My Boss is Covertly Aggressive A covertly aggressive supervisor may be the toughest boss to deal with. He may present as a great person—easy-going, a people-pleaser, even. Except that you’re never quite sure where you stand with him. It’s rather like trying to catch a cloud. Once you think you have your arms around it, it kind of disappears. What is covertly aggressive? A covertly aggressive boss is likely to: Be unclear on what h...
My Boss is Underperforming An underperforming boss can hurt your career. There are some things only your boss can do. She is the link between you and the rest of the company. She can damage your area’s reputation by making unwise decisions which in turn leads to less money and fewer staff (i.e. your job!) What is underperforming? An underperforming boss: Takes a long time to make decisions Changes her mind often Can’t follow technic...
My Boss is Contemptuous In the last post, I outlined ways bosses can be jerks. This post will focus on those who are contemptuous. What it is This boss doesn’t get that treating his employees as human beings is not just good business (as it is) but a requirement of humanness. Instead he: Is always late for meetings Doesn’t read the work you did for the meeting Sends e-mails and texts all hours of night (and expects a prompt response...
My Boss is Impossible to Work for If the world were fair, you’d never have an impossible boss. They would all be evenhanded, encourage their staff to their full potential, and not be working out personal issues on the job. Right. Every once in a while, you get a great one. If you do, they are gold. Hang in there as long as you can and don’t take your luck for granted. Not all are impossible bosses But for the rest of us, perfect bos...
Walking Away from a Bad Job In previous posts, I have been talking about challenging a bad job’s ability to sap your confidence by taking a look at the assumptions you’ve made about why you stay. In this post, I want to talk about how to start the process of walking away and getting into job search for a better job. The job search tactics which usually apply, apply in this case also. Dawn Rosenberg Kay has an excellent article on ho...