10: Choosing the Right Approach
There are various approaches you can take for dealing with a tyrant, balancing what is most natural and comfortable for you against what is ultimately effective in addressing the tyrant's behavior.
Consistency is important: it may require a trial-and-error process to discover the best approach, but it's important to arrive at a single method that is effective, such that you may practice it with ease. (EN: The drawback is that, unless he's painfully unintelligent, the tyrant will come to recognize and expect it, and will seek to defeat it, which requires changing tactics.) If you constantly switch methods, you will not develop expertise, and you may find that the randomness is damaging to progress.
In this chapter, the author intends to consider "popular" guidance (EN: the quotes on "popular" are his, not mine) to better determine how they are intended to work, so you can consider their effectiveness. There is no single "ideal" approach that will be effective with all tyrants in all situations.
Approach #1: Stand Up for Yourself
The notion of assertiveness is a popular topic of the self-help industry. The basic idea is that a person who accepts abuse without standing up for themselves is "enabling" the abuser - who may not even be aware that their behavior has a negative impact on others unless someone points it out to them.
It's also true that some aggressive people look to provoke aggression in others. An assertive boss disdains a spineless employee who constantly toadies to him, and sees such a person as a weakling who is incapable of holding his own - and at the same time seems an assertive employee as being "like him" and demonstrating competence and management potential.
However, there is a line to be drawn between "asserting" and "aggressive" behavior. If you go too far, you pose a threat to the tyrant's power, and will provoke a strong fear reaction intended to put you back in your place.
The advantavges of this approach is that it sets clear and explicit boundaries for behavior early in the relationship, provides you with an immediate release so that you do not bottle up emotional baggage, and builds confidence in your ability to make demands.
The drawbacks are that it can backfire with serious consequences, increases your stress level, leads to escalation of emotions, and provides only a temporary feeling of resolution rather than a lasting success.
Approach #2: Support Your Boss
Going back to the retail notion, there is the attitude that "the customer is always right," and that your service to your boss as a supplier of labor is to appease their every demand, no matter how poorly he treats you.
The author believes the rationale of this approach is simply to abide the tyrant's behavior until you can find another job or are assigned to a different boss. However, it's not always a "losing" strategy if you can find a way to support your boss while keeping your dignity intact. Ultimately, you will not always get your way, and will need to cede to a person in a position of authority.
If done properly, the advantages of this approach is that it aligns your goals (albeit unilaterally) with your boss's agenda, demonstrates a willingness to be flexible, and promotes collaboration toward common goals.
The drawbacks are that it generally is not effective as a long-term approach, creates the sense that you are weak-willed and/or unintelligent, and is a method of avoiding conflict rather than acknowledging and dealing with it effectively.
Approach #3: Document Communications
Many HR professionals will instruct people to document their office communications, but the problem is that this documentation holds little sway - it is not defensible "proof" of anything, and HR departments will not take action on it, unless the behavior you document is illegal in nature or harmful to the interests of the firm.
Most companies simply aren't concerned about the way their managers treat employees so long as it does not create a legal exposure for the firm - and even then, HR departments seek to protect the interests of the company, not of the individual employee. Their interest is in resolving the problem only if there is grounds for the employee to bring suit, and then to dissuade the employee from doing so.
However, documenting communication can be useful as a method of collecting information when it is fresh in your mind for later analysis, rather than relying on your own ability to recall specific details and store a large amount of information for a long period of time.
The advantage of doing so is to help pinpoint patterns of behavior, record your progress, and base your perceptions on an accurate record of events.
The disadvantages are that there is a negative perception of a person who secretly takes notes about other people, it facilitates and encourages you to "tattle" in an ineffective manner, and builds the perception that you are a hostile employee who is gathering evidence to take legal action against your employer.
Approach #4: Escalation
Another approach to dealing with a problem boss is to go up[ the chain of command, to speak with his boss about the behavior. However, there are a host of problematic outcomes.
In general, the ranks of management are an "us" which views employees as "them." In speaking to your boss's supervisor, you are dealing with a person who knows your boss better than he knows you - you are an outsider who is complaining to an executive about a person he likely favors.
Additionally, bad management is a matter of culture. There is seldom a good organization with one bad apple - more often, an organization supports and encourages managers, and even trains them to be manipulative and deceitful toward employees. Your boss's boss has the same mindset, and may even consider your boss to be an effective manager for the way he treats his employees - or at best, he accepts the impact on morale as collateral damage, necessary to getting things done.
Odds are, you won't find a sympathetic ear. At best, your boss's boss will listen patiently to your complaints, and then report to your boss what was said, and who said it, implying that you are a problem employee who needs to be dealt with.
In rare instances, when your boss's behavior is not endorsed by the organization, you may find that some action is taken and that your complaints are taken as a sign of concern for the company's welfare. But for this to succeed, the person to whom you escalate must already have evidence, other than your word, that there is a problem.
The drawbacks have already been discussed: the person you approach may not want to help you at all, will likely report the complaint back to your boss, and you will be labeled as a "trouble-maker," decreasing your credibility even if your complaints are legitimate.
Approach #5: Share Your Experience
Sharing information about painful or traumatic experiences is a method of coping, and people who suffer together form a kind of social bond from the shared experience. There is often significantly strong morale in the mutual support of employees suffering under the same tyrant boss.
Unfortunately, "misery loves company" and tales of woe feed the rumor mill, and the details are often exaggerated until the stories become distorted to the point of being unbelievable. In general, rumors are presumed to be untrue.
There is also the effect of rumors getting to the wrong people - friends and allies of the tyrant. Especially once the details are changed or exaggerated, it may turn into a situation where you are accused of saying things you never said.
There is also the problem of peer pressure: people who hear a tale of misery are quick to dole out bad advice about what you ought to do, and when you've heard it from enough people, it might to start to sound like a good idea.
If you can share your experiences discreetly, it may help you vent some frustration so that you can focus, and just "talking through it" can help you sort things out and consider effective ways to take action. To achieve these benefits, you must be able to trust in the confidence of others.
However, it can also foster a sense of helplessness and even isolation if others don't appear to share your perspective, it can create gossip or rumors that will get back to your boss, and you may be perceived as a "whiner."
Approach #6: Just Let it Go
Avoidance is a psychological defense mechanism: rather than dealing with your negative emotions, you simply seek to let go of them and take no action. While this is clearly a way to avoid becoming emotionally overcome by a situation, it also prevents you from becoming effectively engaged with it.
However, disengaging is not always negative: "pick your battles" is generally good advice, and there's some middle ground to be defined between the person who doesn't care about the things he ought to ad the person who cares too little about the things he should. In any situation, there is value in considering whether it is worthwhile to react at all.
The advantage of "letting go" is that it enables you to dismiss matters of no significance that are not worth your effort to work to resolve, provide that you do not also dismiss those that are worth the effort. It also facilitates getting into the habit of setting aside emotion to deal with situations objectively, and evaluating them from a rational perspective.
However, avoidance is a form of acceptance: if you "just let it go", the tyrant assumes that the situation is acceptable to you, it does not solve the problem, and it creates a tendency to abide worse and worse circumstances.
Approach #7: The Group Effort
The idea that employees ganging together to pool their negotiating power against the tyrannical rule of management was the basis for the formation of labor unions, which were for a time effective in using their collective bargaining power to improve their situation.
However, labor unions have never been effective over the long term. Historically, they begin by making reasonable demands but ultimately begin to use their negotiating power to the detriment of the firm that employs them. Much of domestic industry has in this way been destroyed by unions, and companies are on guard against them.
As such, when any group of employees gang together to file a complaint, the first concern of the company is not to address the complaint, but to go into defensive mode and refuse to acquiesce to even reasonable demands for fear that this will embolden the employees to escalate.
This makes it difficult for groups of employees to organize at all: as word spreads that they are "getting together," it presents a toady with an opportunity to tattle, and given that organized labor is perceived as a threat, for his allegations to be taken seriously.
If handled cautiously, complaints from a number of employees carry greater weight than those of a single "whiner" or "troublemaker." However, if these employees appear top be acting as an organized group, the company will side with the manager and react harshly against them, and particularly against those who appear to be ringleaders.
Loose Notes
The author starts a bit obliquely: he compares handling a tyrant to riding a bicycle: it's a difficult learning process that requires intense concentration on the mechanics of the activity, and the acceptance of the fact that you will likely fail several times before you get the knack. But as you become more experienced, the mechanical motions of pedaling and keeping your balance become natural, and you begin to pay attention to other things. Once you are an accomplished rider, you stop thinking about the effort and begin to enjoy the scenery.
The end-of-chapter exercise is meant as an aid to assess your own commitment to change. The author encourages readers to list the specific outcomes they want to achieve and then rate each, on a scale of one to five, in terms of their commitment. (EN: The problem is, there's no indication of what the numbers "mean" - what differentiates "level three" commitment from "level four" commitment. Ultimately, it is a way of prioritizing the most important goals, but in a vague and haphazard way.)