Posted on 08/03/2007 3:45:53 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
Bad bosses get promoted, not punished
Fri 03 Aug, 2007 04:32
By Rachel Breitman
NEW YORK (Reuters) - How do people get ahead in the workplace? One way seems to be by making their subordinates miserable, according to a study released on Friday.
In the study to be presented at a conference on management this weekend, almost two-thirds of the 240 participants in an online survey said the local workplace tyrant was either never censured or was promoted for domineering ways.
"The fact that 64.2 percent of the respondents indicated that either nothing at all or something positive happened to the bad leader is rather remarkable -- remarkably disturbing," wrote the study's authors, Anthony Don Erickson, Ben Shaw and Zha Agabe of Bond University in Australia.
Despite their success in the office, spiteful supervisors can cause serious malaise for their subordinates, the study suggested, citing nightmares, insomnia, depression and exhaustion as symptoms of serving a brutal boss.
The authors advocated immediate intervention by industry chiefs to stop fledgling office authoritarians from rising up the ranks.
"As with any sort of cancer, the best alternative to prevention is early detection," they wrote.
They faulted senior managers for not recognizing the signs of workplace strife wrought by bad bosses. "The leaders above them who did nothing, who rewarded and promoted bad leaders ... represent an additional problem."
The study will be presented at the annual meeting of the Academy of Management, a research and teaching organization with nearly 17,000 members, from Sunday to Wednesday in Philadelphia.
correction...
“you rise to the level of your incompetence”
Promotion is easy, just golf with your boss and badmouth everyone he hates. Works like a charm. Oh yeah, almost forgot, always let him win.
I forgot to mention always remove your brown lipstick after a day on the links with the big boss.
I wonder if bad bosses, as measured here, are those that implement their bosses’ policies and demands to the letter, and absolutely inflexibly. If you do exactly what your boss tells you, and the company doesn’t run very well, and you don’t develop any talent, you probably won’t be blamed; your obedience is short-term gratification to your boss, and he’d have to share in any blame. And in sharing that blame, if he is amenable to change, he’ll at least feel empowered to make any change he deems necessary,
OTOH, if you are flexible and you succeed, your success might threaten your boss or stand out among his other subordinates.
The solution is for someone in top management to be VERY on the ball, and look at production workers as prospects, and look beyond how well policies and procedures are implemented to see how well talent is developing. Unfortunately, a growing movement to understanding motivating workers is being counter-balanced by a sense that all employees are here today and gone tomorrow; while workers need to be treated like prospects, they are treated, instead, like free agents. And the more they are treated like free agents, the more they behave like free ahents.
Well, good for you, I guess! You seem to be alive and kicking and able to pay for your ISP, so I guess something must have come along for you.
Ironic though, January of '82 was when I started at the company I'm going to retire from in 6 months. I can' tell you how many times I wanted to say that, but I needed the money.
The way to get ahead is to take credit for everything good that happens and successfully blame your subordinates for everything bad that happens. And become highly skilled at the art of kissing up and pissing down.
It’s like a troop of monkeys sitting in a tree. Looking up all you see is aholes, but looking down it’s nothing but smiiiling faces.
You can’t keep the good ones and you can’t get rid of the bad ones.
That is easier said than done, as others have mentioned.
Sometimes you live somewhere where there are few good jobs.
You like your job and do it well and thrive... until an affirmative action hire comes along who is uneducated, can't do the work herself, and was going to be canned but threatened to sue...
Her insecurities create a palpable unrest in the department and everyone seems happier when she is on vacation or out with one of her chronically faked injuries.
It's nice to be wealthy enough or whatever to not work, but most of us want and need jobs. I refuse to let an incompetent drive me out, but back to the title of the article, all I see are "bad bosses" getting promoted.
So true. Apparently the dolt who was behind the Passport fiasco just got promoted.
The other part of the equation is to get promoted and move on before the SH!T hits the fan. Can’t count the number of times I’ve seen this happen. My other perception is there is a trend to making it look like problems have been solved—rather than actually solving them. This is especially true in Government.
As for good people leaving, people will always be treated as a commodity. There is always more fresh meat out there. And, in truth, in a good organization, no one will be really irreplacable. That is just bad planning.
“Good managers are very hard to find/develop. There are many who want the authority and title but are ill suited to the job.”
This is my boss exactly. Can’t make a simple decision without asking his boss.
a boss, by definition, is in a position of power over you. Agreed, life is too short to let it ruin it, but a boss takes to throwing his or her weight around, sure it can effect you.
...Good one!
And Slick Willie was re-elected....
“As for good people leaving, people will always be treated as a commodity. There is always more fresh meat out there.”
For me, that became clear when Personnel departments became “Human resources”. Now my bosses dont say “I need more workers for this job”. They ask for more “resource”.
Let’s just say that one bad day can ruin your career.
Wait, it’s moved way beyond “Human Resources” in the Federal government. Now it’s “Human Capital Management.”
I think its dehumanising. It legitimises an atmosphere of treating people as objects.
And I think treating people as objects rather than individuals is a pretty good definition of evil.
The current socioeconomic system selects for the biggest bastard, not the most capable producer. The bigger a bastard you are, the better you are likely to do in the Game.
I wish someone would have taught me that in high school, instead of all that useless “education”...
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