Home > Update > June 2007

Why Don't We Have Better Bosses?

By Lari Fanlund

The bad boss. He—or more recently, she—is a staple in fiction.

There’s Dickens’ miserly Ebenezer Scrooge, refusing to pay Bob Cratchit a living wage. There’s the tyrannical magazine editor in last year’s hit movie, “The Devil Wears Prada.” (Meryl Streep earned an
Oscar nomination playing a boss who staged a major meltdown if her coffee didn’t arrive in nanoseconds.)

Bad bosses are a fixture of non-fiction as well. Search online for books with “boss” in the title and you are hit with titles like: “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Boss?” or “Nasty Bosses: How to Deal with Them without Stooping to Their Level” or— just to cover all dire options—“A Survival Guide for Working With Bad Bosses: Dealing With Bullies, Idiots, Back-stabbers, And Other Managers from Hell.”

There’s even a cottage industry in the popular press categorizing the wide range of toxic bosses:

• The obsessive micro-manager
  
• The invisible manager
• The passive-aggressive manager
• The bully
• The incompetent

But wait. Bookshelves are also groaning with dozens of books promising to help leaders take their troops to new heights. Many managers seem just as desperate to improve their relationships with subordinates, as employees are to get along with their bosses.

It’s not as if the disconnect doesn’t matter. A recent survey by the Gallup Organization found that 70 percent of U.S. employees say they feel either “not engaged” or “actively disengaged at work.” Dissatisfied employees had more absenteeism, lower productivity and much higher turnover. Engaged employees tended to work for managers who spent a significant amount of time helping subordinates succeed.

What’s going on? How can so many people be so unhappy with their bosses at the same time so many bosses clearly are trying to do a better job?

Culprit #1: Newcomers to the Corner Office

Sometimes “bad bosses” are really just inexperienced managers. The qualities that tend to get a person promoted often are not the qualities needed in a good manager.

“Mid-level managers often end up in their positions because they were good at detail-
oriented performance, not because they were trained as managers. The skills that boosted them into management may not be the ones they need to be successful in their new roles,” says Professor David Antonioni, who directs leadership development and project management programs for the Executive Education unit of the UW-Madison School of Business.

Robert Shaver directs basic management courses in Executive Education. He teaches hundreds of managers each year, many recently promoted into supervisory roles. His view: “New managers often struggle because they are moving from a job they mastered to a new arena where they have low competence and start to be judged not just by their own work but by the work of the people they supervise.”

Dave Anderson, chairman and CEO of American Family Insurance, BBA ’70, MBA ’74, has this advice for newbie managers: “I would tell some- one who is just entering management to understand it is just as important to explain the ‘why’
as to manage the ‘how.’”

Anderson believes what it takes to be a successful manager changes as the type of people supervised changes. “When I started, I managed front-line staff in accounting and then IT,” Anderson recalls. “Now I manage very senior people. It takes different skill sets to be a boss as you move up. In supervising front line staff, you may need to be more involved with process. When you are managing senior executives, the challenge is to try to create understanding and align to a vision.”

Culprit #2: When More Is Just More

Even good bosses, committed to motivating their employees to do their best, can lose their way as productivity demands increase. In recent years, many companies have eliminated many layers of management. That may be good for the bottom line, but it can produce managers too busy putting out the nearest fire to have time to address the bigger picture of the emotional needs of the people they supervise.

“Time constraints do have an impact,” says Management Professor Barry Gerhart, who directs the Wisconsin MBA career specialization in Strategic Human Resource Management. “When you are asked to do the same amount of work with fewer people, it can be hard to devote time to being a better supervisor and helping people develop.”

And it’s not just how much there is to do, but the many different audiences to satisfy that can make being a good boss a challenging assignment. Steve Bennett, president and CEO of Intuit, BBA ’76, has found that the best managers need to “make decisions that balance the needs of all key stakeholders…employees, customers, community and shareholders…and factor in both short- and long-term time horizons.”

How can so many people be so unhappy with their bosses at the same time so many bosses clearly are trying to do a better job?

Culprit #3: Oil and Water

Except in extreme cases, it may not be a case of someone being a “bad boss” in general, but having a bad fit or lack of chemistry with specific employees.

The very definition of what makes a bad boss can vary widely from subordinate to subordinate says Gerhart: “A lot of people don’t like to be micromanaged, but other people like to know exactly what’s expected of them.”

Anderson’s rule of thumb is to “manage to the result and not how someone gets there. I try to give employees freedom, but provide guidelines, such as deadlines, so there are clear expectations.”
There is little doubt that the boss-subordinate relationship is crucial to job satisfaction. “Having a bad boss can be like being in a bad relationship” says Shaver. “We have good data showing that 75 percent of employees who leave are quitting their bosses, not their jobs.”

Gerhart sees a major road block to improvement in the lack of institutional mechanisms for communicating feedback to managers on their performance. “In a lot of companies there’s just not a mechanism for supervisors to get good data about what their subordinates think of them,” he says.

Of course, not everyone thinks a boss with a challenging personality is always a bad thing. “Tyrannical bosses often thrive in hit-driven industries where creative thinking is at a premium,” Stanford University’s Jeffrey Pfeffer wrote in a recent column in Business 2.0. His prime example: Apple’s Steve Jobs, a CEO often mentioned as being difficult to work for—but brilliant.

Culprit #4: Nice Guys May Deserve to Finish Last

Sometimes even the term “bad boss” is a misnomer. It may be someone who follows in the footsteps of a predecessor seen by employees as a “good” (as in undemanding) boss.

Being a nice guy (or gal) to employees isn’t enough—if the company fails, the employees suffer. The first responsibility of a good boss is to be a good steward of organizational resources. Many companies that have imploded in recent years were headed by “nice guy” bosses.

“It’s better to have satisfied employees than not,” says Gerhart, “but it really depends on why they are satisfied. Are there good business reasons the employees like the boss? Employees may like a boss because he doesn’t push them hard enough or because he doesn’t try to do things better or make changes that can be uncomfortable. So it’s not necessarily a good sign if everybody loves the boss.”

So, what makes a good boss? Different people have different definitions, but some common qualities emerge: competence, honesty, the ability to inspire.

American Family Insurance’s Dave Anderson says the most important qualities are “being empathetic, willing to teach, having a passion for what you do. Your passion can really motivate people.”

Executive Education’s Robert Shaver says, “The best bosses don’t happen by accident. They were willing to get the skills they need. They are willing to expend the extra effort. They are willing to say, ‘It’s not just all about me.’”

To Intuit’s Steve Bennett, “A good manager demonstrates through their actions that they care about people as individuals and about the work they do. They create a psychological contract with each employee that includes mutual expectations that deliver benefits to both the employee and the company.”

Are good bosses born or can they be made or at least improved? “A few people are born with an incredible gift,” Shaver says. “The rest of us have to be trained how to do it.”

That’s where Antonioni says courses like those offered by Executive Education can be valuable. “They give individuals a safe learning environment to be open about concerns, ask difficult questions, receive ideas on how to do better and just to realize that they are not the only ones dealing with issues,” he says.

Many companies have gone to performance assessment processes like 360 degree feedback in which bosses, peers and subordinates offer feedback. Gerhart says if these methods are well executed, “a supervisor can get fairly unvarnished feedback from a variety of sources, and that’s the first step in making an improvement.”

Some managers are turning to executive coaches to improve their skills. As Gerhart says, “An executive may have many strengths, but have trouble with managing people.” Antonioni says coaching can have an impact, but only if the coach is a respected role model and if the manager is coachable. “For some managers, this may be the first time they’ve encountered a caring listener,” he says, “someone who is willing to have a candid conversation on self-defeating behaviors and things they can do to grow.”

So the occasional bad boss isn’t as inevitable as death and taxes? “There will always be bad bosses,” says Shaver, “but I think our expectations for bosses are changing rapidly; they are being held to a higher standard.”

Lari Fanlund is editor of UPDATE

Illustration by Robin Good