Working For A Horrible Boss? Congratulations!

It’s one of the best things you can do for your career.

I can remember a time when I had employees crying in my office at least once a day. Sometimes more than one employee a day.

To be clear, I wasn’t the person making them cry. I was their HR Manager.

Their bosses were the ones moving them to tears — and not in a good way. And, let me tell you, it takes a lot to make someone so upset that they willingly talk to HR about it.

Looking back, there were so many factors that culminated in the perfect storm of awful leadership. The company was struggling financially, and managers had grown tired of missing their sales targets month after month. Morale was brutal.

So what did those managers do? They quit in droves.

After a while, we ended up with more manager-level positions to fill than we had people qualified to fill them. And hiring from outside of the company was nearly impossible — because who wants to join a failing company?

We decided that, if we wanted to fill manager-level positions, we had to promote people from within who arguably were not ready to be managers.

Big mistake. They had never been taught how to lead.

We were left with a ‘leadership’ team full of horrible bosses. They weren’t abusive or anything, but they didn’t have a clue about how to give feedback, coach, or manage conflict. And some of them had a significant lack of emotional intelligence, too.

All this to say, I’ve had a front-row seat to the impact a horrible boss can have on their team.

And if you work for a horrible boss, I’m here to congratulate you. Why?

Because working for a horrible boss is one of the best things you can do for your career.

Let me explain.

Bad bosses teach you the importance of self-validation

When I started my first full-time job, all I wanted was someone to reassure me that I was doing well. I was used to the constant feedback that grades provided me with and, so long as I was getting A’s, I knew I was ‘good enough.’

But horrible bosses usually don’t give feedback freely and, if they do, it’s probably not the positive kind of feedback. Without that praise, I convinced myself that if no one told me I was doing a good job, then I probably wasn’t.

But, after waiting a while for feedback that never came, I learned to stop seeking external validation and start self-validating my work.

Did I think I was doing good work? Did I feel like I was adding value?

If the answers to those questions were ‘yes,’ I learned to embrace that as my personal measure of success. I no longer needed to hear it from someone else.

Bad bosses make you a better boss

Take notes — because your horrible boss is giving you a literal blueprint of everything not to do as a boss. One day, you will lead a team, and you will go out of your way to make sure that you don’t make your team members feel the way your boss has made you feel.

I learned a lot from the best boss I ever worked for, and she taught me so much about how to think like a leader, but I learned just as much, if not more, from my worst boss. It wasn’t nearly as pleasant, but it was still learning, and there’s no such thing as bad learning.

Pay attention to things like how your boss speaks to you and others, how they react under stress, how they respond to criticism, and how they bounce back from setbacks. The simple task of observing others at work can do wonders for your own emotional intelligence.

Bad bosses teach you how to evaluate future bosses

I worked for one boss that seemed to keep me out of the loop intentionally. Everything was a secret, and it felt like I was the last to know the information that I needed to do my job well.

When I got around to interviewing for my next position, I was determined to work for someone who was transparent and intentionally designed processes to keep her team informed.

I used the interview process to ensure that I wasn’t signing up for more of the same because I knew that working for another boss who didn’t freely share information was a deal-breaker for me.

And I did that by asking a ton of questions about this facet of her leadership style during my interviews — both of my future boss and of her direct reports who could validate their experience on the team.

Working for a terrible boss absolutely sucks in the moment — there’s just no other way to say it. But I promise that you are learning and growing so much more from this experience than you even realize right now, painful as it might be.

Remember that no boss is permanent, and you will not be in this job — or even at this company — forever.

You hold the power in that you can leave at whatever point you feel is right. But you might as well learn as much as you can while you’re there.

Congratulations on working for a truly horrible boss!

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