What to do if you hate your boss

 In Career Change, Stress

There is nothing worse than having a bad boss. If work isn’t challenging enough, adding the stress of not respecting—or even hating—your boss can make for some long days. The American Time Use Survey (2013) estimates that the average American (age 25-54) spends 8.7 hours a day in work-related activity—and if you hate your boss, that is a lot of stress to contend with for nearly 45 hours a week. And anyone with even a loose grip on reality knows there is often little that can be done or will be done about your bad boss.

4 Tips to Make Hating Your Boss More Tolerable

  1. Acknowledging it to yourself will make it better, not worse. Professional pain is legitimate, yet often we try to put a positive spin on it. It does not matter if you are right, wrong, good or bad—admitting to yourself that you do not respect or care for your boss can actually bring relief to a seemingly impossible situation.
  2. Avoid gossip, complaining and speculation. Talking about your boss behind her back will only make you feel worse about yourself in the long run and could also seriously harm your own professional reputation. As tempting as it is to share your pain, it is best to resist the urge to gossip or speculate.
  3. Control what you can. This is a good time to get everything that is within your control, under control. Manage the projects, tasks or customer interactions that you have control over with supreme care, and enjoy that control. If you feel like you have no control over anything, find something that you can control—like your office, desk, laptop, car, etc., and get it organized and within your control. Dominating something will make you feel better; feeling better will give way to ideas.
  4. Set some goals and deadlines. Once you have done a great job with numbers 1-3 above and have sustained it for 3-4 weeks, then it might be a good idea to set some deadlines for yourself to take action about this situation. The action could include you confronting your boss, talking to a higher-up about it, working around it, or taking more assertive actions, like looking for another job, calling in a third party or filing a formal complaint.

 

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