How to Work With a Bad Boss: What if the Jerk at Work is My Boss?
In my book, The Jerk-Free Workplace: How You Can Take the Lead to Create a Happier, More Inspiring Workplace, I of course talk about the importance of not being a jerk at work – starting with yourself! But what if the jerk at work just happens to be your boss? It’s one thing to deal with a colleague who’s a jerk, but it’s a whole other kettle of stress dealing with a boss who is a jerk. Here are some thoughts on how to deal with a bad boos, how to cope with a jerk of a boss!
Help! My Boss is a Jerk! (video transcript)
Since the release of my book, The Jerk-Free Workplace, the number one question I have received is, “What if my boss is the jerk?”
Here are few ideas that might help you out if your boss is the jerk!
First, you need to learn how to respond to a jerk-like boss and not just react to a jerk-like boss.
And one of those choices you could make is to ignore your boss! If your boss is a jerk in a way that isn’t impeding your performance, your ability to deliver great service to your customers, or work with your teammates, if your boss is a jerk, but still not really getting in the way of your success, maybe you decide to just learn to live with it some way.
Maybe it’s through creative scheduling, creative job crafting to change your duties a little bit. Or maybe it is ultimately just ignoring the jerk-like behavior that otherwise will eat you up because you make the decision that you’re not going to let it impact you. You decide to accept that this is just who they are – they’re a jerk! You’ve tried to change them, but you can’t change them. So, you’ve learned to accept that that’s just who they are, but it’s not getting in the way of your work.
Now, if you make this decision to ignore your jerk-like behavior from your boss, then you truly have to embrace that. And that means you can’t go home and complain about your boss to your spouse or your friends. You cannot complain about your boss to your co-workers. That’s not ignoring it!
If you keep complaining about your boss, then there is an issue that you do need to resolve, and you need to resolve it or it’s going to eat you up inside. But if you can truly ignore it or think about how you respond in a more positive, constructive way, that is one option you seriously so need to consider.
Another approach before I get to some constructive solutions is what I would call the “nuclear option.” In other words, if it is really, really bad, if your boss is demonstrating truly jerk-like behavior that is abusive or bullying in any way, that is threatening, that you just can’t live with and if you are losing sleep over your boss and this is affecting your mental and physical health, you have to ask yourself, “Is this worth it? Is it worth the cost?”
And I’m going to suggest, no, it’s not worth your health! So, you need to consider pushing the nuclear button, which could mean quitting your job.
Now, I would never give a stranger advice to quit their job without having a serious backup plan in place. So, please make sure you do have a plan in place. But that is, of course, an option you ultimately have to consider. Seriously ask yourself: What is this costing me? Can I put up with this forever more? And if the answer is ‘no,’ if it’s affecting your health or your family, then you may need to make the difficult decision to quit your job or to transfer to another department.
Or another, what I would consider to be a nuclear button option, is you may need to talk to HR. You may need to go over your boss’s head and have a very difficult conversation with their boss. If you do those things, though, I want to suggest that you choose that as a last resort. In other words, you’ve tried talking to your boss on multiple occasions and seriously tried to find a solution to the situation.
If you go over their head or go to HR, be prepared. Do your homework. Do your research. Don’t make it about you, make it about the best interests of your team and your company. Make it about the best interests of your company from a culture point of view and how you need to be true to your values, so it’s not about you. You have to have a partnership mindset to resolve the problem, and realistically, you do have to be prepared for the consequences. But that is an option you need to consider if you’ve tried everything else.
Okay, so if you can’t ignore your boss’s behavior anymore, and you’re not ready to hit the nuclear button option, then you have the third option, which is to fix your jerk-like boss.
Okay, maybe let’s not use the word “fix,” let’s use a more constructive phrase. How about coaching your boss in a constructive way to change their jerk-like behavior?
Here are some tools that will help you do just that. And let’s start with some of the mindset stuff because this is really important.
Before you go and sit down with your boss, take to heart that they are a human being. They’re another person just like you. Having a challenging conversation with your boss shouldn’t be all that different than having a challenging conversation with anyone else in your workplace. Now, I get it, yeah, they have some influence over you, so it is different. It can be intimidating. But ultimately remember, they’re a human being. They have families, they have the same concerns and fears perhaps that you do.
For my book, The Jerk-Free Workplace, I interviewed dozens and dozens of managers and asked them, “What do you want your employees to know about you?”
And time and time again, I got responses like, “I want them to know that I’m a real human being, that I have feelings, that I have fears and stressors that keep me awake at night. I want them to know that I am kept awake at night thinking about them, worrying about whether I’m doing a good enough job or not. I want them to know that I want to help them. And sometimes, I don’t come across that way. Sometimes I can come up cross a bit like a jerk or a bit gruff, but I really do have the best interests of the company and them in mind.”
Look, we’re talking about jerk-like bosses here, so you might be rolling your eyes right now and saying, “Well, that’s not the case with my boss!”
But please hear my message. Remember that underneath that lousy behavior is a beating heart. There is a human being there that has a lot of the same frustrations and feelings you do. And so, go into that conversation with that mindset.
Another mindset to adopt is to remind yourself that you might be doing them a favor. You might just be doing them a favor because nobody’s had the guts to tell them this before, and they just didn’t know!
We know this from the research, that maybe they never received proper training into how to do their jobs and they just don’t know any better, and they’ve developed bad habits. Maybe they’ve picked up horribly bad habits! But…they just don’t know any better, and you’re doing them a favor by speaking truth to power. And they may actually respect you even more.
So, adopt that mindset. Again, when I’ve interviewed dozens and dozens, if not hundreds of managers around the world, they tell me that all the time. “I respect employees who tell me the truth and speak up – even if it’s about me!”
Make sure you schedule a conversation with your boss and prepare them for what the conversation is going to be about, so they have time to get used to it emotionally, but before you sit down to have that conversation, don’t view it as a one-time event! View it as the start of a process. View it as the first conversation in a series of conversations, not the one and only conversation.
The reason I say this is because if you view it as just THE conversation, you’re going to potentially lose a lot of sleep over it. You’re going to get so stressed out because it becomes this epic world championship of conversations. And you put so much pressure on yourself and on this one event, because you’re viewing it as a singular event.
So, view it as a process. This is just the start of a process of you approaching and working with your boss to find some constructive solutions to the situation.
Before you talk to your boss as well, check your motives. Make sure you are doing this for the right reasons.
And check your emotions. You do not want to have a conversation with your boss that is emotionally charged. The last thing you want to do is schedule a conversation 10 minutes after your boss drove you nuts by doing something jerk-like in a meeting, and you’re still fuming. Give it some time. Sleep on it. Give it some time to digest; for you to calm down so that you can go in and be as calm and be as present and focused as possible.
And do your homework. Now, I’ve already mentioned this, but do your homework. Come into a conversation prepared, whatever that may look like depending on the issue: Prepared with stats, prepared with research, and especially come prepared with ideas and solutions.
Managers and bosses want ideas. They want suggestions. They want solutions. They don’t want to hear problems. So come armed with solutions, come armed with some ideas or suggestions that you can make with that partnership mindset in place.
Again, frame the conversation in such a way that it’s not just about you. Frame it in such a way that you want to come up with a solution that is in the best interest of your team because this is affecting your team, it’s affecting your company’s performance, perhaps it’s even affecting your customer service. Frame it in such a way that you want to help them succeed.
Send the message that you want to help them do their jobs more effectively. You want them to be able to lead in a more positive, constructive way because that will reflect well on them. So frame it in a way that you are coming at it from the best interest of your company, of the values that your company stands for, of your customer service, that you want to make sure that you are delivering incredible, outstanding customer service, that you care about your company, you care about the brand of your company, the reputation of your company, you care about your cultural values, and the impact this is having on your culture.
Frame it as much as possible away from yourself and in the best interest of your company, your team, and your boss. And if you are offering solutions and coming from a true partnership mindset, then be prepared to take some of the responsibility yourself. Be prepared to own a piece of the problem and to say, “If I’m part of the problem here, let me know what I can do to support you.”
And when you have these challenging conversations, especially with your boss, it’s especially important that you meet in a neutral area. Do not meet in your boss’s office. That’s home-field advantage. Don’t meet on your turf.
You want to meet in a neutral, comfortable, safe place, with no distractions, no computers, no smartphones. Some place where you can have a really focused conversation.
And as you’re talking to your boss, feel free to use notes. Have them written down in bullet point. Have your notes ready and refer to them. There’s nothing wrong with that because you want to be prepared. The last thing you want to do is leave that meeting and realize later that evening that you forgot a really critical point.
So come with notes and come even with a conversation framework. In my book, The Jerk-Free Workplace, I offer all sorts of different frameworks that work effectively to frame difficult conversations.
It doesn’t have to be overly complicated. It could be as simple as saying, “Here’s where I’m coming from. I’d like to hear now where you’re coming from and how you see the issue?”
Or “Is there anything I can do to support you on this issue so we can find a solution together?”
“Is there anything I could start doing or anything I should stop doing that could help make this situation easier for both of us?”
I also want to remind you of that metaphor of ripping off the band aid really quickly, because far too often, we ignore conflict, especially when it’s from our boss. We ignore the jerk-like behavior. We keep kicking it down the road. And so it becomes bigger and bigger in our minds.
So now it’s not just an elephant in the room; it is a herd of elephants stampeding in the room because we’ve blown it into these huge proportions, and it’s become this epic cloud hanging over our heads.
The longer you wait, the more difficult it can be to have that conversation. So be courageous enough to do it when you need to do it.
And know this, I cannot tell you the number of times where employees have said to me that they finally sat down and had a really, really challenging – what they thought was going to be an incredibly uncomfortable conversation – with their boss. And guess what? It wasn’t that uncomfortable! The boss was relieved. They were relieved. They felt so much lighter just having the conversation. They’d blown it up thinking it was going to be this huge deal, and it turned out to be nothing at all.
So don’t put this off.
Be courageous, act now.
And finally, even if the conversation exceeds your wildest expectations, even if the conversation went wildly well to the point that there’s puppies and rainbows and unicorns in the room, schedule a follow-up conversation. Schedule a follow-up conversation to check in with one another just to see how things settle a few days later or a week later, just to see if any other thoughts rose to the surface.
But also check in with that spirit of supporting each other. Schedule an appointment in this meeting to follow up with another conversation. It doesn’t have to be long, it could be 10 minutes just to see how both respective parties are feeling, to see if progress has been made, and if there’s anything that either of you can do to support one another.
So, what about you? How have you dealt with a jerky boss? What tips do you have for people that might have a really jerky boss that they have to live with? I would love to hear your comments in the comment box. Have you ever had success in dealing with a jerky boss that wildly exceeded your expectation? Please leave a comment in the comment box.
Michael Kerr is a Canadian Hall of Fame business speaker, trainer, leadership coach, and the author of 8 books, including “The Jerk-Free Workplace,” “Hire, Inspire, and Fuel Their Fire: How to Recruit, Onboard, and Train New Employees to Live Your Culture Out Loud,” and “The Humor Advantage: Why Some Businesses are Laughing all the Way to the Bank.”
