How can you tell if you’re an a**hole boss? And is it possible to change? According to executive coach Tamica Sears, a**hole bosses play a significant role in employee attrition and low productivity, but it doesn’t have to be this way. She claims that most horrible bosses are redeemable, and it starts with recognizing the tell-tale signs and committing to change.
GUEST AT A GLANCE
Tamica Sears is an executive coach and HR consultant bent on helping leaders become more effective, inclusive, and authentic. Her recent book, How to Tell if You’re an A**hole Boss: A Humorous, Yet Honest Exposé on Misguided Management Behaviors, reveals the signs of ineffective leadership — all in an effort to help leaders recognize their shortcomings and how they affect the teams that depend on them.
A QUICK GLIMPSE INTO OUR PODCAST
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LEADER, MANAGER, OR BOSS?
We can’t really understand what Tamica Sears means when she uses the term “a**hole boss” until we understand her hierarchy of leadership. Tamica began, “At the top, we have leaders, and those are the people who understand — that have coaching conversations with their employees.” These leaders treat employees as humans, laying out expectations and letting them get to the result in the best way that they can.
“And then you have managers who know that they shouldn’t be super mean to their employees. They know that there are certain rules that they need to follow, but sometimes they still slip back into bad behavior or they may not have updated leadership training,” Tamica explained. The managers who become leaders are those who realize that there’s a better way to do things.
And lastly, at the bottom, “you have your a**hole bosses, and those are the people who micromanage, who have very little self-awareness, who take credit for team projects, and who they treat you like you’re an idiot” when you ask questions. Of course, no leader sets out to be labeled the a**hole boss, but it happens nevertheless. Luckily, there are ways to recognize it and change.
PODCAST EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS
You’re Not Stuck
“I think there are some people who are truly just natural-born leaders. There are people who just have it, and then there are people who do not. And they start off at that bottom rung, and they can learn and grow and develop and move up. And that’s the thing that I think is great — that you’re not stuck there. I was a horrible boss when I was younger.
I was a total a**hole boss. But thankfully, I had people in my life that did show me that there are better ways.”
A Glimpse into the Past
“I was embarrassed to look back at my behavior. […] I’d be sitting down to train them, and anything that they didn’t automatically get, I would just get super frustrated and wonder, ‘why didn’t you write that down?’ And I just had very little patience and I in no way, shape, or form met people where they were. You either rose to my expectations or I was, I was done with you.”
Redeeming the Bad Boss
“So I have been called the Patron Saint of Lost Causes. I do think that most people are redeemable. I think sometimes it takes a slap in the face. And again, I think part of this is because of my own experience. I had someone who quit and sent the site director a long letter about how awful I was. And I had to look at that and say, ‘You know what? Probably 85% of that is actually true.’”
A Few Tell-Tale Signs
“When you enter a room and people stop talking, […] you’re probably the problem. You’re probably the bad boss. And then the other thing is when people are talking about their lives — if people are like, ‘Oh, did you know that Ron had his twins last week?’
and you’re like ‘Who’s Ron?,’ that’s a sign of a bad boss — if you don’t know the team, you don’t know your employees.”
Engaging Employees
“Having a bad boss is an early indicator of somebody who’s going to leave the company. So you’ll have higher attrition and lower productivity. There are a lot of companies that do employee engagement surveys, and those surveys will either have low scores or the bigger thing is lower participation.”
Taking Action
“When you get that employee engagement data, you want to take action on it. One, you should probably check in with the employees to see what action they actually want, right? Because what you think they may want may be different than what they actually do want. And so if you get some kind of cohesion there, and you’re able to make changes — you’re able to give flexible schedules or put on a leadership development program or career pathway — when you make those announcements, it’s really important that you let people know that you did that because of that employee engagement survey.”
Staying Proactive
“If you’re doing succession planning, then you’re able to identify [your next leaders]. And a really great organization will be able to have subject matter expert leads so that if someone is an awesome individual contributor, but they are not really good leader material, they still have a way up. They can still be promoted.”
LEARN MORE
To learn more of the tell-tale signs that you have an a**hole boss in your midst, listen to the whole episode above. You can also connect with Tamica Sears on LinkedIn, find her book on Amazon, or check out her website at searscoaching.com.
This episode is sponsored by Swag.com. Get 10% off your order by going to https://swag.com/tyw and enter promo code TYW10 at checkout.