Types of Bosses

So, in my four years and some odd months in Corporate America, I’ve had seven bosses.  I just mentally recounted in my head, and yup, that’s right – seven.  Seems like too many for that amount of time, huh?  Out of those managers, I’ve had a couple that I’ve liked and that *gasp* actually encouraged my career, a few that were tolerable, and one belittling jerk.  Being in the corporate environment and having had the chance to study these boss creatures from inside their own little world, I’ve broken down boss taxonomy into a number of categories:

• The Overly Career-Oriented Boss with No Life:  This type of boss has made what should be a career into a life, and has blurred the lines between work and home so much that the two have become one.  This person lives for work – they’re up and at ’em early in the morning, and write emails late into the night.  This is the type of person who will consistently send you a memo at 11:00 p.m., making you wonder when you come in the following morning, “Did this person actually expect me to read this last night?”  Probably not – it’s just that this person has work-induced insomnia, meaning, that he or she wakes up in the middle of the night with job-related ideas and absolutely must let you know about them.  This might bring you to think, “Does my boss have a life?”  Well, the answer to that question is most likely, and quite frankly, “No.”  In my experience, these types of people are typically middle-aged individuals who are single or divorced, and either have adult children that have long since moved out, or never had kids in the first place.  This type of boss also tends to have multiple fluffy dogs or cats, and will have many pictures of the pets around the office, possibly dressed up in holiday attire.  This manager is most likely a well-meaning person who cares about employees, but who can be a bit much with the constant 4 a.m. emails.  The encouraging, good bosses that I’ve had in my tenure at Big Corporate Company have been of this variety.
• The Power-Hungry:  This manager breed is a more evolved version of the overly career-oriented one (or maybe I mean a more devolved version?).  They often have most or all of the characteristics of the Overly Career-Oriented type, but with an added level of greed and a little less of a conscience.  This person doesn’t just live for work, but lives to be the absolute best at work (note that this is probably futile, since you’re most likely not going to be the richest or the most powerful person in the company, and all of this devotion to material goods is just going to leave you without a family or social life), which isn’t a bad trait to have, but can be bad when it totally consumes you.  The Power-Hungry Boss will also send you emails at all hours of the day, and will sometimes come across as insulting.  Your boss will rarely say “thank you,” will always insist that he or she is correct, will project his or her stress onto you, and will like to point out the tiny little errors (or errors that he or she invented) in your work. An interesting fact about these people is that, ironically, they are usually not even good at what they do.   Their emails will have countless typos; a middle-schooler could see that they have no grasp of the English language.  This is especially ironic when they work in communications.  However, annoying though these people are, they’re not out to get you so much as they’re just being self-centered and thinking of all the glory to be had.
• The Outright Jerk:  Only one boss that I’ve had fits into this category.  She’s middle-aged, has never been married (surprise – maybe it’s because she’s mean and makes Medusa seem comely), has no kids, doesn’t even have a little barky dog, lives alone, and works so much that she’s lucky to get a shower or talk to someone other than the guy delivering her takeout Chinese food.  Knowing all this about her personal life, I honestly feel very sorry for her.  She’s let work possess her life so much that she is actually out to get you, and will let you know it.  I know this because I was the brunt of her aggression.  She’d leap over the line from assertive to aggressive, never let me know I’m doing a good job, didn’t offer any sort of constructive feedback, and never encouraged career growth whatsoever.  She told me that my work was, “not at all what she expected,” but never told me what she expected in the first place.  She very tactlessly let me know that I either had to leave her team, or she was going to give me a bad performance review because I, “have shown no improvement.”  Funny, ‘cuz up until that point, she hadn’t indicated that I needed to improve on anything, and gave me no specifics.  She likes to cause anxiety, feeds on putting others down, and would probably answer to the name “She-Devil.”  If you encounter this type of boss (which I hope you do not), my advice is to try to get out as quickly and as unscathed as possible.

I have to be honest – I’ve yet to have a boss that has the whole career-life thing in balance.  In every case, I’ve seen the scales shifted very much toward work.  Come on, I mean, the marketing communications department will not cease to exist if you don’t check your email in the wee hours of the morning.  The company will keep making money if you finish up your work at 5 p.m. and put in a reasonable amount of overtime.  It’s good to be devoted to your job, but it’s better to be even more devoted to your family, and to your self.  ‘Nuff said.

Corporate Phrase of the Week:

Preempt value:  One of the “corrections” to my writing that I received from a Power-Hungry Boss.  I seriously don’t know what that would even mean.  Is it like how football games preempt regularly scheduled programming?  Why would you want to preempt value – wouldn’t you want value now?

Example:  Big Faceless Company will announce new solutions that will preempt value for clients.

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