Be Powerful: Resist the Kryptonite of Self-Defeating Labels

Your Bad Boss--be that a Finger Pointer Boss, an Incompetent Boss, an Egomaniacal Boss, or any one of the other freakoids allowed to wander the halls of power--is an expert trasher of self-esteem. Yours. Few humans can smash your self-confidence to smithereens faster or more completely than a Bad Boss.

Enough of that treatment, and you’re likely to buy into--at least to some degree--whatever ineptness your Bad Boss accuses you of. What a horrible thing to do to yourself! When you lambaste yourself, you contribute to the spoiling of your self-esteem, you deplete your personal power, you are your own Kryptonite.

Yet, as business guru Nilofer Merchant so accurately points out:

"Most of us talk to ourselves in ways weʼd never talk to anyone else. More than likely, you are unkind to yourself when youʼve had a failure. You expect yourself to “get it right” — every single time. More often than not, you hold yourself responsible for the whole of the failure. You believe you should have seen it coming. As if somehow you can actually control everything. But, let me ask you – would you speak to someone else this way? Would you talk to them in an unforgiving, demanding, and invalidating way? Likely not. Were you to say it to someone else, you would almost see him or her shrivel up from the inside. A label given to another person can transform a personʼs sense of self and their ability to contribute and create. So can a label you give to yourself."

Restore your power! Refuse to accept any of the labels your Bad Boss has pinned on you. Improve whatever you need to do better, yes of course, but see yourself as constantly evolving, never as an undeserving flawed human. You are not that.

Now click on that phone booth app and grab your cape.

Anti-Bad Boss Tactic Number One: Don’t Take It Personally!

When researchers Leslie Velsor and Van Velsor  looked at studies across different organizations and different employees, they found that failed managers had certain things in common.

Two of these are of particular interest when it comes to Bad Bosses:

According to the Veslors, failed managers have:

“Poor interpersonal skills. Horrible managers look down on you from on high like irascible emperors. They are insensitive, cold and as likely to be nice to you as give their pay-checks to charity.

“Can't get the work done. They repeatedly set overly ambitious targets and then repeatedly fail to meet them. They don't follow through on their promises and they're likely to betray your trust.”

Let’s review: An arrogant boss who doesn’t care about how you feel or what you think, loads you up with impossible projects/deadlines, doesn’t support you with resources or guidance, and--just to finish this off from my research--blames you when the project/deadline falls through.

OK! That pretty much defines Bad Bosses in a nutshell. 

Now that you know the problem, what are you going to do about it?

First thing I would suggest, is that you quit taking anything your Bad Boss does personally. In other words, it’s not because you are somehow deficient, defective, untalented or unskilled that your Bad Boss behaves the way he or she does. It’s because that’s who your Bad Boss is.

So when you get blamed, hassled or otherwise made miserable, as long as you’ve done the very best you know how, remind yourself: “It’s not me, it’s my horrible boss.”

Your self-esteem will thank you.