Jekyll & Hide - What To Do When You Have a Toxic Boss

There’s a kind of boss that makes bad managers seem..well, not so bad.?

A while ago I was thinking through the different leaders I’d? had in the course of my career.?

I was trying to evaluate them in a way that my 25-yr old self wasn’t capable of. While I had a mix of great leaders, to not so great, there was one leader which left me conflicted on how to categorize them.?

On one hand, they were the most charismatic, fun, and energetic leader I’d ever worked for. They could walk into a room and immediately change the energy. When you spent time with him, he had an uncanny ability to make you laugh and have fun. He really was the life of the party.

In this way, he was in the Great Boss category.

But then there was this other side to him. A side that came out in our weekly team meetings going through KPIs. Here, he morphed into a completely different person. He had super-high expectations, and while that wasn’t a problem, it was how he dealt with everyone who didn’t meet those expectations.?

He was cutting, demeaning, disrespectful, and publicly shamed people. Every week when you went into the team meeting, if your numbers were off, you knew you were going to get it. You only hoped someone else's numbers were worse than yours so that they might take the lion share of the hot seat.?

I remember him telling all of us that we would never find a better job than the one we were doing now, and that we were in fact lucky to be making the money that we did, even though it wasn't much.

In these moments he was in the bad boss category.

(I talk about this more in this video, or you can continue reading below.)

But then, after the bloodbath of staff meeting, he would shift gears on a dime and say, “Hey everyone, let’s go have lunch.” And we would, and it would be fun, relieving, and therapeutic in a way. It was like he morphed into a different persona, one we liked.

And this is why I felt conflicted. How can someone make you feel so good to be around and the next day, tear you down to pieces?

As I thought about it, I realized he wasn’t a good boss, or a bad one, but a toxic one, as he played a sort of Jekyll and Hyde character in all our lives.

Toxic bosses are toxic because they do damage to the psyche, leaving emotional, and mental scars which can last for years.?

Bad bosses we can handle, because it’s easy to place them into a certain bucket. Maybe they are not friendly, steal credit for your work, have an authority complex, or micro-manage you until you leave the office for the night. But we can deal with bad bosses. We don’t like them, but we can adjust, keep our head down, get our work done and go home.?

Being under a Toxic Boss is sort of like being in an abusive relationship which people get caught in all the time. And when their friends and loved ones move in to help, they ask questions like, “Why are you still here? This person is terrible!”?

But the abused feels conflicted. “Well, yes, at times they’re terrible, but not all the time.” And this is what makes the cycle all the more dangerous.?

If you're working for a Toxic Boss

If you find yourself working for a Toxic Boss, my advice is to leave. Because no workplace or job is worth having pieces of you cut out and left on the floor. No matter how amazing they are in some areas, what promises they make you, or what you can even learn from their expertise, when a boss treats you in a way that you wouldn’t tolerate from others in our life, it’s time to go.?

And Toxic Bosses often go undetected from those higher up, because they have so much charm and charisma, and are often high performers, which makes them valuable assets to their bosses above them.??

The bad news is that Toxic Bosses rarely change, even with coaching. Believe me, I’ve tried to help some of them. They might be a narcissist, or have a personality disorder, or it could just be their wiring and previous mentors that have shaped them. Regardless of the reason, you deserve better.

If I have a regret, it’s that I didn’t leave that situation sooner. But I was young then, and didn’t have a lot of experience yet under my belt. So I give myself a pass for that. But if anything here resonates with you, and you feel like the leader in your life, makes you worse, and not better, then it’s time to take a long hard look at what you’re willing to put up with. Because life is short, in fact, too short, to spend a single day more with a boss that hurts more than they help.

#badboss #toxicleadership #leadership #hr #SHRM