Bad Bosses: The Bloodsucking Mosquitoes You May Deserve
Bad bosses are like mosquitos. Countless studies have proven the harm bad bosses cause organizations. They can be everything from a mild nuisance to carriers of the death sentence for your organization. Much like mosquitos, how you handle the problem will impact your experience and results.
Awareness
Like mosquitos, we understand bad bosses exist in the world. We know they are bad for us and our organizations. Pretending they don’t exist or simply hoping we won’t see them will not them disappear.
Reactive Treatment
With no plan or proactive approach, most organizations begin by attacking individual occurrences. We swat them away (train, demote, or fire), each individual bad boss occurrence. This solution is cheap and relatively simple. However, the problem will continue to resurface because we have not solved the root-cause and source of the pest. As a result, there remains a high risk of your organization suffering a more negative experience and results.
Proactive Treatment
As organizations become more serious about addressing bad boss behaviors, we begin a proactive approach to help reduce the infestation. With mosquitoes, we wear insect repellant and buy bug zappers. For bad bosses, we improve our hiring processes, introduce leadership courses and assessments. This substantially reduces the problem but leaves gaps for carriers to slip through and hurt your organization.
Root Cause Resolution
When your organization is serious about preventing bad boss behaviors to improve your experience and results, you attack the root-causes. With mosquitoes, we address possible sources by removing still water, installing better window screens, spraying insecticides, and regularly evaluating the effectiveness of each solution. With bad bosses, in addition to training, courses, and assessments, you implement a leadership development program tailored to your unique industry and organization.
Do You Deserve Bad Bosses?
Much like mosquitoes, guarding against bad bosses is an ongoing struggle. If you let your guard down, they will resurface. Your best bet is to attack root causes. Ignoring the problem will not make it go away. Failure to address root causes could even leave your organization exposed to terminal illnesses.
If you or your organization considers addressing the root-cause of bad bosses, contact Ben and let’s see how we can help.
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