Have you ever experienced being put into hot water several times because your superior doesn’t like you? You are not alone. It happens. And I think this is especially true if a subordinate is deemed by his or her superior as a “threat” .
When you are a leader, you can’t afford to be insecure to your subordinates because if insecurity will get in the way, it can lead to counter-productive results in the organization.
What are the tell-tale signs that your boss is doing you a demolition job?
1. Memo is everywhere – Issuing a lot of memo is a sign of a disorganized office. It means that every small instruction has to be on paper that’s why your boss seems to transfigure himself or herself into a memo-making machine. If the memo is directed towards you, this could also be an indicator that your boss is collating evidences against you so that if he or she sees an opportunity to fire you, he or she is backed up with documented citations.
2. You are reprimanded for little things – If your boss despises you, every negligible error that you commit in the office will be magnified. If he or she sees a chance to humiliate you within the earshot of your officemates, that would be a pleasant experience for your aggressor. If you happen to have subordinates too, your boss will call your team the ‘most disorganized one’ even if everybody knows that it’s not true. So, never expect that your boss will praise you in front of other people.
3. Rules are stricter when imposed to you – A bad ass boss plays favourites and his chosen ones are either arrogant or obviously privileged. They easily get a raise in their pay check, their leave applications are approved faster, and they don’t receive written or verbal reprimands even if they are lousy at work.
4. They tag your overtime work unofficial – Even if your boss is aware that you are concentrating on a month-long project but you failed to kiss his or her ass every day, err... inform him or her that you will be spending extra hours in the office to work on your project, expect that the overtime hours that you filed will be stashed, quoting the rules of the Civil Service Code, under the presumption that you will no longer question his or her discretion because it is bound by the law.
5. Your office pals become distant to you – Your workmates who are close to you will be aggressed too. If they are ass-kissers, they will forget about your friendship and side with the boss because they will choose ‘benefits’ over harm. But if they wear thinking hats too, they will inform you that their hands are tied. Sympathizing and understanding officemates will apologize to you if that they can no longer help you because they are instructed to make your life in the office difficult. Here, the boss employs a “divide and conquer” strategy.
6. Blame game becomes common – If your boss writes a lousy press release and the chief executive disliked the content and writing style, he or she will tell the big boss that it was YOU who wrote it even if you did not.
7. You are no longer being given an assignment – There are times when you get into the office and you will find yourself surprised that everybody is busy and you’re not because you’re not included in the project. This is so because your boss doesn’t want to see you having an opportunity to garner accomplishments that will add feather on your hat.
8. People from other departments feel the animosity – You will be discretely approached by several people in the organization to ask you if there’s a gap between you and your boss. It is possible that your insecure head contacts the people who may have trust in you to inform them that the inter-department collaboration you handle is unofficial unless approved by him or her. This is really a sad scenario if your boss has selective memory when it comes to you. Your boss will deny knowing your on-going project even if he or she is always looped in the email or even if there was a prior conversation about it.
9. Your presence in the office is strictly monitored – Complimentary to item no.1, your boss will often contact your team mates to check if you’re around. If you’re there, your boss will make you feel unneeded. When you’re out to take a break, your boss will accuse you that you're always not found in your station. If your cool officemates will make fun out of the situation, you will be surprised to receive the “Call Me Baby of the Year Award” in your Christmas Party with matching explanation that your boss always misses you when you’re not around.
10. Walls have ears and all eyes are on you – In addition to item no.9, since you seem to be a threat to your boss, every little move that you do is being reported to him or her by the minions. Some may add unfounded side comments to make their report spicier. It must be true that, “you should keep your friends close but you should keep your enemies closer.”
11. You are asked to do crazy stuff. If you get to accomplish the task, the next one is crazier – Your boss will approach you to give you an insulting job such as to re-type a 50-page law book that is better purchased than re-encoded. You get to find a pdf version on Google which saved your time from re-typing the whole thing and e-mails the link to the boss where it can easily be downloaded. Your office messenger will go back to you to inform you that you are being asked by the boss again to photocopy 50 SETS of the 50-page book. Amazing.
12. Crocodile tears come out of his/her eyes - Your boss personally calls the HR officer beyond office hours to lament that one of his subordinates posted something nasty about him or her on Facebook and namedrops YOU as the most probable person to have done it. Your boss badmouths you and calls you unprofessional and disrespectful – even if you’re not and the Facebook post was done by somebody else.
13. All the working systems that you are using will be challenged and changed without your concurrence – You are safekeeping files for future research use. Here comes your nosy boss who wonders how come you still manage to accomplish something even if you’re not being given any workload at all. The boss finds out that you are maintaining files in a particular manner. Your boss will order you to change the way you keep your documents. When you get to follow the order well, the boss changes his or her mind again and finally orders you to SUBMIT all the files to him or her. Your important files are now all gone.
14. All the good men are disappearing one by one – A good leader sees and acknowledges potentials in people, trains them, and nurtures them so that they may become future leaders too. An insecure boss will only find the negative qualities of his men and will let go of them one by one because no one in the pool is allowed to become better.
It is so sad that there are crooked professionals who are like that, right?
Worry not. Believe in unicorns and sunshine after the rain. Let’s start counting our blessings and wiggle off the rubbish. Cheers to your exciting careers life!
No comments:
Post a Comment