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What are some examples of difficult bosses?

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Difficult
comes in many forms. Typically, you might describe a difficult boss as someone who:
  • Uses intimidation to get what he/she wants
  • Doesn’t trust employees
  • Doesn’t respect employees
  • Never asks for employee’s feedback or involvement
  • Fails to respect family/work/life balance
  • Overloads employees with work
  • Meddles too much
  • Holds up the process with procrastination.
If you work for someone you find difficult, you might recognize him or her in the descriptions below. Don’t just read your boss’s description, though. Read the others to see that the grass isn’t always greener on the other side. Depending on your personality style and the type of job you’re in, one difficult boss might suit you better than other. It’s all a matter of finding the best in the situation, and learning how best to respond, to save your sanity.
  • The Micromanager: This person fails to delegate. He or she wants to look over everything you do, and how you do everything, no matter how trivial. Often this type of manager makes your work harder, and makes every process take longer, by bringing up moot points to debate or nitpicking the results of a project, when it’d be better to just let employees do it their way and have it done on time. A micromanager makes employees feel untrustworthy and insecure, which hampers productivity and morale.
  • The Unqualified Manager: This person doesn’t understand the process, the product, or the situation at hand, but has many talents as a manager in general, thus getting the job. Employees find this kind of person frustrating because he or she just doesn’t get what it takes to handle the job at hand, and often gives suggestions or mandates that just aren’t feasible or practical for the situation. A manager really should be able to do everything he asks of his subordinates, and should understand the business better than them, but that’s not always the case.
  • The Disorganized Boss: This person is often a pleasant boss, no big communication challenges, but just isn’t organized, and that wreaks havoc on his or her team. You might never find the report you gave him, or will wait ages for a meeting to start, or have to keep tabs on items in order to get a response. He or she is just a little disorganized, and that effects job performance.
  • The Bully: The bully boss puts you down in front of others, yells at you for real or perceived errors on the job, micromanages your projects, and makes you feel incompetent in your position. This person exerts his or her power over you continually, but would rarely think of treating his or her boss this way.
  • The Unreasonable Boss: No amount of work is too much for this person. He or she likes to heap on the responsibilities, and just doesn’t understand why you’re unable to get 28 hours worth of work done in 10 hours on the job.



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