Season 3 – Episode 026
Bad bosses: the office equivalent of a microwave with a broken timer. It either leaves your career frozen in the middle or burns it to a crisp, and you’re never quite sure which setting it’s on today. In this episode of A Job Done Well, Jimmy Barber and James Lawther dissect the scourge of the workplace: the boss who turns a dream job into a daily grind. With a mix of war stories, dry humour, and hard-won wisdom, they explore why a bad boss can overshadow even the most rewarding roles, and—more importantly—what you can do about it.
From the hypocrites who preach morality while chasing bonuses, to the indecisive leaders who’d rather watch a business burn than make a call, Jimmy and James leave no stone unturned. They tackle the personal nature of bad boss experiences (one person’s nightmare is another’s mentor), the traps employees fall into (avoidance, bitching, disengagement), and the rare but glorious moments when understanding your boss’s pressures—divorce, imposter syndrome, or just being in over their head—can turn a toxic relationship into a tolerable one.
But let’s be clear: this isn’t a self-help seminar. Sometimes, the only solution is to wait it out, adapt, or—if all else fails—run for the exit. Because, as they remind us, no boss lasts forever. And if you’re lucky, neither will the damage they inflict.
Five key points:
- Practical solutions include understanding your boss’s pressures, improving communication, and knowing when to cut your losses and move on.
- Bad bosses have a disproportionate impact on job satisfaction, often overshadowing even the most rewarding roles.
- Only about 10% of bosses are truly bad, but their influence can feel all-consuming.
- Common bad-boss traits include inconsistency, hypocrisy, indecisiveness, and lack of clarity.
- Employees often fall into traps like avoidance, reinforcing bad behaviour, or becoming cynical and disengaged.
[00:00:03]
James: Hello, I’m James.
Jimmy: Hi, I’m Jimmy, and welcome to A Job Done Well, the podcast that helps you improve your performance and enjoyment at work.
[00:00:14]
James: What are we talking about today?
[00:00:16]
Jimmy: Well, today, James, we are talking about one of the biggest factors in whether you enjoy your job or not: your boss.
[00:00:24]
James: All right.
[00:00:24]
Jimmy: You can have a great job, and a bad boss ruins it. You can have a really tough job, and a good boss can make it bearable. So today, we’re going to talk about bad bosses and what to do when your boss is the problem stopping you from enjoying and performing at work. And we’ve had a few of them, haven’t we, James?
[00:00:49]
James: I’ve got to try not to get into boss-bashing in this episode. I’m going to rise above it. I’ll be like Michelle Obama: when they go low, we go high. I know you like a good statistic, and I had to look at the numbers. There was an ACIP report that found 70% of employees with poor managers report low job satisfaction, as opposed to 88% who report high job satisfaction with good ones. And the thing that surprised me was that the gap wasn’t bigger.
[00:01:30]
Jimmy: Yeah.
[00:01:31]
James: Competent bosses apparently can boost happiness more than salary, according to the Harvard Business Review. And that, I do believe.
[00:01:36]
Jimmy: Yeah.
[00:01:37]
James: I used to work with a guy who said, You can’t do enough for a good governor. And I thought that was a very astute point.
[00:01:49]
Jimmy: It’s one of the things we’ve talked about in a couple of episodes recently. You work for people, not organisations. You’ll run through walls for a good boss. But today, we’re focusing on the shadow of that: the bad boss. And, interestingly, this made me reflect on the bad bosses I’ve experienced. I reckon over the course of my career, I’ve had about 50 bosses.
[00:02:11]
James: Yeah, and that’s interesting. I did a count as well, and in 33 years, I reckon I had about 22 bosses.
[00:02:19]
Jimmy: Yeah.
[00:02:20]
James: And, actually, you’re right—only about 10% were really bad. Probably 10% were good. The rest just floated in the middle somewhere.
[00:02:28]
Jimmy: But the challenge is the disproportionate impact a bad boss has on your working life. It absolutely overshadows it. I was surprised when I thought about the numbers. The ratio would’ve felt higher because of the impact they have.
[00:02:52]
James: Yeah, I always remember the bad things.
[00:02:54]
Jimmy: Exactly.
[00:02:55]
James: What would you say defines a bad boss for you?
[00:03:00]
Jimmy: I think there are a few things that often crop up. Somebody who isn’t clear—we talk a lot about purpose and clarity around purpose. So, a boss who isn’t clear about why you’re there, what they want, or the tasks. And they’re inconsistent. You’ve had that situation where they blow hot and cold, or sometimes they want lots of detail and sometimes they don’t. So you never really know where you stand.
[00:03:30]
James: Yeah, and I’ll take that further. I’ve worked with some bosses who say they want to do something that sounds grand—morally or ethically correct, something everybody would want to get behind—but they’re just giving it lip service. In reality, all they’re interested in is their bonus.
[00:03:50]
Jimmy: Yeah.
[00:03:50]
James: I’ve always found that really difficult. So maybe that’s your inconsistency point.
[00:03:54]
Jimmy: But I think that’s an interesting point, James, because I think we can define some things, but some of it is very personal. In that example you just talked about, I’d hate it because one of the things I really despise is hypocrisy. If you’re taking the moral high ground and you’re not, that’s going to be a problem for me. But that’s personal to me. And, actually, I bet if we compared notes on some of the people we think are bad bosses, we might have some disagreements.
[00:04:25]
James: No, absolutely. I can think of at least one individual I thought was a great boss who you didn’t like at all.
[00:04:28]
Jimmy: Yeah.
[00:04:30]
James: I absolutely agree with that.
[00:04:31]
Jimmy: One person’s good boss is another person’s bad.
[00:04:34]
James: One of the things that struck me early on is that seniority and capability are not necessarily the same thing. You’re working for somebody two or three levels above you, and you sit there thinking, Bloody hell, do you know what you’re doing?
For example, early in my career, do you remember BSE—bovine spongiform encephalopathy?
[00:04:56]
Jimmy: Oh yeah.
[00:04:56]
James: When BSE hit, I was working for Bird’s Eye, a beef burger company. People just weren’t eating beef burgers, which was a big deal. So we had to switch from making beef burgers to ham burgers. I needed an order for 10,000 tons of pork. The business group chairman was incapable of making a decision. It was clocking on through May, getting into burger-making season, and I needed the pork, otherwise we weren’t making any burgers. He wouldn’t make a decision at all. I think it was probably fear. He was worried about his profit targets.
[00:05:43]
Jimmy: Yeah.
[00:05:44]
James: But that, for me, is one key thing: just a lack of consistency.
[00:05:48]
Jimmy: A few other things I’ve experienced with bad bosses: people who are overly controlling—you can’t do anything, they don’t let you make decisions or take actions. People who are completely absent—they’re never around, especially when things get tough. People who are overly political—we’ve talked a few times about people who are very good at managing upwards but don’t manage downwards as effectively.
[00:06:16]
James: You know I said I was gonna go high, Michelle Obama-style?
[00:06:20]
Jimmy: You’re gonna go low.
[00:06:21]
James: I am gonna go there. There was one bloke I worked for, and every three months he’d have an operational review with his boss. We’d all get dragged in to present how good we were doing, and he’d just talk over the top of us. He’d make stuff up if he thought it sounded good, and you’d be really caught because, on the one hand, you’d think, If that’s what you wanna say, crack on. But on the other hand, it was just creating huge holes you knew were gonna fall in afterwards. So that was quite stressful.
[00:06:47]
Jimmy: You said early on you discovered that capability and seniority didn’t always correlate. It took me a while to realise that. I went through naively thinking the bosses in senior roles knew best. It was only when I got a little bit closer to them that I realised they often didn’t. They just made up for the lack of capability with confidence.
[00:07:10]
James: Well, and that’s why I shouldn’t get political, but you can see this in what’s going on in the Middle East at the moment. The most powerful white man in the world probably isn’t a great boss, let’s be honest.
[00:07:20]
Jimmy: No problem about it, James. He ain’t a great boss, and he ain’t even a great human being, frankly.
[00:07:25]
James: But the other thing—coming away from that for a second—the other thing I think is important is values. Somebody might actually be a very capable boss, but if they don’t share the same values as you, you really struggle. For a while, I worked for a senior marketing lady. My values were all about operational effectiveness. She couldn’t give two hoots about that because it just wasn’t her makeup. It’s not that she was bad to work for—it just became really difficult because we saw the world from totally different perspectives.
[00:07:59]
Jimmy: I think another example of what I consider to be a bad boss—and this is maybe in hindsight a little bit—I’ve worked for a number of people who, when they needed something from you, they were like your best friend, and you were the greatest thing since sliced bread. As soon as they didn’t need anything from you, you were dead to them. There are a few people we know like that.
[00:08:21]
James: Yeah, I think we could name names and have some congruence there, but maybe now is not the time.
[00:08:26]
Jimmy: Those are some of the traits we’ve seen. But as we say, it can be a little bit personal. But I guess, why do you think it’s so hard when you have a bad boss?
[00:08:38]
James: I think for me, if I was to give an analogy, it’s all about control and delivery. On the one hand, it’s a bit like you’re the captain of a sailing ship. You’ve got to get this ship from wherever it is to India or wherever it might be. But you don’t control the wind.
[00:08:55]
Jimmy: Yeah.
[00:08:55]
James: On the other hand, you’ve got the boss, and they control your priorities, your resources, and your progression. But they’re still holding you accountable. They love that word. But you’ve got to deliver, and you’ve got to lead your team. You’ve got to make things work. And it’s that discontinuity between accountability and control which is the thing that really causes a problem.
[00:09:18]
Jimmy: I think you’re right, James. They have such control and impact on your life—what you’re working on, how you’re judged, how you get on, how you get promoted, your end-of-year review. On a daily basis and just on a whole-life basis. But you have to do all the work, often.
[00:09:35]
James: Yeah. But then, as you said, over the past 33 years, you’ve had—how many?—50 bosses.
[00:09:42]
Jimmy: Yeah.
[00:09:42]
James: I think you got through them at twice the rate I did. I was obviously more stable than you. I had 20-plus. Either way, that’s a boss every year and a half on average. But even given the churn of bosses, they do have real-world consequences. There’s that phrase: People don’t quit their jobs; they quit their bosses. And it’s so true. I think there’s some Gallup data that supports that. But I was thinking about it, and I’ve moved jobs internally three times because I had a bad boss.
[00:10:11]
Jimmy: Yeah.
[00:10:11]
James: And externally twice because I had a bad boss. So you do—it’s not great when you have one, and people do leave.
[00:10:19]
Jimmy: Well, I think if I looked at the 10% of times when I had a bad boss, I moved every time after a while. Having said that, we’ve talked a bit about bad bosses and what they’re like and why it’s difficult, but I do think that when you’re working for a bad boss, there are some common traps that we fall into. For example, when you’ve got a bad boss, I found I didn’t want to talk to them. So you just avoid them, avoid those difficult conversations.
[00:10:52]
James: Yeah. And is that a trap, or is that just inevitable? I mean, it depends on whether the boss is vindictive. But actually, I think of all the bosses that were proper—well, to be honest with you, mate, I used to work for you, and I have, on occasion, told you you were making shit up.
[00:11:17]
Jimmy: Yeah.
[00:11:18]
James: But I knew you could take it.
[00:11:19]
Jimmy: Yeah.
[00:11:20]
James: Therefore, by definition, you weren’t a bad boss.
[00:11:22]
Jimmy: No, but I think the principle is: do you have the conversations you need to have? Do you talk to your boss about why you’re finding them difficult? Do you talk to them about why some of their behaviour is difficult?
[00:11:34]
James: Brave.
[00:11:35]
Jimmy: It does, and so I think we often avoid those conversations. I think that leads to reinforcing their behaviour. So agreeing with all of their points. Back to your mate, the orange lunatic—everyone around him is agreeing with everything he tells them all the time.
[00:11:54]
James: Well, and that’s very interesting because it must be causing some of them extreme stress. There’s one guy, very senior in the Pentagon, who’s been pushed out in short order. Clearly, he wasn’t telling them what they wanted to hear. But when you’re in a situation like that, he’s trying to protect his soldiers’ lives. I have no doubt. Not doing that is just hugely stressful. Fortunately, I only ever worked in an insurance company, in a bank. So I wasn’t in that position. When somebody’s fundamentally got a values conflict, it is really hard.
[00:12:33]
Jimmy: I think another couple of traps we can get caught in: one is bitching about your boss. You end up talking to colleagues about it.
[00:12:42]
James: I wouldn’t have said that was a trap. I would’ve said that was a pleasure.
[00:12:45]
Jimmy: Well, yeah, you would, James. But part of that is it can be cathartic to understand that we’re all in the same position, we all feel the same way. But sometimes it doesn’t actually help move you forward. It doesn’t help you progress things a lot of the time. So I think there is a risk with that.
[00:13:05]
James: There’s also a risk that your boss could find out about it. My daughter worked for a while for one person, and she noted that everybody in the entire organisation used to bitch and complain about them. It’s what singled this woman out in one way—that’s great, it’s cathartic because you’re not the only one. But it’s a bit toxic. It doesn’t really take you anywhere. It’s not proactive.
[00:13:32]
Jimmy: No, and I think that can often lead to you becoming just a bit cynical and a bit disengaged. One of the things that always worried me personally is when I found myself working for a bad boss, I found myself becoming very negative. I didn’t like myself then, and I worried that when I went somewhere else, I’d carry on being the same. That wasn’t true because once I moved, I didn’t carry it on. But I always worried that I’d get myself in a downward spiral and couldn’t get myself out of it.
[00:14:08]
James: And it’s quite easy to become very cynical and disengaged from the situation, which again is not helpful.
[00:14:14]
Jimmy: I think one of the things—a bit of a mixed blessing—is, as you said, James, we’ve both been through lots of bosses. You get tempted into kind of waiting it out because they’ll move eventually, won’t they? And that is true, but that can still lead to a very difficult, toxic time for you if you don’t take some action.
[00:14:38]
James: Well, and that’s interesting because I think that is the common strategy, and it’s understandable. But if we’re right that 10% of bosses are bad, that means 10% of the population is waiting it out at work. And that really is a dreadful thought.
[00:14:54]
Jimmy: And just before we get onto what you can do about it, would you ever have said that you were a bad boss?
[00:15:00]
James: Never.
[00:15:02]
Jimmy: Go polish your halo, Jack.
[00:15:03]
James: I’d say it, whether I knew it or not. And I’m sure I frustrated the hell out of people sometimes, not intentionally.
[00:15:09]
Jimmy: Yeah, that’s one of the interesting things. I think sometimes bad bosses aren’t intentionally bad bosses.
[00:15:16]
James: Oh, a lot of them are.
[00:15:17]
Jimmy: You know what I mean? It’s just whether it’s their lack of confidence or lack of capability. It could be a whole raft of things impacting them, but they don’t get up in the morning thinking, Today I’m gonna be a really bad boss.
[00:15:42]
James: Yeah.
[00:15:43]
Jimmy: I’m sure there are people who would definitely say that I was a bad boss. And that might have been how we worked together. If I look back, I was always too focused on results, and I probably didn’t focus on the people who worked for me as well as I could have. And that would’ve pissed some people off in the past.
[00:15:58]
James: I like to think I had the humility to be able to accept it when somebody told me I was a bad boss. I can think of three or four people who thought I was a really bad boss. And sometimes you just clash, don’t you?
[00:16:07]
Jimmy: Yeah, but I think the danger with that, James, is back to the point about you not always having those conversations. People who found you a bad boss probably weren’t telling you.
[00:16:18]
James: What have you done in the past that you think made things worse when you had a bad boss?
[00:16:23]
Jimmy: I think a couple of things I’ve probably done: I’d be schizophrenic with it. Either I would lock horns with them, and if they were talking bullshit, I’d feel I had to put them right. I had to make them realise how stupid and destructive they were. Or I’d withdraw. I just wouldn’t want to—I’d try and find ways of keeping out of their way, not engaging with them, staying out of the way. And I think both of those reactions probably made things worse at times with certain bosses. Because then they’d feel, If you’re gonna rebel against me, we’ll see who wins.
[00:17:03]
James: Yeah. Have you ever heard of the Pygmalion effect?
[00:17:06]
Jimmy: No, go on, educate me.
[00:17:07]
James: It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. I’ve gone from being golden balls to Mr. Satan within the space of about two weeks, only because my boss changed. My performance didn’t change, my boss changed, and therefore my boss’s perception of me changed.
[00:17:24]
Jimmy: I—
[00:17:25]
James: But what I found is that if somebody thinks you’re a poor performer, you start acting like a poor performer.
[00:17:32]
Jimmy: Yeah.
[00:17:32]
James: You don’t engage, you leave early, you don’t push on the things you should. And it really is—I think that’s the worst thing, when you get so hung up on your boss and their perception of you, and it causes you to spiral down. And that, I think, is the thing you really need to watch out for.
[00:17:54]
Jimmy: So let’s get on to some of the things that actually work. We’ve talked about some of our reactions and how that didn’t help. Give me an example, James, of some of the things you think do work.
[00:18:05]
James: And I—sorry, it’s a bit trite, a bit cliché. All these things are clichés because there’s another truth in them: walking in their shoes for a little while. Understanding what’s driving them. The bloke I was telling you about—the one who wasn’t prepared to order 10,000 tons of pork—he was just worried about profit. He was worried he was gonna have a dirty great big write-off on his hands. He was a bit young, inexperienced, truth be told. So what did we do? We ordered 1,000 tons a month. Minimised his risk, at which point he was bang up for it. So just understanding what pressures people are under and trying to understand them helps enormously.
[00:18:47]
Jimmy: I remember I was working for a person, and it was their first time at that level. They were worrying about detail, governance, and how we wrote board papers. And I never really thought, Well, maybe they lacked a bit of confidence and were stepping up. I know when I stepped up to more senior roles, you often do lack that little bit of confidence. You can’t always say, Look, I’m finding this really difficult. This job’s tough. I’m gonna take a bit of time getting used to it, because you don’t have that confidence. So you mask it. Just thinking, What’s going on for that person? Whether they’ve just stepped up to do that job or what’s happening for them outside of work.
[00:19:32]
James: I worked for one woman, and she was an absolute horror, as far as I was concerned. Turns out she was going through a very messy divorce at the time—which, of course, I didn’t know about. Is there any surprise she was a bit erratic at work?
[00:19:40]
Jimmy: Yeah.
[00:19:41]
James: So you’re right. Understanding what’s going on for them is really important.
[00:19:48]
Jimmy: I think another angle to understanding them is understanding what’s important to them. What matters to them? Some people, it’s making a difference. It’s that classic what’s in it for me? If you don’t understand what matters to them, it’s very difficult to feel that you’re helping them.
[00:20:03]
James: Yeah.
[00:20:03]
Jimmy: You don’t understand what matters to them—
[00:20:09]
James: Well, there’s something in making life easy for them.
[00:20:12]
Jimmy: Yeah.
[00:20:12]
James: Clarity, updates, no surprises—all that sort of stuff.
[00:20:16]
Jimmy: Do you remember one of our favourite bosses? He always, when he went into big meetings, wanted to be over-prepared. He had his infamous back pocket. He wanted so much information, and it was an absolute pain in the arse. But we used to do it for him because we knew that made him more comfortable.
[00:20:37]
James: Yeah.
[00:20:38]
Jimmy: He’d perform and do well and represent us as a team more effectively. We didn’t just sit there and say, Why are you asking for this? Why do you want this? We used to give him loads of stuff to make him more comfortable, didn’t we?
[00:20:49]
James: Yeah. And I remember the opposite of that in one session early in my career. I was working with somebody, and we had a big development review meeting. All the great and the good were in the meeting room, and this woman just tore a strip off me in front of everyone. It wasn’t for what I’d done wrong—it was because I hadn’t told her I was going to do the wrong thing, and she just felt really exposed. So the whole thing about no surprises is really important. If you’ve got a boss who’s a bit edgy and doesn’t like to find things out, best to keep them absolutely on the front foot, especially when things aren’t going quite the way you expect them to go.
[00:21:28]
Jimmy: So I think there’s something about understanding them as a person. There’s something about making their life easier. But I also think we did an episode quite a while ago about managing upwards. Just having some structure and a plan for how you manage your boss helps. Things like: don’t just bring them problems—bring them some options. What can you do? What are some of the things that could be solutions when they ask you to do something? Be clear on what their expectations are. What does good look like? What’s success? Don’t wait till you’re halfway through and then say, Is this what you wanted? That used to infuriate me. You haven’t said anything, so I thought you understood what I wanted. Then you get to the end, and they bring you all this stuff, and it’s like, No, that’s not what I wanted.
[00:22:13]
Sometimes you have to write stuff down. I used to find it quite useful with one boss: we’d discuss things, he’d knock stuff around, and you weren’t sure exactly what you’d agreed. I used to write to him and just say, James, just to confirm, I’m gonna do X, Y, Z for you.
[00:22:33]
James: Yeah, the old CYA—Cover Your Arse—note.
[00:22:38]
Jimmy: Ah, okay.
[00:22:40]
James: Actually, when—
[00:22:41]
Jimmy: Yeah.
[00:22:41]
James: —very powerful.
[00:22:42]
Jimmy: No, it wasn’t a—yeah, it’s getting the right tone, though. Because a lot of this underlying comes down to communication. If your tone is I’m covering my back, that’s gonna bristle. If it’s Look, I really wanna do a good job for you. I’m clarifying—this is what I think you’re looking for, it’s a whole different ball game.
[00:23:06]
James: That’s where I always went wrong, is it? The tone?
[00:23:09]
Jimmy: Yeah. If you just discovered tone, you’d realise tone’s not my strong point. Do you think it was like—
[00:23:15]
James: Again, now you tell me. The master of the dark arts—how do you push back on a boss properly?
[00:23:19]
Jimmy: I think you have to not get caught, like I did, in locking horns. You have to push back in a very logical, calm way at the right time. There are times when you don’t push back—just let them rant. Just let them go. Then find the right time when you think they’re gonna be open to it and present options, present logic, present some of the facts. Not in a defensive way, but tie it back to what’s in it for them. How do you wanna move forward? You understand what matters to them. Therefore, you’re pushing back, you’re being logical about it, you’re pushing back for the sake of what matters to them.
[00:24:01]
James: Yeah. And the one more thing I would add—and I suppose this is me, hardly surprising—is to approach it systematically. Control what you can. You can worry about your team, your communication, your standards. If your boss is a complete arse, there’s probably not a lot you can do about it. So therefore, it’s almost not worth your time worrying about it. So it’s almost like: look at a bad boss as just another system constraint. You can’t change it. What can you do? Worry about what you can do rather than what you can’t.
[00:24:23]
Jimmy: Yeah.
[00:24:32]
Jimmy: So I think there are some practical things you can do. But I do think we should probably spend a couple of minutes, James, talking about the elephant in the room a lot of the time when it comes to bosses: a lot of this behaviour, these reactions, these actions, are driven by power and ego at times.
[00:24:52]
James: Yeah. Okay, so do you think—I mean, they do say power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely—but do you think power corrupts bosses? Is that where you’re going with this?
[00:25:03]
Jimmy: Well, I think it does. I think not just that it corrupts, but I think when you get promoted, back to my example of somebody promoted to a senior role, they feel they have to show they’re in charge and that they know what they’re doing. So I don’t think it’s coming from a point of corruption. I think sometimes it’s I’ve got to step up. I’ve got to be the boss. I’ve got to be this person who has all the answers.
[00:25:34]
James: I think it’s this whole thing about 360 feedback. In my experience, 360 feedback does not flipping exist unless you’re at the bottom of the flipping rung. Because you get feedback from the top, but actually, the higher people go, the less honest feedback they tend to get about their performance. And so if you’re not getting the feedback, if you don’t know the implications of what you’re doing, then it can’t help but change your behaviour, can it?
[00:25:59]
Jimmy: Do you remember the session that a certain boss of ours had with us when he sat down and wanted us to tell him honestly about all the things that were wrong with something and speak openly?
[00:26:12]
James: I don’t. I must’ve blanked it from my mind. Keep going.
[00:26:15]
Jimmy: And we did. We talked to him openly about everything, and he thanked us and was very appreciative. Then afterwards, he went to our actual boss and said, Your team are awful. They’re all very negative. It’s like, But that’s what you just asked for. So that’s one of the reasons why people in senior levels do not get honest feedback—because of the fear of consequence.
[00:26:42]
James: What about ego, then? Is there something about ego which actually gets people promoted? By which I mean, some of the jobs I’ve seen—very big jobs—you’ve gotta have a fair-sized ego to want the flipping job in the first place.
[00:26:55]
Jimmy: Well, yeah. To believe that you can do that job, you’ve got to have an amount of ego. Nobody gets to being CEO, Prime Minister, or President without any ego. It’s just a reality. But I think if you go further down the organisation, ego often shows up in things like not listening, not wanting to admit to mistakes, needing to be right. One guy wanted to always be the cleverest man in the room. He didn’t care whether the meeting was absolutely shit and the outcomes were awful. If he’d proven he was the cleverest man in the room, he went out of that room happy. And that’s just pure ego.
[00:27:42]
James: I think another big one is actually insecurity. A lot of people in these positions have imposter syndrome. Then they become insecure, and because they’re insecure, they just revert to what they know. And then you start to get a whole load of micromanagement, over-checking, and all that sort of stuff. And I don’t think that helps.
[00:28:05]
Jimmy: I think there are a few practical things you can do when dealing with power and ego. I think some good examples: you have to remember that often, for a boss, being a boss, being a senior person—their identity is tied up in all of that. So challenge some of the facts and the outcomes, not the person’s identity.
[00:28:28]
James: Okay.
[00:28:29]
Jimmy: One of the great mentors I had used to say, You’ve got to give people’s ego the chance to retreat. So if you’re trying to prove a point, you’ve got to give their ego the chance to back down or change their mind. If you make it too big a jump, their ego won’t let them change their mind.
[00:28:51]
James: And we all know this to be true. I’m sorry to go back to the current political situation, but if you listen to the political pundits, the term they go over and over is Where’s the off-ramp? The whole thing being that politicians need an off-ramp. They need to be able to find a way out without losing face. And actually, the trick is very often to give them the off-ramp so they don’t feel stupid.
[00:29:13]
Jimmy: Yeah.
[00:29:13]
James: Let them change their mind. Let their ego allow them to do that.
[00:29:15]
Jimmy: Sometimes you have to let them have a win. It’s just the reality of things. Sometimes the goal isn’t always to be right—it’s to get the right outcome. So let them have the odd win at times.
[00:29:30]
I think then the other thing is: pick your battles. Back to my point about how I used to get caught in the trap of feeling that every time a boss opened their mouth and said something that was bullshit, I had to call the bullshit. Whereas actually, not every hill is worth dying on.
[00:29:53]
James: Yeah, I found I died in ditches, mate. I died in quite a lot of ditches.
[00:30:00]
Jimmy: Exactly. But pick your battles. But I think you know it comes back again to just understanding the pressure they’re under. Is it that they’re back to my example—the ego that doesn’t let you say, I’m struggling with this. I find this job difficult? So I think some of the things you can do around dealing with power and ego: don’t challenge them as a person, challenge the outcomes. Give them the odd win, pick your battles, and also just understand them a little bit as a person—the pressure they’re under.
[00:30:33]
James: Yeah. Put yourself in their shoes.
[00:30:35]
Jimmy: So what do you do when it’s not fixable? I don’t think it’s not fixable that often. I mean, in my 33 years, I can only think of one boss who was just—it was never gonna happen. A handful were bad, but one was terrible. But when you do get in that situation, what do you think?
[00:30:54]
James: Well, I think there are a few ways you can deal with it when it isn’t fixable. You can adapt your approach, accept it, work around the issues. But ultimately, for me, I worked with some people I didn’t always see eye to eye with. I would do those things, but ultimately, sometimes you do have to move on. And we both said there were a number of times—you can’t just jack in a job. We don’t have that luxury in life. But I knew when I worked with a bad boss, I would adapt, I would work around. But ultimately, I knew that if they weren’t going anywhere, I had to.
[00:31:33]
Jimmy: So sometimes the only solution is to leave.
[00:31:38]
James: Yeah.
[00:31:38]
Jimmy: So we’ve talked about bad bosses, given a bit of flavour of how they behave, why it’s difficult, some of the practical things you can do about it. We’ve talked about power and ego and how you can deal with that. But if you, out of all of that, James, what’s the one thing you would pick out and share with somebody who’s dealing with a bad boss today?
[00:31:58]
James: No matter how bleak it feels, he or she will not be there forever. So worry about what you can do and don’t worry about the boss, because you can’t change them. So just worry about what you can do. They’ll be okay.
[00:32:13]
Jimmy: And I think the one thing I—
[00:32:14]
James: That’s two bits of advice in there. Cunningly.
[00:32:16]
Jimmy: Yeah, two for the price of one.
[00:32:17]
James: Yeah. Very good.
[00:32:18]
Jimmy: Well, the one thing I’d pick on is I think a lot of the issues and the solutions come down to communication. I think just really thinking very carefully about how you communicate with somebody can give you a lot more options. So there you go. If anyone’s dealing with a bad boss, hopefully that’s been helpful, because invariably, it will happen to you.
[00:32:42]
James: All right.
[00:32:42]
Jimmy: Thanks, James. Thanks, everyone.
[00:32:43]
James: Speak to you later.
[00:32:45]
Speaker 2: We cover a whole host of topics on this podcast—
[00:32:48]
Speaker 3: From purpose to corporate jargon—
[00:32:50]
Speaker 2: But always focused on one thing: getting the job done well.
[00:32:54]
Speaker 3: Easier said than done.
[00:32:57]
Speaker 2: So if you’ve got unhappy customers or employees, bosses or regulators breathing down your neck—
[00:33:03]
Speaker 3: If your backlogs are out of control and your costs are spiralling, and that big IT transformation project you’ve been promised just keeps failing to deliver—
[00:33:12]
Speaker 2: We can help. If you need to improve your performance, your team’s performance, or your organisation’s, get in touch at Jimmy@jobdonewell.com or James@jobdonewell.com.
Listen On:
