Bad Boss: What to Do if You Work for One, Manage One or Are One

Bad Boss is a title that captures the gaze and curiosity immediately as it sadly is something everyone can relate to in their working lives. Unfortunately people are often subjected to more than one bad experience with a ‘bad boss’ that can have a lasting effect on their lives, both from a personal and workplace perspective.

Michelle Gibbing has taken her vast experience of workplaces, bosses good and bad, and life in general to craft what could easily be termed a manual on how to work with, for and manage the ‘Bosses’ in your life.

The underlying fact of the matter is everyone has a boss, no matter what level of workplace or Corporation is involved. Even the CEO is answerable to a Board, which are made of a raft of personalities, skill bases and personal ambitions, exactly the same as the workplace in any one business.

But how to understand, manage and learn from the experience is vitally important as you and your team work toward developing a positive and productive workforce and from a senior management perspective, developing your Business to become one of the businesses that attract the best of the best.

As Gibbings says, most people do not set out to be bad bosses; they simply do not know how to be bosses, good or otherwise which has a detrimental effect on the bottom line, personal relationships and a resultant toxic workplace culture.

Three distinct sections form the book, What to Do if You…. Work for one: Manage one: Are one:  all return to the same key points: Assess, Strategies, Act and Reflect, all simple but all areas that take being honest with what is going occurring in the workplace, how everyone is creating the situation and how, with a change of direction or better management skills, change a can and will occur.

She also clearly states there are those in the Management structure who clearly delight in behaving badly, have little or no remorse about their actions and simply use others on their pathway to the top! Skills are presented in each of the four subject areas on how to manage when your boss falls into this category.

Bass Boss is not a book about bagging the boss, but one that encourages when the situation is dire, provides a pathway to better understanding the situation, a road map to a better, considerably less toxic workplace, based on ‘feeling, thinking and acting so you are your best’ which in turn provides inspiration and leadership to encourage those around you to be the best they possibly can be by developing their full potential regardless of the position held, be it boss or employee.

For anyone facing challenging workplace issues whether they are a ‘boss’ or not, Bad Boss is a must read as it provides an excellent, refreshing viewpoint and perspective based in personal experience to help ‘take the edge off’ and improve a difficult, often toxic and stressful workplace.