“All men should strive to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why.” -James Thurber, writer and cartoonist (1894-1961)
In my coaching practice I frequently get requests to help my clients when they decide to change their current situation and look for something that will make their life better. Typical use cases are bad boss (60%), job getting worse (10%), toxic environment (10%), and everything else (long commute, no promotion, and many other such complaints). To all these “reasons” my first question to my client is always the same: what are you running away from and what do you expect to find different in your next job?
In many situations the most pressing problem you encounter seems to loom larger than anything else that can also vitiate your quality of work-life. What I mean by this is that if their most pressing problem were somehow taken away from the mix of complaints they usually make, the next one will take over, and the cycle will repeat itself.
For example, if you were to suddenly parachute an ideal boss in their department for them, soon they will get used to the “better” boss and dig into the next item that rankles them. This is an endless cycle of items that make your job a source of some rub. So, the bottom line is what do you want to change and how much risk are you willing to take with your next move?!
When you are dealing with humans these problems are not going to away, no matter where you land. It is a question of your own tolerance, resilience, and most importantly, your ability to change your own approach to such adversities and developing strategies to not only mitigate their impact on your ongoing welfare and success, but also to use them to develop your immunity to such offensive human traits.
So, what must be your strategy?!
It is simply that you must learn to assess and calibrate for yourself your ability to deal with the most toxic element in your work environment and that you must develop coping strategies to mitigate their impact on your ongoing success. Here are some commonly used approaches to make a change in how you manage such offenses:
- Identify what aspect of a particular relationship or environment that is affecting your performance and well-being. Let us take an example of your manager who is micromanaging every aspect of your work and taking most of your time just getting and communicating the updates and status. Next, he tells you what you must do next, taking away any initiative or idea you may have to deal with the problem you are addressing. This is causing you grief and much stress. Totally understandable.
Here, your solution is not to walk away from this dysfunctional boss to find yet another random manager somewhere else, who could be even more dysfunctional in a different way, but to develop strategies to make your current boss’ approach to management more palatable. Always remember: the devil you know is better than the one you don’t and that surveys over decades have demonstrated that ~80% of the managers demonstrate some dysfunction in their leadership!
How do you make your current boss more palatable?
- First identify what aspect of your interactions with your boss result in this behavior that offends you. Say, each time a new task is given the boss insists on detailed progress report at each step of your progress. Of course, pulling together all the data and packaging that for presenting to your boss takes time, without adding any value to the process. The boss also has some annoying habits of berating you in front of your team members, challenging your leadership in department meetings, and withholding key information to stay in control. These are just some major dysfunctions that you find toxic in your interactions with your boss.
- So, instead of listing all the traits that annoy you in your interactions with your boss make the Top-three list of adjacent behaviors that could radically change how you are managed and treated. So, pick constant progress reporting, berating in front of your team members, and withholding key information as the topics for your first round of “straight talk” with you boss.
- Next, set up a special meeting outside of your weekly scheduled ones for status reporting. Give this meeting a suitable title after talking with your boss that you must meet with them to discuss an item that falls outside of your weekly reporting meetings. This puts your boss on notice to let you run the meeting and not them.
- If possible, try to make this meeting face-to-face, which may take some doing. Otherwise, pick some ways to conduct a video session, not just a phone session. The reason for this is that you want to observe how your boss is responding to your presentation with their body language and other cues (tone, pitch). Give recent examples of their misbehavior with specifics. Be assertive and confident in stating your case by showing your boss that you can be more productive and make them shine in front of their higher-ups if they understand how much you can work better under a modified regime. Then walk them through how they are treating you and how that makes you feel, again with recent specifics.
- This conversation is not going to be easy, but once you get your script together, practice it, and deliver it calmly and confidently you’d be surprised how effective it can be.
- Once you reach the end of your script ask your boss to summarize which of the changes you proposed are going to be implemented, how, and when. Shake hands with your boss, walk away with a smile, and send an email, first thanking them and then summarizing the meeting with the change plan for your record. Even if your boss does not respond to it, you have made your point and you have a record of your action if needed for later escalation.
In this discussion I have used just one most encountered use case that forces people to run away from their current job to find another. Other use cases are too numerous to cite here and their treatment to put you in charge of your own destiny to give you some sense of fulfillment in your job. Mastering this technique will free you from having to constantly chance new job for any dysfunction you encounter to make your work place a happy one!
Good luck!
