Bye Bye Smooth, Dumb and Nasty

Well now I am getting the silent treatment from Smooth, Dumb, and Nasty. Hooray! Dumb has written, and then re-written, the project schedule for the project I’m supposedly a part of, and it looks like my piece has been written out of it. Of course, I only know that by going in to source control and looking at the schedule. I haven’t heard from Dumb in weeks. Which is annoying just because of the lack of professionalism and raw stupidity of running a technical team that way. I mean, they paid for the hours that I put in to that effort. But it’s also a huge relief, because it’s an acknowledgment that I am finally free and clear of those sociopathic f-holes.

Whew! What a relief! Bye bye suck-hole jerks!

Bully Bosses Article

There’s a really excellent article on bullies in the workplace at CIO magazine, and I want to capture a copy of it here so I’ll have it for a while.

http://www.cio.com/article/131400/How_to_Deal_With_Bully_Bosses

How to Deal With Bully Bosses

Do you have a bad manager? Someone who makes your life miserable all week by criticizing your every move? Experts offer their tips on handling bully and toxic bosses.

By Bob Weinstein

August 17, 2007 — CIO — Is your boss a tyrant of Machiavellian proportions? If it makes you feel better, you’re not alone. According to a study by the Employment Law Alliance, almost half of all employees have been targeted by a bully boss.

The study also revealed the following:

• 81 percent of bullies are managers.
• 50 percent of bullies are women and 50 percent are men.
• 84 percent of targets are women.
• 82 percent of targets ultimately lost their job.
• 95 percent of bullying is witnessed.

Do you have a boss who is off the wall—we’re talking certifiably nuts? If it’s any consolation, take comfort in knowing that you have more company than you can imagine. The simple truth is that bully or tyrant bosses can be found in abundance. Unfortunately, the majority can’t legally be institutionalized. Many should not be bosses.

Tyrannical behavior comes in all forms. There are bosses who are mind-controlling abusers, manic-depressive and psychotic. There are obnoxious bully bosses who rule by intimidation, insist on getting their way and fly off the handle easily. They treat subordinates like children and seldom ask for anyone’s input. There are also predator bosses, a term that is explained in management consultant Harvey Hornstein’s book, Brutal Bosses and Their Prey (Penguin Putnam), in which he defines two species of tyrannical bosses: “The Conqueror” and “The Manipulator.”

Conqueror bosses prey on employees’ weaknesses. They find great thrills in treating the workplace like a battlefield. Once they sense an employee’s soft spot, they pounce on it. The unsuspecting victim doesn’t stand a chance.

Manipulator bosses are the smoothest of bullies. They fear becoming less valued if their underlings get any recognition for exemplary work. Manipulator bosses are backstabbers who’ll go to frightening lengths to look good to their superiors.

Related Link

The Boss and You: A Survival Guide

So what makes lunatic bosses act the way they do? Brian Stern, president of Shaker Consulting Group, a management consulting firm in Cleveland, contends that tyrannical behavior often stems from bosses not knowing what they’re doing. A false assumption is thinking that bosses actually know how to manage people. Mention the word “boss” and we immediately think that the person has some special abilities or training. There are rules and training programs for almost every conceivable job, from sanitation engineer to nuclear physicist, but no set curriculum teaches you how to be a boss. An obvious way to compensate for a lack of skills is to be tough and unyielding. You stand a better chance of being left alone and unquestioned this way.

Yet training alone won’t turn a crazy boss into a sane manager. Whatever category your crazy boss fits into, the big question is whether you can work with him or her.

Tyrannical bosses come in one of two packages. “The first is the hard-nosed, tough, demanding perfectionist,” says Stern. “They can be difficult to work with, but they will listen to reason because they’re all about doing the best job they can. They also know that talented people make things happen. But they can drive you nuts trying to achieve goals.”

The second type, however, is even more difficult to work with, says Stern. “They are unyielding control freaks and have a total disregard for the facts. They demand that things be done their way.”

How to handle an off-the-wall boss

If you feel compelled to improve your situation so that you can at least coexist with your crazy boss, Stern suggests tactfully talking to the tyrant. Take extreme care, and use diplomacy when broaching the subject, he advises. “Don’t take an accusatory tone,” he says. “Instead, put the burden on yourself. Begin by outlining the problem, and suggest ways you and your boss can work together.”

A safer strategy is to lie low and stay out of the way of the tyrant boss. Do your job well, and avoid confrontations at all costs.

Only you can decide what will be the best solution, Stern adds. Whatever you do, remember that no job is worth enduring constant misery five days a week—not to mention obsessing about pending torture come Monday.

“I’m not going to take it any longer!”

Yet Robert Mueller, labor attorney and author of Bullying Bosses: A Survivor’s Guide (bullyingbosses.com), says you don’t have to take a bully boss’s constant abuse—and he doesn’t endorse copping out by finding another job.

Mueller contends that all victims of workplace bullying can become what he calls “workplace warriors” and use self-defense strategies that can restore power, dignity and options to the bullied employee.

The more you know about your despotic boss, the better you’ll be able to handle him.

There are many types of bully bosses. Mueller has identified seven types. Any of the following strike a responsive chord?

1. Subtle bullies: They torment their targets with quiet but piercing techniques.
2. Abusive bullies: These bosses hound a target employee without mercy.
3. Crude bullies: These people throw their weight around loudly and physically.
4. Raging bullies: These people intimidate everyone in the vicinity with their out-of-control anger.
5. Echo bullies: Not normally abusive, they mimic bullying behavior with their subordinates.
6. Ghost bullies: These bosses guide, mentor and supervise lower-level bosses in bullying techniques and tactics.
7. Satellite bullies: These are people of stature who undermine the target by contributing to someone else’s bullying.

Preparing for battle

Before you march into battle, Mueller offers some observations about bully bosses:

Personal confrontations with bullies are almost never productive.

Management-team members interpret any confrontation an employee might have with a boss as also being a confrontation with them, and without well-documented proof of a pattern of behavior, they will likely view the employee as the problem.

If bullies notice you’re ducking them, they will not see this as sensible avoidance, but as cowering behavior.

Don’t be afraid to make eye contact with your bully boss.

Don’t mistakenly think you can defuse a bully by getting personal and showing your human side. Bullies not only don’t appreciate the personal side of others, they don’t tolerate it. Details of your personal, spiritual or emotional life are weapons in your antagonist’s hands.

Don’t try and enlist the help of your HR department. HR can be the chilliest place any employee can visit, and also one of the most dangerous. HR’s allegiance is to the employer—and its goal is protecting the employer from legal claims. Approach rarely, with caution, and only when fully prepared.

Ready to go one-on-one with your tyrant boss?

Mueller offers 10 strategies:

1. Approach your bullying problem like a work project. Be methodical in how you behave, perform, document and strategize. Take notes after an incident. Try to stay unemotional. Even though he or she is trying to make you think the opposite, it is the bully who has a serious personal and professional problem, not you.

2. Be a workplace warrior. Even if you plan to put out feelers for other jobs, dedicate yourself to vanquishing your abuser, not being a victim.

3. Sweat the small stuff. Document even the smallest incidents, which often become the most important, illustrating a pattern of bullying that might not otherwise be apparent. Teasing counts. Sarcasm counts. Ignoring you or criticizing you counts. A very public glare or silent treatment counts.

4. Don’t let yourself get isolated. Every day, pick out someone you haven’t talked to for a while. Have a brief but focused conversation. Bullies work hard to alienate targets from their coworkers. Don’t let that happen to you.

Related Link

The Boss and You: A Survival Guide

5. Display self-esteem and broadcast a positive attitude. Pay attention to how your appearance—such as hair and clothes—is perceived by others. Make your personal space an oasis of calm and taste.

6. Try to stay in safe spots. Your abuser is less likely to attack when you are around other supervisors, known allies, particularly upright employees, and customers or other outsiders of importance to the employer. Make a list of those people and places.

7. During a bullying situation, excuse yourself. Don’t beat a hasty retreat, and don’t leave the building; tell your abuser that you’re late for an appointment with HR, for example. Or casually excuse yourself to use the restroom. Never enter the restroom if you are being pursued by a bully.

8. During an attack, try distracting your abuser. Pick up something physical—as long at it’s not a threatening item—such as a critical file that needs the bully’s attention or a note with an important phone number that needs to be called. Sometimes a simple distraction is enough to get him or her to stop.

9. Protect your personal information. Tell bullies as little as possible about your life, family, friends, hobbies, interests, religion and so on. Information about you gives them power.

10. Hold your cards close to the vest. As you’re building a case against a bully boss, the less you talk about your story to others at work, the better. Controlling what you say, when you say it and to whom needs to be part of your overall, well-organized strategy.

My boss is not a bully, he’s toxic!

Another variation of the tyrant or bully boss is the toxic boss, a term that has been around for a number of years. For those saddled with toxic bosses, there is actually a website called toxicboss.com and even a book about them, The Allure of Toxic Leaders: Why We Follow Destructive Bosses and Corrupt Politicians and How We Can Survive Them (Oxford) by Jean Lipman-Blumen. Toxic bosses are everywhere, according to Lipman-Blumen. Many are accomplished and extremely successful. Some are working for or running well-known companies. Others are geniuses who created breakthrough technology. On your first meeting, they can be well-poised and ingratiating, and can seem like they’d make great bosses, but that changes quickly once you start working for them. What you thought would be a dream job turns into a nightmare.

“Toxic leadership seems to be an equal-opportunity career path,” she observes. Even though we’re supposedly smarter and more psychologically tuned in than we were a few decades ago, “we continue to tolerate—even prefer and sometimes seek out—toxic leaders who degrade our lives and diminish our happiness.”

Toxic leaders are everywhere, and they’re not going away. “We see them in every arena: business, politics, religion, education, athletics,” says Lipman-Blumen.

Technology industries are rife with toxic managers, especially brilliant, warped geeks responsible for creating breakthrough technology.

Identifying toxic bosses

Unfortunately, toxic bosses are hard to spot before you’re hired. The reason is that many have Jekyll-and-Hyde personalities, says Lipman-Blumen. But if a sixth sense tells you that all is not kosher with this person, or that he is too good to be true or is unconsciously gnashing his teeth, do some homework and speak to employees or former employees. Unfortunately, few of us are going to act on our instincts.

What can you expect from toxic bosses once you’re unlucky enough to be working for them?

Ready?

Lipman-Blumen lists common destructive behaviors:

• Leaving employees worse off than they found them by undermining, demeaning and terrorizing them.
• Consciously feeding their employees illusions that enhance the leader’s power and impair the employee’s capacity to act independently.
• Playing to the basest fears and needs of the employees.
• Stifling constructive criticism and teaching supporters—sometimes by threats and authoritarianism—to comply with, rather than question, the leader’s judgment and actions.
• Failing to nurture other leaders, including their own successors.
• Maliciously setting constituents against one another.
• Identifying scapegoats and inciting others to castigate them.
• Ignoring or promoting incompetence, cronyism and corruption.

Can anything be done? You’re playing with fire if you intend to fly solo and confront your lunatic boss. “Forget heroics,” she says. If you feel compelled to right the situation, Lipman-Blumen advises putting together a coalition. There is strength in numbers—or at least, you hope so.

“There are probably many others who share your concerns, but feel as lonely and isolated as you do,” adds Lipman-Blumen. “Get them together and plan your strategy.”

But even then, she cautions that you’re walking a precarious line.

Trying to straighten out a crazy boss is like trying to soothe a starving cheetah that’s about to consume you for dinner. But if you’ve got guts and a sense of adventure, why not have it out with him? You’ll certainly feel better about yourself —and you may be surprised by the results.

© 2007 CXO Media Inc.

http://www.cio.com/article/131400/How_to_Deal_With_Bully_Bosses/1

END OF CRAPPY JOB!!

OK I think this one should do it. I have been trying to wait for money to come in for the job I want, but it just looks like it’s not going to happen. Meanwhile, the politics on my current team are just horrible. Smooth, Dumb, and Nasty are just at their finest. Dumb got some high praise from one of our internal customers, primarily because he’s the only one they work with. And because he’s an ass-sucking creep. So he and Smooth have been all inflated and full of themselves.

They scheduled a “design meeting” fro my project, which I’m sure is an ambush. Smooth said he’s going to have Dumb get up and talk about the overall design — as if Dumb is qualified or able to generate an overall design — but then he’ll let me go into my piece, which happens to be the piece that does the actual work.

Later I found out that the whole team is invited — including Nasty — so I’m sure it’s going to be an opportunity to gang up, strut around, and stick their thumbs up each other’s asses.

Anyway, spurred by the prospect of that, and also the bleak prospects of getting the job I’ve been waiting for, I went ahead and asked about transferring to another team. The manager of that team was really happy, and now it looks like that is going to go through smoothly, barring some negotiation between him and Smooth over the transition.

I want to be a party to that negotiation — since it is about me. On the other hand, Smooth doesn’t run a real tight ship, so a longer transition just gives me more time to work on my side project.

In any case, it’s looking like by the end of next month I should be off this crappy team, and my memories of Smooth, Dumb, and Nasty will just be funny stories I can tell my grandkids.

More fun

So now I’m just in a holding pattern waiting for money to come in for the position I want, or some shoe to drop to signal that it’s time to move on from here.

This team is just nuts. I’ve been working with Dumb on this project, and suddenly he goes “silent”. In his mind, his driving the project (but only in his mind), so suddenly I was amazed at the lack of micromanagement I was experiencing.

So I took at look at source control to see what he’d been up to, and he’s off working on *another* project.

Now I’m sure he’ll be back, and I’ll hear about it the moment he is. But where’s the coordination? Where’s the communication? Neither he, ace project manager that he is, or my boss Smooth, ace project manager that he is, let me know that Dumb was off working on something else.

The short of it is, this is a crazy, dysfunctional team with terrible communication. I have no idea what anyone else is working on, not even the peers that I am working with directly.

My dad made a good point though. Because Smooth is so ambitious, he doesn’t want to report any bad news. For him, everything is rosey and peachy in his little domain. So as long as I go with the flow, and chalk up some bullet points here and there, I have good job security.

I’m not satisfied with that, though, and I’m not willing to tolerate the bullying that goes on because the team, and a couple of its members, are so broken. It’s just a matter of waiting for the good position to come through, or else look for a good opening to jump through to another team.

Not Yet End of Crappy Job, Revisited

Well, OK it’s not over yet. I spoke with Smooth today, and decided not to change anything for now. I’m still holding out hope that my new/other job could come through. So this is an OK place for now.

Working with Dumb is painful, as usual, but I can just rise above that. Plus I have work for the new/other job I can do to keep me interested for the next little while.

Dumb is fixated on several design points, and just can’t let them go. I hope at the very least he was shaken and torn because I challenged him on those small points — nothing that I care much about — and has spent the last few days ruminating over them.

We have a meeting tomorrow, which could go either way. It will be interesting to see what Dumb comes up with this time.

End of Crappy Job, part II

So my new manager wrote from California; they aren’t going to fund the position I wanted after all, but may roll it up into a larger effort that’s going on around User Generated Content.

Which means that the job I wanted isn’t going to materialize, and I am simply stuck in the crappy job I have now,working with Smooth, Dumb and Nasty.

So it’s time to get the ball rolling on moving to another group. I’ll talk to the boss I wanted to have on Tuesday or Wednesday, and let her know that I’d like to find something else in the department to work on & see what she can to do help.

It’s going to be sticky, though, because for some reason my current boss, Smooth, wants to have me on the team — even though I don’t get invited to any team meetings, not included in any design discussions, or haven’t done any work for him in the last 2 months.

I think what happened was since I was working for one of the high-ups, it became  prestigious for him to have me on his team. Needless to say, he is a snivilling, ass-sucking little weasel.

There is also the possibility that they won’t be able to come up with a solution I like — either jerking me around on how long it takes to transition, or claiming that there’s no where for me to go after all. But right now the job market in my field is red hot, so it shouldn’t take long for me to find something quickly, although I’d have to camp out on Smooth’s crappy team for a few weeks.

I’m disappointed the budget isn’t coming through for the new job, but I’m also glad it’s coming to a resolution. I’ve been uncomfortable “flying under the radar” for the last couple of months. It will be good to get back to work.

Working with Dumb

I haven’t written as much about working with Dumb yet. I think I am just more fascinated with psychopathic personalities than stupid personalities.

I suppose that’s not fair to my co-worker Dumb (full name Dumb and Compulsive), because he is a real fruit loop himself. He seriously has a few wires crossed. But he compensates by being over-formal and compulsive.

Anyway, after I spoke with Smooth about this project, I went over to Dumb’s desk to touch base. I asked him to send me the documentation for the project. Basically, he just needed to send me two Word docs that he had on hand. One came from the business user, and the other was a rough draft that he had sent to them.

That was at 11:00. At 3:00, I finally went over to his desk and stood with him, smiling and polite, until he sent me the document. I think he was annoyed with me.

hehehehehe

Anyway, he’s working really hard to wrap his brain around this project, and it’s kind of embarrassing and painful to watch. The  thing that will save him is that the folks he needs to integrate with are really smart, so they’ll carry him. Then he can obsessively generate a mountain of pointless documentation, for which Smooth will be very impressed.

My goal is just to stay clear of it all for as long as I can. Because Dumb is obsessive and compulsive, he has bad anxiety issues. I’ve learned that I can play on those to -ah- incent him to stay away from me, too.

I’m just sad about being stuck on another crappy project with Smooth and Dumb. Fortunately, the “side project” that I’ve been doing is interesting work, so I’m willing to see how it plays out for a few more weeks.

Smooth and Dumb — Oh boy!

So my manager Smooth has called me back to a project. I’ll be working with my co-worker Dumb (full name, Dumb And Compulsive).

Smooth has been ignoring me for a couple of months, which has been really nice. But talking with him again just reminded me why I was such a rush to get off his team. He’s basically just crazy. Communication is really painful with him. All the technical facts enter his head, and then they get all jumbled up. If he can sit at his desk and work through it, he can eventually put together a big picture. But I think he really relies on his team to assemble the pieces for him, which he can then parrot to the folks in the business units.

Which, by the way, isn’t bad in itself. What makes it bad is that there’s a nastier side. He’s basically like a small, over-competitive child, playing with toys he doesn’t understand, and he gets frustrated and angry easily. Fortunately, the way he expresses his anger and frustration is by being — smooth. So he’s more of the assassin type than the “rager” type.

Six of one, half a dozen of the other. The advantage of working for an assassin is that everything moves much more slowly, and that gives me time to consider my moves. And get paid while doing it.

Edit: BTW I should mention it took me a long time to figure this out about him. His primary strategy is to set loose his two hounds, Dumb and Nasty, and let them do the dirty work of harassing and bullying.

I have to admit, though, that I do appreciate the leeway he’s given me for the past couple of months. I think he’s under the impression that I’ve been instructed from above to work on my side project, when in fact I’ve been told to work on the side project as my main work allows. However, one way or another, it’s been nice having this time and I am grateful he’s been looking the other way.

This time, one thing that struck me as I was compelled to make small talk about our Thanksgiving breaks, is that he has inappropriate eye contact. He was being friendly, but fixed me for the whole non-technical part of the conversation with a steady, non-blinking gaze. You know, the blank stare and flat affect. Go see “No Country for Old Men” if you’re not sure what I mean. I don’t think it was intentional; but, paired with some of the other behaviors I’ve seen from him, fits right in.

Edit: By contrast, when we got to the technical part of the conversation, he didn’t keep the steady, unblinking gaze, but was actually kind of flustered. Even frustrated. I’ve found in working with Smooth, Dumb and Nasty that they just hate it when I express opinions. I’m not supposed to do that. I’m supposed to sit there smiling and listen to their wonderful ideas. Which means, of course, that I am going to have lots and lots of opinions during the course of this project.

So it sort of fits in with what I’ve felt for a long time. That this guy is a low-grade psychopath who just happens to have a really, really good “mask.” He’s perfect for the large corporate world. I just need to get through the situation for another month or so, and the goal for December and January will be to land myself in a better situation.

OK I was being paranoid

I asked my manager, and he was actually very reasonable. Sounds like they are hiring for another position in my team, but for now they are not looking for someone to fill my seat.

Eventually, they’ll have to. But for the time being I think they are content filling the other position.

I’m actually happy with the straight answer my manager gave me. I get frustrated with the politics on this team, a lot, but at least in a one on one setting it’s nice to talk with him.

Crappy Job Almost Over?

I heard my current manager, Smooth, talking with some other folks about a job candidate. I’m in a funny position where I am waiting for a transfer to another group while my manager, Smooth, tries to back-fill my position to fill my chair. While I’m sitting in it.

The truth is, I am totally rooting for him. This is a nasty little group driven by rotten politics and bad personalities. So if my chair disappears from under me, it will force the issue and propel me to a new group.

There’s always a chance it will propel me into the street. But, first, even that is better than the current situation, and second, I’ve built up a good enough reputation that there are lots of places I could go internally even if the now position that I really want isn’t yet ready.

So, anyway, go go go!