Rebecca Brayton: Are you dealing with a bad boss, if so, you are not the only one.
Gabriel Bouchard: I think we all have encountered one or two bad bosses in our career. An integral part of our satisfaction at work is the way we are being treated by the person we report to, obviously this relationship could go wrong in many different ways.
Rebecca Brayton: Hi, I am Rebecca Brayton and welcome to WatchMojo.com. Today, I spoke with Gabriel Bouchard, Vice President of Monster to learn more.
How do you think the boss affects the workplace?
Gabriel Bouchard: Backgrounds and experiences are things that are easy to assess. You have a resume, you know if the person did or did not do the job before or a similar job before, But a boss is first a human being with a personality, and right there you have the risk that the personality won't match. It happens everyday. I would say that probably the number one reasons why when an employer hires a new employee and it doesn't work on a very short-term basis, it's because of a personality clash between the two individuals.
Boss is also the person that is responsible for applying corporate policies. Let's say there is a strict policy when it comes to giving promotions within the company, and you have been working for an individual for a certain period of time and you are not getting that promotion, but maybe somewhere there is a policy that prevents you, maybe you would need to have a different role before you could actually access that promotion. So then you may tend to blame the person who is responsible for your development within the company.
Rebecca Brayton: What constitutes a good versus a bad boss?
Gabriel Bouchard: If we look at data, if we look at research, there are obviously personality, but this is highly subjective. For some people, one type of personality is perfect, for the rest of the team it's not the right match. That one is hard to address. Being a boss right now of managing four different generations and different cultural background is very different than what it was. Good leaders are very attentive to those considerations. They treat each individual as somebody who has his own unique expectations and needs and ultimately that's how we should be measuring bosses is their ability to increase the level of engagement of their people.
Rebecca Brayton: Is there anything people can do if they just can't quit the situation but they have a bad boss that they have to deal with?
Gabriel Bouchard: Basic thing to do is to sit down with the individual and get a clear description of what your role is, what this person expects you to do, and how you are going to be measured. You want to make sure that it's objective as much as possible, because then you will never win. If it's subjective, there's always going to be a way for that person to criticize your work.
Also understand what happens if I am not meeting your expectations and your objective criteria, what kind of help are you going to offer me. Make sure there's a plan. Many people that we qualify as being bad bosses, they don't know how to help people at getting better in what they do. They are good at telling them that they are not satisfied, but they are not offering ways for those individuals to improve.
I think there are things that are just not acceptable, and if they happen and if you have tried to discuss this with the individual and there is no solution or there is no improvement, get out of there, because it's going to impact your self esteem and eventually your health.
