Dealing with a Difficult Boss
How to Handle Working with a Boss Who Isn't Nice
While it would be nice if all bosses were great at their job and great with employees, the reality is that not every boss is a people person. How can employees work with managers who aren't nice without losing their sanity? It can be hard to deal with a toxic boss and sometimes the only answer is to seek employment elsewhere. However, before giving up on an otherwise great job, try one of these solutions for dealing with a difficult boss.
Work From Home
While it isn't easy to convince an employer that working from home is a great solution, people who have managed to do so, even on a partial basis, have found that they were able to be extremely productive without the additional stress of dealing with their toxic bosses. To prepare for a meeting to discuss commuting options, the employee should:
- Create a list of benefits to the employer, such as being able to start work on a project that needs to be completed before noon earlier in the day because commute time is not an issue.
- Point out that new technology makes it easy to hold virtual meetings if something important needs to be discussed.
- Stress that he or she is accessible throughout the entire work day through email, cellphone and web cam.
Be Nice
A boss who is unpleasant or rude may have personal problems that are seeping into work relationships. A person who is going through a divorce while trying to care for a very sick parent is stressed, tired and struggling with some very tough emotions. It is easy for someone in a supervisory position to forget good manners and take out all of that frustration on people he or she oversees without even realizing it.
Think about giving that difficult boss the benefit of the doubt for a few weeks to see if he or she becomes more pleasant as personal issues become less stressful. In the meantime, try these tricks for disarming a sour supervisor:
- Compliment a great business decision he or she has made, from implementing a time saving technique to landing a big contract.
- Thank him or her for feedback, even if it wasn't nicely given. Find the nugget of truth in a negative tirade and specify that this particular point was very helpful.
- Avoid being artificially complimentary. A coffee mug that says "World's Greatest Boss" is probably going to annoy a supervisor, since he or she will see the gift as a case of obvious brown nosing.
