Rules for Success Your Bad Boss Won’t Give You

Your Bad Boss isn’t going to provide you with realistic rules or guidelines for success. Your Bad Boss is more likely to provide you with chaos, impossible rules, or a vast wasteland of no guidelines whatsoever.

Yet if you’re to succeed, you need some way to chart your course, to get yourself on a good path regardless of your Bad Boss’s mismanagement.

Deborah L. Parker talks about her uncle, Harris L. Parker--a man of many accomplishments--who served in the army, was a Vietnam Veteran, Airborne Ranger and served in the community as a Chief Magistrate and Honorable Chair of the Sussex County Virginia Board of Supervisors. “He had rules he lived by that were constant in each environment. His voice and value commanded attention,” she says, and I would suggest are also rules that helped him achieve much in his lifetime.

Parts of the “creed” Parker says her uncle lived by are terrific guidelines for success in the workplace. 

         - Always be organized and have a plan.

         - Be firm in your character.

         - Check in with … people and see how they’re thinking.

         - Take the time to do things right.

Four simple statements--yet when lived by, are an excellent roadmap for your success.

Overcome Your Bad Boss-Induced “Who Cares?” Syndrome with Good Work Habits

Good work habits are what help us overcome the inevitable “who cares?” inertia that can develop from being under the thumb of a Bad Boss.

Good work habits are the ways you help yourself achieve your job goals when your boss won’t-can’t-wouldn’t ever support them, much less nurture and guide you towards them.

Sonia Simone, co-founder and CMO of Copyblogger Media, suggests a simple productivity structure that makes it easy to develop good habits:

“There are really just two elements to any successful productivity system. One, figure out what you need to do next on any given project. Don’t put ‘Launch my e-book’ on your to-do list; put ‘Write outline’ or ‘Research my primary topic’ or ‘Talk with Blogger X about a guest post to promote.’…

“String those actions together and you come up with finished projects. . .

“Which leads us to the second key element: Two, block out chunks of uninterruptible time to focus on your most important project. Once you’ve identified the next action to take, you need to block out time on your calendar and make an unbreakable commitment to doing it. . . Consistency and focus are much more important than the raw number of hours you spend.”

Track Your Progress to Keep Yourself Motivated Despite Your Bad Boss!

Research by  Teresa M. Amabile and Steven J. Kramer found that the # 1 motivator for the knowledge employees they surveyed was progress–the feeling that the workers were moving forward and achieving a greater goal:

“On days when workers have the sense they’re making headway in their jobs, or when they receive support that helps them overcome obstacles, their emotions are most positive and their drive to succeed is at its peak. On days when they feel they are spinning their wheels or encountering roadblocks to meaningful accomplishment, their moods and motivation are lowest.”

So what do you do when you’re saddled with a Bad Boss, who doesn’t give you support that helps you overcome obstacles, and if anything, is a constant impediment to your making headway in your job?!

Well, you obviously can’t rely on said boss for your feeling of progress, yet the solution is closer than you think.

It’s you. Yup. You can set goals for yourself--small, achievable goals--and reward yourself for the accomplishment of every single one of them.

Reward can be as simple as checking that item off your list, taking a 10 minute break, or just sitting for a moment with your personal sense of satisfaction.

Progress is progress, no matter who defines it. Take it upon yourself to define progress in a way that’s doable, given your Bad Boss circumstance. You’ll feel better and do better.