What can you get out of having a bad manager?

Photo: Paul Skorupskas

We’ve all had at least one: the terrible boss, the one you dreaded spending time with, who never saw you in a good light, no matter what you did. Some of them yell and scream, some pile on the tasks and some of them just ignore you. What they all have in common is that they have created a bad experience that can be very scarring.

There are lots of great tips on the internet on how to deal with this, mostly focussing on what you can do to manage them or the situation but I want to focus on the opportunities having a bad manager offers you. “Opportunities?” you say? Yes, opportunities. You may learn more from a bad boss than from a good one. Lets go through a few possibilities:

• First off is that you learn some bad boss behaviours that you know to avoid in the future. Most people don’t get much in the way of management training or guidance so they are totally unaware of what they should be doing or what it feels like to be on the receiving end of their behaviour. By experiencing it first hand, you know to eliminate it from your own leadership style and your future colleagues will be grateful.
• Recognise which saboteurs are driving them - and you! When we are little, we develop guidelines that help us feel safe and some of them don’t translate well into adult life because the follow a child’s simplistic logic.  Take the saboteur test and see if you can spot what drives you and how that may be interacting with what drives your manager.
• Learn not to take things personally. This is a really great perspective to tune into. Your manager is unlikely to want to destroy your life. He/she probably has a lot going on and isn’t managing it as well as you might wish. They also may have formed an impression of you that isn’t entirely correct. It’s a lot easier to step back and think about how to change the situation if you don’t think it’s targeted at you, personally.

• Learn useful conflict resolution tactics. Conflict arises when expectations are mismatched. Is there something you can do differently that will change the dynamic? It may sound cliche to say it but the only thing we have full control of is ourselves and when we change what we do and how we are, it has the potential to change everything.
• Get better at asking for what you need. Many of us hesitate to ask for what we need or give the whole story because we think it will make us more vulnerable, but telling a boss about the impact they are having on you can be exactly what is needed to get things to change. Your boss isn’t psychic and may not realise they are not explaining things well or asking you to do more than you have time for.

In short, sometimes a bad boss can teach us more than a good one. Remembering that, and using it as a learning opportunity can help transform how we feel about a situation. If you see it as a gift, you can even get excited and curious about dealing with the situation - and that will help you at the time and forever afterwards.