And so the litany continues. In an Associated Press article by Brent Kallestad, the headline reads, “2 in 5 bosses don’t keep their word, Florida State University survey shows. This article goes on to summarize the results of study led by associate professor Wayne Hochwarter of the College of Business at Florida State University. The “bad boss behaviors it reports include failing to keep promises, failing to give credit to direct reports when it is due, giving employees the silent treatment, and making negative comments about other employees and managers. Finally, the article reports Professor Hochwarter’s observation that all of these bad behaviors lead to poor morale, less productivity, and increased turnover.
While the researchers at Florida State do make some helpful suggestions for what employees can do when faced with a bad boss, what’s missing in the article is any guidance on how to prevent or correct the presence of bad bosses in the first place. Certainly, this is a problem that has been going on for a long time , someday, I’ll write about my first boss , and it does not lend itself to a simple solution. However, there is one basic question that someone hiring a first time manager or promoting an existing manager to a level of greater responsibility can ask: “Could I work for this person? If the answer is “no, how can you ask someone else to work for this potentially bad manager when you yourself could not?