Introduction
Why You Should Read This Book
Let’s get straight to the point: the world is full of bad bosses. Team leaders, group leaders, departmental managers, unit managers, deputy managing directors, managing directors, and the bosses of managing directors. Sometimes the boss is a chairman of the board in a Fortune 500 company, and sometimes the same chairman is at the head of a local sports team. At every level, in all types of organizations, there are bosses who have ended up in the wrong place and cause problems for themselves, who cause problems for their staff, who are incompetent, and who are naïve. There are bosses who are far too nice, and there are ones that are just plain mean. Some can’t manage to learn the names of their staff, and some just sneak away from their own responsibility. Some of them are so incompetent that the company would have been better off without them.
These are the superfluous bosses. The ones that aren’t really needed and that the rest of us would manage better without. Who don’t contribute anything at all, except for headaches and stress.
It used to be that the boss’s responsibilities were simple: to lead and say who should do what. If you managed that, then you were doing your job. A good friend of mine often quotes his own father when it comes to leadership: Never become the boss, because you’ll end up doing everything yourself.
Why is it so hard to define a boss’s role? Is it really that difficult? Perhaps it’s the simplest thing in the world? If you just sit down and give it a shot.
And the bosses who function brilliantly in their roles—what do they understand that others don’t? Is there actually a secret?
This book is divided into two parts. The first, Surrounded by Bad Bosses, describes how hard it is to do your job when you have a bad boss. Here we will look at examples of poor leadership and what you, as an employee, can actually do about it.
This section isn’t designed for the reader who is already a competent boss and actually knows what they’re doing. But if you are a boss and you think there’s still a lot you can learn about how to best manage your employees, you might find this section valuable. The second part of the book is Surrounded by Lazy Employees. Because there are some workers who aren’t exactly in the running for employee of the month. Everybody has different strengths and weaknesses. Read on to find out how you can you help your staff discover their potential and find their genuine driving forces.
But for those of you who really wonder why on earth your boss behaves like that—just keep on reading. You’ll learn the reasons why some bosses function well—and others don’t function at all.
Surrounded By Idiots?
A few years ago, I wrote a book called Surrounded by Idiots. It’s about differences in communication styles, and why certain people can be so difficult to understand. I introduced William Moulton Marston’s DISC system which, over time and with further development by others, evolved into a simple model based on four colors: Red, Yellow, Green, and Blue. The point was to show how you can better understand people who don’t function or communicate like you do. Of course, the model doesn’t answer all the questions when it comes to how we function day to day, but it does give us a good starting point for discussions and ways to institute change. A person is rarely just one color, but most often has elements of two or even three.
Here are a few things to know about the DISC model:
• The DISC model cannot explain everything about an individual’s behavior.
• There are other models that seek to explain behavior, but I use this one as a starting point because it is pedagogically simple to grasp.
• There are more pieces of the puzzle than “the colors” to map various behavior patterns.
• The DISC model builds upon thorough psychological studies, is used throughout the world, and has been translated into fifty different languages.
• Historically, there have been similar models in different cultures, such as the system of the four humors created by Hippocrates, who lived in ancient times, around 2,500 years ago.
• Approximately 80 percent of all people have a combination of two colors that dominate their behavior. Around 5 percent have only one color that dominates behavior. The rest are dominated by three colors.
• Entirely Green behavior, or Green in combination with another color, is the most common. The least common is entirely Red behavior, or Red in combination with one other color.
• There can be differences in behavior between the sexes, but I do not deal with the gender perspective in this book.
• The DISC model cannot be used to analyze ADHD, Austism spectrum disorder, borderline personality disorder, or other diagnoses.
• There are always exceptions to what I outline in this book. People are complex—even Red people can be humble and Yellow people can listen attentively. There are Green people who can handle conflict because they have learned how to do it, and many Blues understand when it’s time to stop double checking that the documents are correct.
• Everything that I talk about is connected to personal insight and awareness. Problems arise when personal insight is limited.
• My own colors are Red and Blue with a bit of Yellow. No Green to mention. Sorry.
In Surrounded by Idiots, I didn’t focus on the different roles we have in the workplace. And I’ve received many questions about whether it’s possible to take the whole thing one step further. And of course, it is.
If we take an experienced individual who is very results-oriented and make them solve a problem alongside a person who values security and calmness above all else, problems are going to arise if they don’t both learn to meet each other somewhere in between. But if we layer in the complication that the first person is the boss of the second, then a new problem appears, right? Or what if the second person happens to be the boss of the first? That would really make the situation fascinating. When we bring leadership into the equation, the idiot epithet is not far away.
I do realize that you would never call your boss an idiot—at least not to their face—but you are aware of the fact that there are workplaces with problems directly related to incompetent bosses. We need to understand our different personal qualities while also finding a way to take into account the fact that, in work scenarios, one of us has power over the other.
If you have a friend who is a bastard, you can always just walk away. If your boss makes unreasonable demands on you, it immediately becomes more complicated, and the value of having a working dialogue to help those situations is so much greater. That’s what I’ll be giving you in this book.
But if You Put Your “Boss Hat” on, It Must Mean Something, Right?
And yet … my personal belief is that bosses are held to a higher level of responsibility. They should deal with the issue and find solutions. But naturally, the boss can be stressed for one reason or another. The boss might be in a sticky situation with their own boss, but they are still responsible for their staff. You can’t hide behind your own stress or blame the fact that there wasn’t enough time. As the boss, you have a responsibility to your staff, to watch out for them and at least try to give them what they need—preferably before they ask for it themselves.
Nor do I think that a boss should be able to blame ignorance of the parameters of their job or of what it means to be boss. Anybody can work out that it entails more than just sitting at your desk.
During my twenty years as a consultant focusing on leadership issues, I have, of course, met many bosses who are skilled in the art of leadership. Some have a natural inclination for it, others have learned it the hard way. Their staff admire and love them and would put up with quite a lot for their sake. These are the stars that others want to follow.
But I have also met an endless number of bosses who have been practically useless. Some of them haven’t grasped what the job requires. Some of them would like to learn, while others aren’t even interested in that. Which—in my opinion—makes them even less suitable. Some of them are just superfluous. They’re in the way. The organization doesn’t really need them.
The reasons that many bosses are ineffective, do, of course, vary, but there are nevertheless certain patterns. And it’s a good idea to learn to recognize these patterns.
To Have Responsibility but No Authority
I’ve been there myself as an employee—situations where I’ve had lots of responsibility but no authority. The expectations from management have been more or less impossible to fulfill. I’ve received criticism and grumbling when something has gone wrong, but never praise when something has gone particularly well. I’m not one of those people who demand compliments and movie tickets just because I’ve done my job. But if I’ve done something above and beyond, then it’s nice if somebody (read: the boss) notices it. Often all it takes is an appreciative thumbs-up in passing.
Sometimes, the demands have been absurd. More or less unsolvable tasks have been placed on my shoulders. But the expectation that I fix the situation remains. Sometimes I’ve succeeded, and other times I’ve ended up in the ditch.
You know what it’s like. You can’t succeed in everything. Sometimes it ends up one hell of a mess.
It is frustrating to only be at the receiving end of a problem, without being able to make decisions and influence how the job should be done in the first place. And it’s even more frustrating when nobody listens to your proposals and ideas. Sometimes my boss has listened politely, nodded, and said I hear what you’re saying. This is often followed by a but … You know what that means, right? What they actually mean is: I hear that you are saying words but I couldn’t care less about your idea. Your boss has already decided. So why did they even ask you?
Or your boss does actually listen, and says: do what you want, but it’ll be your responsibility if it all goes wrong.
Well, thanks a lot for that vote of confidence.
I’ve never been able to keep quiet. As a young man I thought authority figures were a pain. This sometimes led me down troublesome paths. Now and then, even in later life, I’ve questioned certain structures and routines. Systems are often totally illogical; one might hear that’s simply how it is. Or that’s how we do things here. My favorite is we’ve always done it like that, as if that was a genuine argument.
I know what it means not to be able to influence your situation as an ordinary employee.
Obviously, there are exceptions. I’ve also had bosses who have been good listeners and been open to the thoughts and ideas of members of their staff. Some of them have even had the decency to admit whose idea it was in the first place.
I, probably just like you, have often wondered how my boss thinks and functions. Because I really don’t know what they’re doing. So why not take a look at some of the reasons behind their behavior?
Let’s dive into the strange world of being a boss.
Ready to jump into the deep end? OK, let’s go.
Copyright © 2021 by Thomas Erikson