Matthew Gates http://notetoservices.com 23m 5,763 #handleaboss
The views of this article are the perspective of the author and may not be reflective of Confessions of the Professions.
Boss Management: Finding Happiness In Work
For most people, work is a place that you go everyday and you perform tasks which you call your job. If you are lucky enough to work for yourself, you are your own boss and answer to no one, but yourself and, of course, your customers. If you happen to have a good boss, than you likely have no issues. However, if you do happen to have that boss who takes his or her position to mean godlike status, than it is likely you must endure the behavior of a childlike human being.
For those who take on the challenge, being a boss is a lot of work. Being a boss who respects and appreciates employees is an even harder job, at least, for most. Judging by the lack of happiness in the workplace, I can only assume that most people aren’t happy with their boss. I have received plenty of articles that you can find right here on Confessions of the Professions about no-good bosses and unhappy employees. I could show you tons of survey information and research on just how unhappy most people are with their bosses. Fortunately, something tells me you already believe me because you are reading this, and you already deal with a childlike boss everyday.
Whether they keep yelling at you for no reason or putting you down, challenging you, letting you know they are the authority and you are just a worker, you already know too well the type of boss I am talking about, and if you haven’t worked for one of these types of people, to you, I say, really – bless your heart. For the rest of you, you already know too well that doing your job is easy. Tolerating your boss each and every day, five days a week, almost 52 weeks of the year is like being in middle school all over again.
In the many jobs that I have had, I have had plenty of bosses who earned themselves titles of the alpha male, the queen bitch, the ruthless dictator, the tyranna-saurus (tyrant), or the know-it-all-because-I-built-this-company arrogant asshole. You know these people too? Glad you already know my pain. Lucky for both of us – you and me – hopefully you, we decided to “better ourselves”, and either go back to college, or learn new skills so we could get a new job.
There are, sometimes, good jobs that you end up doing and loving it. Unfortunately, whether it is a co-worker or boss, you always get that one person who makes your life a living hell. They make work just barely tolerable. They exist for the sole purpose of making sure that you never find happiness in the workplace. Other than attempt to ignore those people, you do your best to get through the day at your job, each and every day, appreciating the moments when that person calls out or goes on vacation. One day without them is Heaven on Earth. Complete bliss and pleasantry at work. It is the only time in which you can actually find happiness in the workplace.
Unfortunately, human resources is not an option for you to report the supervisor or boss, because either they are the boss with no human resources department, or they are too senior to your position, and you lack a voice. Most of us lack a voice in the workplace, and out of fear of losing our jobs, we remain silent in the face of workplace bullying.
Taming The Boss: Handling The Situation
In this case, we will just assume we are dealing with a boss because most co-workers we can handle or just ignore. It is the boss or supervisor that gets harder to tame. Whether a mistake was made or not, you tend to be the one who is in trouble and no matter what you say, it is an excuse and your boss expects you to take ownership and responsibility of your “mistake”, despite being someone elses’ mistake. You know full well it was another co-worker and you even have the log records to prove it, but nonetheless, you are in trouble, yet again.
Life is hell. Work is hell. There is no way out of it and your boss has called you in for a meeting. He has a talk with you claiming that you should be more responsible, accept responsibility for your actions, and of course, watch as the boss makes a note of it in your record, as if you are in high school all over again. You listen to your boss speak for several minutes, knowing that you should say something in your own defense, but you cannot say anything, because you know that the minute you open your mouth, an argument will persist and you really just don’t have the time or the patience.
The fact is, you have all the time in the world, or at least, for the next few hours until you have to leave. Why not be reprimanded on company time? At least someone’s paying you for you to get yelled at. Hopefully its good money. All the time spent in the office with your boss is more time you aren’t doing any work for your boss.
Kind of a win situation, isn’t it? Even your mother didn’t treat you that good! She never offered to pay you for all the trouble you got into and all the times she yelled at you. She did that all for free. Why not listen to what this boss has to say?
Arguing with the boss, who rarely uses logic to solve problems, is not worth the argument. I would prefer to get into an argument with my philosophy professor. When emotions are involved, the boss will always win. If you have a boss that does not do research on a particular issue and emotion and feelings are involved, there is absolutely no point to ever arguing.
It is a complete waste of time that will only escalate your boss to throw more emotion and feeling into the argument. And if you are a man, you already have one boss that often uses emotion and feeling over logic at home. You certainly know exactly how to handle that situation at home, so you must apply the same rules at work.
While many people just sit there and listen and take it all in as the boss accuses you, singles you out and targets you on a daily basis, or puts you down, there are certainly ways to defer the situation and make it less painful. After all, if you can establish the missing link from the person who thinks they own you, than you might just have a chance at happiness in the workplace.
Mindfulness: Restoring The Missing Link
If you want to restore the missing link that your boss somehow lost in perspective of hiring you as an employee, you must establish the concept of respect. Respect is the only way you will ever be able to communicate with your boss. You do not have to have respect for your boss all of the time, but in re-establishing the missing link, you must respect your boss. In return, you must also command respect of your boss. This is not an easy thing to do and your childlike boss may not even know what respect is or how to have it towards employees.
Most people lack respect for themselves and therefore allow themselves to be disrespected by others. This is common in personal and professional lives and is usually seen in most grade schools, and follows right into the workplace. Before you educate your boss on respect, you must learn how to respect yourself.
Know that you are a good employee who shows up on time, goes the extra mile, and bends over backwards for your boss. If your boss cannot appreciate this, no matter how much you love your job, the company does not deserve you. However, this does not mean you should quit your job, especially if you love it. Instead, you need to establish the confidence in yourself to know you do your job well.
It is not always easy, as months or years of being broken down psychologically by your boss has done some damage. Sure, you might not think that there was any psychological damage, but if we look at school-aged children who were bullied. They are affected greatly and remember years of torture by other kids. When it comes to your boss, the same thing happened, and while you ignored it and put on your adult face, you certainly have some damage within that you need to undo.
There is a point at which you will snap, as seen in the video above, from the movie Wanted in an excellent performance by James McAvoy. Of course, if I looked in my bank account and saw that I had over $3,000,000 one morning, I would probably tell my boss to go fuck off too if they happened to provoke me that day. You would too, wouldn’t you? Be honest.
Having more money in your bank account would certainly give you the confidence to do a whole lot more than you do when your boss comes over to you now. Sure, I remain quiet too, because I am a firm believer in karma and eventually, everyone gets what is coming to them. Karma might take its sweet ass time, but it eventually gets there. In the mean time, don’t have an outburst like James McAvoy.
Once you acknowledge and understand that you are psychologically being broken each day that you do nothing about your situation, you will be ready to talk to your boss, and during that talk, you will remain having the utmost confidence and respect for yourself and your boss. Where and when in the world was it ever okay for a human being to disrespect you?
You certainly need the job and you need money, but it does not give the boss any right to put you down. Sure, you might make mistakes and you should be reprimanded for your actions. This is a completely understandable and justifiable action, especially if you are guilty of messing up a task that is a part of your job. To this, I tell you: Accept full responsibility and take complete ownership of your actions if you are truly at fault.
Lack of Good Leadership Knowledge In The Workplace
In almost every job I have held, I have always noticed the same thing about owners, bosses, supervisors, or managers. They are barely leadership material and they lack the skills to actually run a company while dealing with a staff of workers. They are often bully material that can get things done with an arrogant personality and have the ability to disdain all their inferiors or the employees who work under them.
They tend to lack respect for everyone that is not on their level. They do not sympathize or empathize with anyone and it is hard for them to understand the common situations employees find themselves in, which happen in everyday life. Of course, they will follow procedure and do what they must, giving the employee a day off for the funeral, or understanding sickness, but for the most part, they just see worker bees.
When the team succeeds, everyone is responsible and gets credit for the success. However, when something goes wrong, one person may be likely to get blamed for the actions of everyone, or fingers get pointed without proper research being done and an appropriate course of action. The boss may treat employees as children or even have tantrums in front of everyone when things do not go as expected. Would you have a tantrum in front of your boss and how might they react to it? Probably not because you are an adult functioning in the real world.
Unfortunately, there are some who simply have meltdowns and try to cope with it by belittling employees to feel better about themselves, bullying or assigning excess tasks because they do not want to do the work. The list of things that an immature boss can do is endless and I could not possibly name all of them, but you probably already know how your boss is. Everyone knows. That experience alone is almost traumatizing. Am I at home with my child? Nope! I’m at work with my boss!
Employees with a bully boss spend more time worrying about getting yelled at, the kind of mood the boss is in, how they are going to react to a mistake we made, what they are going to say in order to defend themselves in order to prevent getting fired. Meanwhile, workplaces that have no fear of their boss are likely to be much more productive as employees can focus on their actual tasks and the job. Most companies looking to save money and downsize often go after the employees, rather than management, but it is often the type of management that causes the workforce the company’s lost productivity.
I would love to think that leadership comes as a skill that we all learn and all bosses are born with it or learned it in their life. They got the job of being the boss, after all, didn’t they? The unfortunate truth is, they either worked hard at it and now own their own company, but forgot to acquire people skills along the way, got lucky and acquired the position, knew someone and transferred to the position, or got promoted into the position. No matter how they got there, sometimes they lack the necessary skills for the position, which many employees can immediately detect.
I may have been privileged to learn about leadership, specifically emotional intelligence in college, when I volunteered for an opportunity to join a Leadership program, where I spent one week for three years being trained to understand the importance of EI. It changed my life for the better. The one thing I recommend to every company looking to improve their well-being: a seminar on leadership training that emphasizes emotional intelligence. If every company or every boss had any idea about emotional intelligence, the workplace would be a much happier and more efficient place to work. EI would lead to absolute productivity.
To give you a brief idea of what EI is, it embodies:
- Self-awareness
- Self-regulation
- Motivation
- Empathy
- Social Skills
Most workplaces around the world lack the understanding of EI and have yet to incorporate it, and even more of their employees have no idea what it is. This lack of EI in the workplace allows for other types of less formal and unpopular methods of authority and leadership. If a company is suffering in productivity or employee well-being and overall satisfaction, the problem might lie with the people who are managing the employees. The instant thought is that the supervisor needs to be harsher on the employee, but this method is temporary and only makes the employee hate their job even more.
Establishing EI values in the workplace for supervisors and worker bees to follow will drive everyone towards a common goal together, rather than relying on a supervisor to use the bully method, otherwise known as the master-slave method, in which the master gets out the invisible whip and beats the employees into submission until they are productive.
While there are certainly employees who show up to work and are not actively engaged, there are plenty more who do not show up to do nothing, and really want to see their company succeed. The master-slave style of leadership is largely unsuccessful, especially with the increasing number of millennials in the workplace, who follow a very different set of standards.
Dealing With Your Boss: The Non-Confrontational Route
I have held several jobs where I was the lowly paid minimum wage worker, showing up to work, making a paycheck to save money for the things I wanted or needed. I showed up to work, did my job, and did it to the best of my ability. I went into work generally looking forward to my job, looking to work and earn my paycheck. I never did love any of those jobs, but they were sufficient enough to do something with my life and make money doing it. It always seemed that no matter what job I held, however, that I would always encounter a supervisor or manager who was far from possessing any real leadership skills.
Believe it or not, I have all the jobs I worked at listed since I was 18 years old on my LinkedIn profile, and counting the number of jobs, not including my work as a freelance web designer in which I have clients who give me jobs, I have held about 10 jobs. Each job was always had someone or something wrong with it that always made me want to better myself. While some of them were tolerable, others made me miserable, but none of them ever possessed a boss who was good leadership material.
To keep this brief, in explaining the non-confrontational route, otherwise known as the karma method, the employee quietly waits, tolerates the pain and agony they are put through, until the supervisor gets so arrogant that it gets noticed by higher authority. The employee does not speak up and does what they are told, even if they know they are right, but are told they are wrong. They simply sit and wait, until something happens. Unfortunately, karma does take its sweet ass time, but eventually it comes around.
In two instances at the same job, when I worked at a hospital as a security officer, I dealt with a lack of good leadership. I had one supervisor who would always pick on me. He would be harsh to me, force me to do tasks that other security officers should have been responsible for, but instead, he assigned the duties to me. He would sit and give me talks at my station on how he got to his position and how I would never obtain such a position. One day, he and I were called to deal with a hostile patient who was HIV-positive. He refused to call for extra backup, despite my insistence, believing he and I could handle it on our own, despite the risks.
A hospital administrator came into the room and realized how much we were struggling, and although we had subdued the patient, the administrator felt we did not handle the situation to the best of our ability. My supervisor ended up saying some words he should not have said to her, which would eventually get him demoted, unable to ever be promoted again. He was directly responsible for the actions that happened in that room, regardless of my own actions to protect myself. I was only following orders, therefore, I was not directly responsible.
In the second instance, I had another supervisor who took the place of the former supervisor (who eventually quit because he was ashamed), who feared that I was out to get his job. Fortunately for him, he only made a dollar more than me and was responsible for too much work. I had no desire for his job.
Some of his actions were very similar to the last supervisor, and I again, had to deal with certain situations that he would put me in, despite requests otherwise. Fortunately for me, our boss liked me a lot and everything I was in trouble for would always be written off as someone who let power and authority get to their mind, and the write-up was a waste of time in paper work. He too, would eventually cause more trouble in the hospital and was demoted. At this time, I was already leaving for college, to better my life.
The bittersweet symphony is that in the end, after several years of going to college and experiencing other areas of life, I am at a much better place in my career and life, and making far better pay than if I were to have remained at that job and somehow managed to acquire their position as supervisor.
The karma method is extremely non-confrontational. It is the safer method, and requires very little risk, but it requires extreme patience and tolerance that can often lead to stress and the desire to punch your boss in the face say things that you will never be able to take back. You must refrain from doing that, as this method requires non-confrontation.
The issue with this method is that it could take years of dealing with a boss who shows disrespect towards you. Sometimes, if they are good at what they do, and they know whose good side to get on, than karma may never kick in at all, and you may have to make the ultimate choice and sacrifice of leaving your job.
Most people who choose this route do not think it is worth the risk of losing their jobs or the risk of becoming under possible greater scrutiny. They may not fear losing their job, but they prefer to just keep things the way they are, as things may be considered normal as they are, and its just not worth having to find another job or start all over again in a new workplace setting. While it may appear that non-confrontational people are mostly the quiet types, there are some people who simply do not want to have to deal with the drama of confrontation.
Why I prefer this method is the fact that I do not get paid enough to argue. I get paid enough to care about my job and even when something goes wrong, I am being paid to ensure that it is fixed immediately. Listening to a boss reprimand me and yell at me repeatedly is not solving the problem. A boss may also think that you need to be reprimanded or yelled at in order to not perform the mistake in the future.
As an adult, I tend to make a mistake at work once. After that, I learn to correct it and never do it again. For sure, if the same mistakes keeps getting repeated, than something should be done to stop it, but in most cases, the employee needs to acknowledge the mistake happened, the boss needs to ensure the employee acknowledged it, and everyone should move on with their lives.
If the boss prefer to still get arrogant and wishes to argue, it is best to simply agree and avoid confrontation, as arguing with someone who is not reasoning with logic and only using emotions and feelings will never lead to the end of a good argument.
Objectively, it is just two people who don’t want to admit either is wrong arguing and wasting time. The ultimate solution is to just let them win and feel good about themselves that day. You have your own ways of feeling good that do not require winning arguments or belittling or disrespecting others.
Things that I directly am responsible for and made an honest mistake, I do my best to fix the mistake and move on with my life. I am far too busy to keep focusing on the fact that I made a mistake and I have to drown in my own sorrow for making the mistake.
The best thing for everyone to do is acknowledge it, put preventative measures in place so it does not happen again, and move on. To keep bringing it up is a waste of time. If it were to continually happen, than a meeting to establish the common mistakes should be held.
When my own boss yells at me or blames me, I do my best to charge him overtime for doing it. I am there to do my job, but the times I am being reprimanded or picked on for things I know I am not responsible for is taking precious time away from my job.
If you have that opportunity, however, to charge overtime, I suggest you do it and let them yell at you for as long as they want, because after all, if you are like me, you are getting paid by the hour. Keep talking, boss, keep talking, for as long as you want on company overtime.
If you believe in karma, hate confrontation, have others goals for yourself, and need the job, than this is the best method to use to deal with your boss. Keep putting on your friendly face and respect your boss as your boss. You do not have to respect your boss as a person or human being, but at least give them the courtesy considering they are your boss and in a way, control the money flow to your bank account.
Eventually, everyone ultimately experiences their much needed karma. Aside from the patient waiting, there is only one other downside and that could be that because you refuse to directly take on confrontation, you may not earn the respect that you deserve. The choice is yours on choosing the non-confrontational route.
Never fail to see opportunities in the karma method. Switching to another department, taking a pay raise, getting promoted, learning another skill, making money as a freelancer; there are thousands of opportunities you have not realized yet. Whatever you do, hold your tongue, and oblige to the requests of your boss.
Dealing With Your Boss: The Confrontational Route
The confrontational route is having the human skill of wittiness and intellect. It is a method that gets things done and it is often done by people with nothing to fear and nothing to lose mentality. These people are actually more likely to succeed and possibly assume the position of their superiors.
They believe that respect and not having to deal with the misery of the boss is well worth every risk, even the risk lot losing their job. They already know what good leadership is and accept nothing less. They certainly care about image of themselves and how others treat them, but more importantly, they command respect, and refuse to remain working at a place where they are treated with disrespect.
Many people choose to avoid this method because they hate confrontation. It requires being able to think on your feet, come up with comebacks, have answers, or simply be able to have a good argument with logic. This route also allows you to command respect immediately, especially by making it known how you feel when it comes to your mistakes and how the boss treats you. By addressing issues early, you may establish respect from your boss which might make future confrontation much more easier when you make an occasional mistake that needs addressing.
If you are planning the confrontational route and have yet to do so, you need to establish a certain respect with your boss. Having a talk with your boss should probably be done in private, in their office. It is also the time to put on your serious face and your serious demands for being treated as an employee who is not there to deal with the so-called bullshit. While the non-confrontational can also establish this, it is harder to do so, as feelings are not known by the boss. If you can avoid tears, you should do so.
Most people who do not mind confrontation believe it is just a job and if the boss fires you, they were probably doing you a favor. To them, jobs are a dime a dozen, and its just finding the right one that accommodates basic needs for respect. If their demands are not met, than to them, the job was worth not having in the first place, because happiness is found in meeting eye to eye on employee demands, especially if they are relatively simple demands.
For those looking to pursue the confrontational route, it is all about communication. You must tell the boss how you feel, whether you feel singled out, picked on, or called out on everything you do. If you made an honest and the boss handled it in a disrespectful way that made you feel belittled, than you should let the boss know that you believe they could have handled the situation much better than they did.
If the boss fails to meet your demands that you had made known, it is likely the boss will never change, and you already know this is not going to be your job for a long time. If the boss understands and respects you, they will try and work with you, maybe not to the point where things are perfect, but they will try to see eye-to-eye with you on future situations.
Finding Happiness In the Worplace
Regardless of the method you choose, confrontational or non-confrontational, it is all in how comfortable you are when you show up to work. Happiness begins with the respect of yourself and commanding that respect from everyone else. When you can establish this respect of you as a human being, as an employee the company, perspective changes for the better.
How you establish this respect is completely up to you. Most people simply put on their serious faces and do not allow the disrespect to get out of hand, but in some cases, bosses may simply assume they can disrespect you because you are inferior to them and they are in the position to do so.
While it should be the job of all companies to ensure that the entire hierarchy of workers is respecting each other, if you have worked in any job ever, you will find this is not always the case, and therefore you must take on the task of ensuring that everyone, from the CEO to your co-workers to even the people who come in and clean the office have respect for you. In return, you must also have the same respect for them as they have for you.
Most people have no choice but to show up in order to make a paycheck in order to pay their bills. There are, however, plenty of people who do have the luxury of choosing a job in which they can be happy. After all, we are all at our places of work for well over 40 hours a week. While the job would never consider that unpaid hour break “their time”, it is when you have to return back to work after an hour.
Consider these facts:
- There are 168 hours in the week
- Average of about 49 – 56 hours of sleep per week
- Average of about 40 – 45 hours in the workplace
- Average of 67 – 79 hours to do your own thing
Looking at those numbers, almost half of the hours in your week is dedicated to showing up at work. In those hours, you should be able to get treated like a human being and not made to feel like a slave or worker bee, because you are truly helping your company, just as they are helping you. You help to keep the business running, which helps them make money, and in return, they pay you for it. Everyone has a mutual relationship in the workplace. When you get disrespected even just once during these hours, the trust and comfortability in the workplace drops to an enormous level.
Take a married couple who is thinking about divorce at home. Whether the couple just did not get along or one person did something unforgiving to the other person in the household, whatever the case may be, what was once a comfortable household is now full of tension. It will be full of tension and stress until the couple is separated or divorced. This is the same concept for going into work: it becomes a place full of tension and stress. It is even worse for those people who are having stress at work and then head home to deal with the same thing there.
Everyone deserves to be treated like a human being in the workplace. Life is a complete struggle for all of us, as the entire system was designed to be somewhat accommodating, but with payments on a mortgage, taxes, and bills, the workplace has, unfortunately, become something we do, not something we enjoy doing.
If you do enjoy what you do, but the people you work with or the boss you work for makes it miserable, than the job is dwindled right back down to something you are doing because you are good at it, but you do not enjoy being there. When this happens, the workplace lacks productivity, as you are likely not giving your full 100% attention to it because of the stress and tension it causes you.
The best thing you can do is to try and establish respect early, and even if you haven’t established it early, to at least establish it now. Your life was not meant to be miserable and you certainly want to show up and do your job and do what you are good at, so it is best to make it known to your boss that you are there as part of the team to make the company successful.
If your boss understands this and knows good leadership, they will find more positive methods to reprimand their employees. As far as the old methods go, they do not work, and they end up just distracting everyone, making everyone feel uncomfortable and miserable.
If you really do have issues and you cannot get the boss to become more respectful to you, there are just two things left to do: go to Human Resources and complain or leave the job so you do not have to deal with a disrespectful boss. We all have a chance at happiness in the workplace, but unfortunately, there is always that one person who stands in the way of “having a good day at work.”
Rather than make that person your enemy and resent them everyday, which is only causing you an insane and unnecessary amount of stress, try to get them to respect you, and you will ultimately find some happiness in the workplace. Let them know that you are there to do your job, do it right, and do it well. You deserve to be happy at your place of work just like everyone else, so make it happen.
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