Are "horrible bosses" tolerated in your organization? - SmartBrief

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Are “horrible bosses” tolerated in your organization?

2 min read

Leadership

SmartPulse — our weekly nonscientific reader poll in SmartBrief on Leadership — tracks feedback from more than 190,000 business leaders. We run the poll question each week in our e-newsletter.

Last week, we asked: Are “horrible bosses” tolerated in your organization?

  • Absolutely not — we address their issues immediately: 8.7%
  • Somewhat — there are a few who manage to get by: 32.92%
  • Often — we rarely address their performance issues: 43.35%
  • Always — being a horrible boss is how you get ahead here: 15.03%

Too many horrible bosses. These are pretty surprising and disappointing results. When about 58% of you are saying horrible bosses are not only tolerated but that it’s a way to get ahead, it’s a sad state of affairs. So you have three choices here: quit, suck it up or try to change it. The first two are pretty bad options. So ask yourself how you can provide feedback to that individual, help “lead up” by coaching them and see what other channels there are to help rectify the behavior. It will never get better until you try to do something about it.

Mike Figliuolo is managing director of thoughtLEADERS and author of “One Piece of Paper: The Simple Approach to Powerful, Personal Leadership.”