Stop making excuses for Toxic Bosses

Far too many people have worked for a boss who has bullied or belittled them. This behavior takes many forms: insulting direct reports in public, invading their privacy, or gossiping about them behind their backs. Toxic actions such as these contribute to not only employee dissatisfaction and stress, but even more harmful outcomes such as alcoholism, family conflict, and health complaints. Yet, abusive bosses continue to wreak havoc and leave destruction in their wake. Why, then, does it seem that organizations and employees put up with toxic bosses?

In a recent study published in Personnel Psychology, we examined one possibility: After a run-in with a toxic boss, the tendency of many people is to heed what Abraham Lincoln called the “better angels of our nature” and forgive the indiscretion, especially when the boss appears to be making amends for their uncivil behavior. For example, former U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson was notoriously ruthless toward his staff, constantly berating them in public, calling for favors at all hours of the night, and throwing objects at them when they did not work as quickly as they wanted. George Reedy, a long-time aide of President Johnson, wrote in a memoir about how Johnson’s cruelty extended “even to people who had virtually walked the last mile for him.” However, it seemed that whenever Reedy considered resigning, Johnson would present “a lavish gift” or do something else that made it so Reedy “forgot his grievances” and kept working for Johnson. However, Johnson’s abusive behavior toward Reedy persisted — and even worsened — during the 15 years they worked together.

It may be that bosses, like Johnson, are not really trying to make nice with employees after an abusive tirade, but, rather, are attempting to fake nice in order to manipulate their social image without actually changing their behavior. In other words, some bosses are skilled at looking good after an episode, leading employees and higher ups to forgive and forget — until the next tirade occurs and the cycle continues. If this is true, employees and organizations may be unknowingly enabling toxic boss behavior by being too forgiving of it.

How Bosses Act After Abusing Employees

In our study, we examined this possibility using a daily survey approach; this enabled us to uncover the motives and behaviors of abusive bosses in “real time” with a sample of people that past studies argue have the keenest insight into those motives and behaviors: the bosses themselves. In particular, we surveyed 79 bosses that volunteered to participate in our study via an online platform. Their responses were anonymous so that they would be more candid about their abusive behaviors and feelings at work. These bosses — who worked across various organizations and industries, such as consulting, education, healthcare, and retail — were surveyed twice per day for 15 consecutive workdays across three weeks to understand how they felt and responded when they abused their subordinates. Specifically, each morning we asked supervisors about their abusive behaviors the day before by inquiring about whether they told their subordinates they were incompetent, invaded their subordinates’ privacy, or made negative comments about their subordinates to others the day before. At the same time, we asked the bosses how they felt their prior-day behaviors impacted their current moral and social standing. Finally, later that same day, we asked them how they subsequently behaved toward their subordinates throughout the day.

We found that when bosses reported having abused their employees, they viewed their social image as being damaged, with this effect being especially pronounced among those who reported at the outset of the study that it was important to them that they appear moral to their employees. In other words, among those bosses who were highly focused on having an image of adhering to a strict moral code, engaging in abusive behaviors, such as ridiculing employees, made them feel more concerned with their social image.

As a result, the offending bosses reported taking multiple steps to repair their social image. Specifically, they reported that they engaged in impression management behaviors, such as doing small favors for employees with the express purpose of getting employees to view them more favorably, while also engaging in self-promoting behaviors like highlighting how hard they work or showcasing past successes. However, these bosses did not admit to engaging in behaviors aimed at genuinely repairing the damage done by the prior-day abuse, such as offering a sincere apology.

Consequently, even though abusive bosses may appear on the surface to be considerate to their victims following one of their abusive episodes, the bosses in our study reported behavior that was instead a superficial attempt at impression management. As a result, toxic bosses were not likely to change their ways, mainly because their focus was on covering up their bad behavior through manipulative ingratiation and self-promotion behaviors, not on actually changing their toxic behaviors.

Stemming the Cycle of Abusive Leadership

In the end, our research offers a word of warning: by giving bosses a pass when they abuse employees but act nice afterwards, organizational leaders and employees end up reinforcing the cycle of mistreatment that pervades so many companies. Unfortunately, it appears from our research and that of others that toxic bosses don’t change as much as we would like them to — instead, the bad behavior tends to continue or, oftentimes, gets worse. Even when abusive bosses may appear genuinely repentant after a tirade, they usually have ulterior, self-interested motives. Our research shows that there is little organizational leaders can do to break the cycle of self-centered, manipulative, and uncivil behaviors, other than implementing zero-tolerance policies for toxic supervisory behavior and consistently adhering to those policies, even when bosses appear to strive to make up for their bad behaviors. Sanctions, rather than forgiveness, are important, especially since past research has indicated that sanctions curtail abusive behavior.

That said, a boss’s behavior can never be fully regulated by organizational policy; in the end, whether a boss fails to exhibit common decency and civil behavior to his employees is ultimately up to them. Sincere apologies and reconciliations on the part of the offending boss are the only sustainable way of regaining credibility and moving forward from a lapse in civil behavior. Further, engaging in these surface-level efforts to manipulate employees’ perceptions can be draining for supervisors; as such, acting genuinely is imperative. The best course of action for offending bosses is to be cognizant of their own motives and behaviors in the aftermath of an abusive outburst.

Some have recommended that bosses take time each day to reflect on their motives in order to stay motivated. Indeed, we urge the same type of reflection when it comes to behavioral lapses. If bosses take time each day to honestly appraise their own behavior and motives, and to carefully reflect on the impact of their behavior on their subordinates, they may be able to really make nice instead of fake nice in the wake of a transgression.

References: 

Shawn McClean

Stephen H. Courtright

Troy A. Smith 

Junhyok Yim

Focus Management

Hey, do you have a sec? I have a quick question:

On average, how many times per work day would you say you're being interrupted?

While everyone’s mileage may vary, years of field experience working with executives and managers for companies of varying sizes and industries has shown me that the average person is either interrupted by others or interrupts themselves mentally at least 15 times per hour or more. To answer or not to answer. That is the real question!

Here’s the rub, Hamlet. All of these little interruptions are like small cuts from a poisonous dagger right to the heart of your productivity. While I teach courses on time management, I'm of the opinion that time management, in the classical sense, is deader than Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

The skill set of the future is what I would call focus management. I believe our ability or inability to protect our focus this skill will determine our career success and the success of our businesses.

Remember the “quick question” I asked up top? I call this the “Dreaded Double Q.” It's the most common offender. It isn’t just the needy co-workers bombarding you with an endless barrage “QQ’s.” A quick question can be self-inflicted when you’re the person interrupting their someone else. In fact, I find that the biggest offender of asking these little quick questions are company execs and managers, because, to some extent, they feel that their time is more valuable than their subordinates.
We besiege ourselves with these quick questions constantly, as well.

“When am I going to get that report done?”

“Do I have enough eggs to make a souffle for dinner?”

“Who’s idea was it to create a television network for gas stations?”

We ask ourselves these questions throughout the day. They happen quick and make brief appearances in the little corners of our minds. We’re accepting these questions without not realizing how extremely expensive they are.

No matter the source, the switch in attention is the problem. Basex research did a study a while back and found that the average knowledge worker loses 28% of their day due to interruptions and the recovery time associated with them. I've found that to be extremely accurate in my field experience. Twenty-eight percent may not seem like much, but, when you run the numbers, 28 % is roughly the equivalent of an entire work week every month. Put another way: one-quarter of the average company’s wages are wasted on switches and switching cost. Our inability to protect our focus is a significant challenge.

Does that sound bleak? Here’s some good news. The executives I've worked with have been able to master the art of focus. This new-found focus enables them to outpace and outdistance their peers, not necessarily because they are more gifted or better-skilled, but because their efforts are concentrated only on that which is of greatest value.

Unfortunately, the methods that many people are using nowadays to stay on top of their time management are outdated. Thirty to forty years ago these were effective tools, but they're no longer useful because of the pace of life and because we are constantly assaulting each other with quick questions.

In my new course on LinkedIn Learning on improving your focus, I talk about there are two sides to improving your focus.

1) We must protect it. We have to, in essence, play defense against all of the assaults of our attention.

2) We must grow it. Growth allows us to pull ahead of the pack. Metaphorically speaking, it's the offensive side of the ball. We stretch our muscles and become more and more effective at protecting our time.

Here are a few tips to get you started.

First, create your “finish line.” Create a clear and unchanging boundary in your day where work starts and ends. Some people, in an effort to feel that they're hard workers, will work "as long it takes" to get the job done. This attitude—while on the surface looks admirable—in reality, perpetuates a lack of focus. Instead, when you view time as precious and scarce, you force yourself to say no to most everything. In fact, the most successful people I know are champions of the of the letters “N” and “O.” When time is limited, and focus is a priority, you are only able to say yes to that which is most valuable.

Second tip: limit and schedule your time for processing. While this mostly applies to email, it also deals with the paperwork in your inbox and the ideas that pop into your head. A recent study titled “Email Duration Batching and Self-Interruption” showed that the more time you spent in email, the less productive people feel. Those who have a scheduled time, however, to self-check the email outperform those who rely on digital notifications. Create a schedule in your calendar so that you check email rather than email checking you. 

Which leads to another tip: turn those silly notifications OFF! It seems that every single device that we possess ispossessed itself. The ever present beeps and buzzes divert our attention from whatever it is we’re supposed to be doing. Whether it is a text notification or another invite from a friend who wants to reconnect with you by playing Candy Crush, these notifications are slicing our day into pieces and killing our productivity.

Choose your emergency channel, one place whether it's a particular messaging app or a limited number that you have, phone number or text message number where you allow notifications to come through. For the geek-inclined: think of this as your “bat phone.” But every single other source of notification whether it is your desktop screen putting a nice friendly popup to remind you that an email came in, or it's the various apps that you have, you turn all of those to off. Disabling notifications will not only reclaim massive amounts of time in your day but will also make it easier for your brain to maintain focus. You will recondition your mind to stay locked in on important tasks.

The final tip deals with growing your focus. Create time in your day and your week for focused, strategic thinking.Your day shouldn’t be a game of Whack-a-Mole where you blindly jab at rodents popping up in front of you at any given point. Instead, make a little time for a deep dive into your mind. Focus on that which is worth the most money per hour.

“The Human Era at Work” study conducted by Harvard Business Review and The Energy Project found that only 16% of correspondents had time for creative or strategic thinking. If you want to excel in the workplace of tomorrow, you must not only allow this to happen, but you must seize the time and protect it fiercely. Your career and the success of your company depend on it. Devote at least a half an hour once per week to this kind of deep thinking.     

Then as you start to grow in your focus and protect your time, increase the amount of time you're spending to 45 minutes and an hour. The most effective executives that I work with spend typically at least 50% of their time in a single area.

We’ve explored several options to get you started on your journey toward greater focus. Before you move on to the next distraction of the hour, please pause and respond in the comment section below to one question:

“What's one thing you can do today to improve your focus?”

By taking that baby step, you'll move beyond gaining a little bit of knowledge from an article, to stretching your focus muscles

Source: Dave Crenshaw

Author, Speaker, Business Chaos Crusher

Ten Reasons Why the Human Resources Department Is Important

For small businesses and large conglomerates alike, the human resources or personnel function can be helpful for much more than simply processing payroll or handling the open enrollment season once a year. Human resources plays an essential role in developing a company's strategy as well as handling the employee-centered activities of an organization.

Human Capital Value

Having an in-house human resources function is important. An in-house human resources staff or a human resources expert on staff can increase the understanding of how important human capital is to the company's bottom line. For small businesses, in particular, human capital is critical because so many smaller firms have employees who perform cross-functional duties. With a smaller workforce, if just one person leaves, it leaves the company with a huge gap to fill and a potential threat to the company's profitability.

Budget Control

Human resources curbs excessive spending through developing methods for trimming workforce management costs, which includes negotiating better rates for benefits such as health care coverage. In addition, human resources ensures competitive and realistic wage-setting based on studying the labor market, employment trends and salary analysis based on job functions. As some small businesses have budget constraints, this human resources function is especially helpful.

Conflict Resolution

Workplace conflict is inevitable, given the diversity of personalities, work styles, backgrounds and levels of experience among employees. A human resources manager or a staff person specially trained to handle employee relations matters can identify and resolve conflict between two employees or a manager and employee and restore positive working relationships.

Training and Development

Human resources conducts needs assessments for the organization's current workforce to determine the type of skills training and employee development necessary for improving skills and qualifications. Companies in the beginning or growth phases can benefit from identifying training needs for existing staff. It's much less expensive than the cost to hire additional staff or more qualified candidates. In addition, it's a strategy that also can reduce turnover and improve employee retention.

Employee Satisfaction

Human resources specialists usually are charged with the responsibility of determining the level of employee satisfaction -- often an ambiguous measurement at best. With carefully designed employee surveys, focus groups and an exit interview strategy, human resources determines what underlies employee dissatisfaction and addresses those issues to motivate employees.

Cost Savings

The cost to hire new or replacement workers, including training and ramp-up time, can be exorbitant for employers, especially small businesses. With a well-constructed recruitment and selection process, the human resources function can minimize expenses regarding advertising job postings, training new employees and enrolling new employees in benefits plans.

Performance Improvement

Human resources develops performance management systems. Without a human resources staff person to construct a plan that measures performance, employees can wind in jobs that aren't suitable for their skills and expertise. Additionally, employees whose performance falls below the employer's expectations can continue on the payroll, thereby creating wasted money on low-performing employees.

Sustaining Business

Through succession planning that human resources develops, the company identifies employees with the promise and requisite capabilities to eventually transition into leadership roles with the company. This is an important function as it can guarantee the organization's stability and future success.

Corporate Image

Businesses want to be known as the "employer of choice." Employers of choice are the companies that receive recognition for the way they treat employees; they are the companies for whom people want to work. Becoming an employer of choice means human resources balances recruiting the most qualified applicants, selecting the most suitable candidates and retaining the most talented employees.

Steadfast Principles

Human resources ensures the workforce embraces the company's philosophy and business principles. From the perspective of a small business, creating a cohesive work environment is imperative. The first opportunity human resources has to accomplish this is through wise hiring decisions that identify desirable professional traits, as well as orientation and on-boarding programs.

Source: Ruth Mayhew, 2015

Global imbalances,crisis and the lack of global governance

Gross domestic product

Vast disparities in per capital income levels continue to exist around the world. The catching-up process of the developing world, which has broadened since 2003, received a boost since the global crisis as key developed countries have struggled to recover from it. These post-crisis developments are not fully benign, since the hesitant and fragile recovery in developed countries risks holding back or even undermining income growth in developing countries. The fast shifting balance in the world economy is reflected in the decline in the share of developed countries in global gross domestic product (GDP).

Employment and unemployment

Widespread unemployment and underemployment in the global economy continues to present the most pressing social and economic problem of our time. The situation was made worse by the global crisis. While many developing countries merely suffered a temporary deterioration, the lasting labour market impact in major developed countries poses fresh challenges and risks to the continuation of positive runs in job creation and poverty reduction in the developing world. Ill-guided policies directed at the labour-market legacies of the crisis in developed countries risk global spillovers that could destabilize developing countries.

Current and account Imbalances 

Large current account balances have been at the centre of long-standing international economic policy debates regarding global imbalances. The United States has run persistent current account deficits since the early 1990s, with net private capital inflows as well as official inflows (i.e. international reserve accumulation by other countries) as the counterpart. A small and only partly evolving group of developed and developing countries features prominently on the surplus side of global imbalances. Current account imbalances may arise for a number of reasons and are not indicative per se of a systemic problem that needs coordinated intervention. Rather, it is the loss of competitiveness at the national level that causes an unsustainable current account deficit.

Misaligned exchange rate

Countries’ competitiveness positions are primarily shaped by trends in unit-labour costs and exchange rates. Since the end of the multilateral Bretton Woods exchange rate system, non-orderly floating of currencies has prevailed, featuring large exchange rate swings and persistent misalignments. Current account imbalances caused by unbalanced competitiveness positions matter both at the regional and global levels. Unbalanced competitiveness positions are the underlying cause of the ongoing European crisis. In general, exchange rate movements that are persistently inconsistent with achieving balanced global competitiveness positions provide strong evidence for the need to coordinate global currency markets.

Interest rates, volatile capital flows and exchange rate instability

Traditional theory holds that floating exchange rates insulate countries against external shocks and enlarge national policy space. Driven by stabilizing currency market speculation, movements in nominal exchange rates are held to compensate for inflation and/or interest rate differentials, so as to avoid any build-up of unbalanced competitiveness and trade positions. Actual experiences speak another language altogether. In the absence of proper global governance, global finance has become dominated by herd-like short-term risk-reward calculations that may ignore the gradual build-up of economic imbalances and related financial fragilities for a long time. The authorities of target currencies in the developing world are facing difficult choices.

Financial liberalization and the financialization of commodity markets

Sizeable commodity price volatility can have adverse effects at both the macroeconomic and microeconomic levels. The wide price fluctuations observed over the last decade coincided with major shifts in commodity market fundamentals, as well as with increased trading by financial investors in commodity derivatives markets. The financialization of commodity markets has accelerated significantly since about 2002–2004 and most probably reduced the reliability of price signals emanating from commodity futures exchanges. Greater market transparency and tighter regulatory measures are called for to contain the price impact of financial investors and the associated risk of price bubbles.

Global rebalancing and recovery contributions

After briefly shrinking during the global crisis, global imbalances in trade and financial flows have made a comeback during the recovery and remain large as of today. While the balances of the main surplus and deficit countries or regions are below their pre-crisis peak, there has been no fundamental change in the global imbalance constellation. Developing countries at large have contributed disproportionately to global rebalancing and recovery, while an increasing number of them have reached the point where rising current account deficits signal future risks of fragility and crisis.

Source: United Nations conference on Trade and Development 2012

Global imbalances,crisis and the lack of global governance

Employment and Unemployment

Work represents – for the majority of the population – the main source of personal income, the other sources being the revenues from capital and social transfers. For working-age populations, employment is also essential for social inclusion. As productivity growth and structural change, featuring job destruction, are inherent aspects of development, the timely creation of jobs in sufficient numbers is a permanent challenge. Job creation is of even more vital importance when population growth in conjunction with demographic and social factors yield a growing labour force ready for employment – or at risk of raising the reserve of unemployed or underemployed workers. Widespread unemployment and underemployment in the global economy continues to present the most pressing social and economic problem of our time because it is closely related to poverty, on the one hand, and social peace and political stability on the other.

 

Growth of employment and real gross domestic product in developed economies, 1971–2011
(Percentage)

Source: UNCTAD, TDR 2011 (Table 1.1) andTDR 2010 (Chart 3.3) March 2012 update;UNCTADstat database and Historical Statistics of Japan, Statistical Bureau

Note: Developed countries comprise: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States.

In developed economies, there is a strong link between GDPgrowth and employment creation. By contrast, in developing economies, changes in informal employment and self-employment dampen the effects of growth cycles on formal employment  (Chart). In the absence of social safety nets fulfilling this role in developed economies, in developing economies movements into and out of informal, low-quality employment is typically cushioning employment in the formal economy as captured in official statistics, if at all. The segmentation of the labour structure in developing countries reflects the dualism that characterizes their economic structures: The coexistence of a modern sector with relatively high productivity and a sluggish traditional sector with low productivity. Moreover, the segmentation also highlights the importance of the quality of employment created; above and beyond the sheer quantity of, perhaps, precarious and poorly paid jobs feeding the ranks of the working poor. While unemployment rates always have to be assessed in conjunction with labour force and employment data in both developed and developing countries. Classification of workers by employment status underlines that the self-employed and contributing family members continue to play a far more prominent role in developing countries (Table).

 

Real gross domestic product and employment by region, 2003–2011 (Annual average growth rate)
Region		03-08				09-10				2011
Developing economies		7.0		1.9		6.4		1.4		6.0		..
East Asia		8.9		0.6		8.6		0.4		7.6		2.0
South Asia		8.0		2.5		7.5		1.4		6.5		2.2
South-East Asia		6.0		2.0		5.5		2.3		4.8		2.7
West Asia		6.3		2.3		5.2		3.6		6.6		4.3
North Africa a		5.1		4.2		4.8		2.3		-0.5		1.3
Sub-Saharan Africa		6.4		3.0		5.4		2.8		4.7		..
Latin America and  the Caribbean		4.8		2.8		4.1		1.7		4.3		1.9
Transition economies		7.4		1.2		5.4		-0.5		4.5		1.0
Developed economies		2.3		1.3		1.4		-2.4		1.4		2.4
North America		2.4		1.3		1.5		-2.0		1.7		0.7
Asia		1.6		0.3		0.8		-0.8		-0.7		-2.1
Europe		2.4		1.4		1.5		-1.0		1.6		0.2
Source: UNCTAD, TDR 2011 (Table 1.1) and TDR 2010 (Chart 3.3), March 2012 update
Note: a North Africa excluding Sudan.

Given the pivotal importance of GDP growth as contributing force behind job creation and the prevalence of unemployment or underemployment in economies in general, events such as the collapse in GDP growth in the global crisis are bound to have a major impact on the employment and labour market situation too. It turns out that countries that achieved a quick and full recovery from the crisis generally only experienced a temporary deterioration in the employment and labour market situation. Until now, this has proved true for developing countries at large, although regional disparities exist. The global crisis has temporarily dented the favourable trends established during the global boom of 2003–2007, but not derailed the benign developments. In principle, developing countries are thus generally facing the same kinds of challenges regarding job creation and poverty reduction as prior to the crisis, their principal problem being that of deficient productive capacity rather than its underutilization.

 

The situation is starkly different in major developed economies, where actual GDP is falling well short of potential output and large negative output gaps persist (Table). In these economies the short-run challenge remains to fully undo the crisis impact on GDP and employment by appropriate macroeconomic policies. In case of failure, crisis-induced unemployment would in due course be classified as structural, which would become true to the extent that a deterioration of human capital (a loss of skills and morale due to long-term unemployment) and lack of physical capital (for lack of investment) artificially creates a state of deficient productive capacity resembling the situation in developing countries. Labour market and welfare system reforms designed to accentuate downward wage pressures would not solve the underlying problem of deficiency of effective demand in these countries, but make them also more similar to developing countries in terms of a widespread prevalence of working poor. It would also tend to make these economies more export reliant and focused on external competitiveness. 

The fragile and unfinished recovery of major developed economies affects developing economies as the former represent critical export markets for the latter. Ill-guided policies in developed countries pose new and additional challenges in developing countries.

• Highlights

• There is a strong link between GDP growth and employment creation;
• The relative role of social safety nets and informal employment varies in developed vs. developing economies, and stark differences in employment status of the labour force persist;
• The employment impact of the global crisis has proved temporary in many developing economies, but lasting in major developed economies;
• The underlying problem of insufficient effective demand and possible ill-guided policies pursued in developed economies cause spillover effects in the developing world.