Employee gets punched through smart phone by angry client because of bad service, product, or bad behavior
If you’re a manager, supervisor, director, or anyone we could refer to as “the boss” then you may not realize you’re the #1 topic of conversation around the dinner table each night.
The question is: What are people saying?
I’m sure all of us have at one time or another, had the “boss from hell.” Being a retired sailor, I can tell you I had more than my share on active duty, but maybe the worst one I had was the VP of Human Resources at one of my post-Navy jobs.
Working now running my organizational repair business, I can tell you much of my work is centered around fixing the damage caused by bad bosses. It runs the gamut between high employee turnover and dwindling customer purchases. It includes legal troubles, low productivity, and in some cases complete process redesign to minimize the negative impact of the bad boss.
The short answer to this of course is simply firing the bad boss. That almost never happens. If you’re a business owner or corporate CEO, do everyone a favor and fire your bad bosses!
The question then remains: what are the characteristics of a boss worth keeping? Based on my experience, here are three:
- Technically-skilled. Few things are worse than having a boss that’s dumber than the workers. While a boss needn’t be in the weeds, they still need to understand the larger scope.
- Mentally-skilled. This means they’re good at making decisions. A boss needs to realize that their actions and choices affect more than just them. Learn to think like a chess player: 3 moves ahead at all times.
- Relationally-skilled. Nobody will care how smart and wise you are if you can’t get along with anyone. Learn some people skills. We’ll all be much happier.
So there they are. Just three things to do if you want to be a boss worth keeping. Pick one and get started, then be sure to do the other two. There is no success in being one-dimensional in this field!
