest that most workers think their boss has a lot of room for improvement: More respondents say a better boss would make them happier at work than say a pay raise would, according to poll results released Tuesday.
There is no shortage of ways for a boss to be bad. “You can almost come up with an endless list,” says Scot Melland, chief executive of Dice Holdings, a New York–based provider of specialized career sites. Some bosses are bullies; others don’t help subordinates develop skills. A particularly annoying boss archetype: one who has no personal life, and assumes his employees don’t either.
“This is the one that wanders into your office at 6 o’clock and starts giving you a work assignment, or just starts talking,” Melland says. “This seeps into your personal life, and if you are not careful, you lose touch with ****** and friends.”
According to new data from workplace expert and author Michelle McQuaid more than six in 10 workers say they would be happier at work with a better boss, compared with almost four in 10 who’d prefer a pay raise. The results are based on an August poll of 1,000 respondents. ( Audio: New boss or raise? Many wouldn’t take the cash .)
For many workers, having a troublesome boss is the most stressful part of a job. “It undermines performance, it undermines your health,” McQuaid says. “When stress levels are rising and you feel powerless, you get yourself in a spiral of despair, and it can be hard to climb out of that.”
Bad bosses aren’t vanishing anytime soon. Many employers have cut back on the management training that helps the top folks improve. Also, as firms become “flatter,” with less of a clear line separating managers and subordinates, there’s less opportunity for employees to learn how to be good managers.
“Today there are probably very few people who are managers who ever had a great manager that they learned the tricks of the trade from,” Melland says.
Bosses without their own personal lives aren’t the only bad ones out there. Here are four more types:
The poor communicator: Bosses with unclear expectations make it tough for their subordinates to reach professional goals. Poor communicators may also have trouble offering feedback or criticism. “Delivering a tough message is probably the most important element for anyone in a leadership role,” says Tish Squillaro, chief executive of Candor Consulting, a leadership and organizational development consultancy. “Delivering that tough message may be painful,” she adds, but in the long term, “you are making that person or group more effective.”
The micromanager: Bosses that micromanage have trouble delegating work, leading to inefficiencies. “Direct reports don’t have meaningful work to do,” Shalhoop says. “The boss a lot of times has them spinning their wheels.”
A micromanager tends to be very critical. “He doesn’t give positive feedback and doesn’t trust the direct report to do work,” Shalhoop says. “I’ve had a micromanaging boss before. I just felt frustrated. No matter how hard I worked on something, it came back shredded.”
The risk avoider: Bosses who are extremely risk-averse and can’t make decisions are problematic. “It’s one thing to be conservative and still produce; it’s another to refuse to make a decision because there’s a possibility that something may not work out perfectly,” Shalhoop says. “Your team can’t get anything done. Work stalls out.”
Such a boss is frustrating for workers who require approval to complete assignments. “Every time you have to talk to your boss, it becomes a three-day ordeal where you get torn apart instead of a stamp of approval,” Shalhoop says
The emotional wreck
Everybody has feelings, but bosses should avoid emotionally volatile behavior. Working for a boss who can’t handle emotions can be disconcerting.
“Small, everyday frustrations get these emotionally volatile people to explode,” Shalhoop says.“There are inappropriate displays of emotion: yelling, temper tantrums, slamming things down on their desk. It’s frustrating when you just don’t know what you are walking into when you see your boss.”
Emotionally destructive leaders can promote a culture of divisiveness. Pelletier once worked at a firm where there was a “wall of shame” that displayed work the boss thought wasn’t up to *****. “They might think that posting this is educational, but certainly anyone whose work is on the board doesn’t feel like this is a positive way to go about it,” Pelletier says. “Leaders need to think about how their actions are perceived by their employees.”
