Winning with the Boss from Hell (eBook)

A Survival Guide

Shaun Belding (Autor)

eBook Download: PDF

2004 | 1. Auflage
180 Seiten
ECW Press (Verlag)
978-1-55490-632-1 (ISBN)

Infos

Once minor details like eating, sleeping, commuting, and bathing are factored in, most people spend over half their adult lives at work. Now imagine spending that half of your life with a boss who is a combination of several of these wonderful traits: ignorant, foul, rude, selfish, loud, obnoxious, abrasive, incompetent, impatient, incoherent, embarrassing, harassing, blamestorming, indecisive, dirty, smelly, mean-spirited, sexist, wimpy, vindictive, unappreciative, crude, and disrespectful. And those are the good points. Winning with the Boss from Hell is a real-life survival guide with real-life strategies for dealing with that Very Special Person You Report To.

Textauszug

PSYCHICS 101: READING BOSSES' MINDS Whether or not you succeed every time you try is less important than whether or not you try every time. A senior HR manager I know told me the story of a district manager who once loudly berated her team. 'You guys are nothing to me,' she said to them. 'I could have you replaced by a team of monkeys - and they'd probably do a better job.' Another story I heard was of a boss at an assembly plant who would just help himself to a different employee's lunch from the refrigerator every day The employees all knew it, but everyone was afraid to do anything about it. He didn't try to hide it - he referred to it as the 'daily special.' There's an owner of a retail chain I know who used to randomly fire people just to keep store employees on their toes. It's hard to believe that these kinds of people even exist. It's hard to understand why somebody actually hired them in the first place. It's nearly impossible to comprehend why, at some point in time, someone would make the conscious decision to promote thesepeople to positions of authority. How does this happen? How is it that these Bosses from Hell, some of them with genuine personality disorders, got to where they are today? Sometimes the answer is obvious - he's the owner of the business, for example. He promoted himself to the position of boss from the outset, and for you it was just a bad decision to take a job with him. Sometimes it's bosses' sons or daughters, who, because they've never run the real risk of being fired, have never had the inclination to concern themselves with how to become better managers. Many other factors may have come into play in bringing your Boss from Hell to where she is today. Following are a few. 1. Tenure: This is probably the number one reason that Bosses from Hell get to where they are today. They've simply been around the longest. They know all the systems, they know everybody's name, and they've never been quite bad enough to fire. They may have absolutely no skills or aptitude for management, but they do have seniority. 2. Good at Something Else - the Halo Effect. How many times have you seen somebody promoted simply because she was good at something else? Retail, hospitality, and call center industries are notorious for doing this. They take their best servicepeople and promote them to positions of managers and supervisors. They neglect to take into account that the skill sets of a good serviceperson may be entirely different from those of a good manager. It's an easy mistake to make. Decision makers are looking for someone who knows the business - someone with a positive track record of meeting or exceeding expectations and someone they know they can trust. 'How big a transition could it possibly be to turn this person into a manager?' they think. Sometimes it's impossible. 3. Experience: Many people are promoted to the position of boss because they have a lot of experience in the industry. Maybe they worked for a competitor, a supplier, or a customer. That kind of experience can often blind people to significant shortcomings in management skills. It's amazing how many people mistake experience for aptitude when hiring. 4. Whom They Knew: That old saying 'It's not what you know butwho you know' is frequently true. Often people get a job because they know the manager or have some kind of relationship with the person doing the hiring. None of these, of course, is the right reason for someone being promoted to boss. The thing is, though, these bosses don't realize they have been promoted for the wrong reasons.

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 27.4.2004
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Beruf / Finanzen / Recht / Wirtschaft ► Bewerbung / Karriere
• Themenwelt: Wirtschaft ► Betriebswirtschaft / Management ► Unternehmensführung / Management
• Themenwelt: Wirtschaft ► Volkswirtschaftslehre
• ISBN-10: 1-55490-632-6 / 1554906326
• ISBN-13: 978-1-55490-632-1 / 9781554906321