Dealing with Difficult Bosses and Other Problem People

What Does Mindfulness Have to Offer? Part One

Relationships can be our greatest source of both consternation and joy. Humans are social creatures and social support has as big an impact on health as physical factors such as diet and smoking.

For most of us, our work life is embedded in a matrix of social relationships. As Bob Dylan said, “You’ve got to serve somebody; it may be the devil or it may be the lord but you’re gonna have to serve somebody.”

That somebody can make a huge difference in our experience of work. A pleasant, supportive, and interested boss, even if challenging contributes much to job satisfaction. A boss who is mean, tyrannical, petty, angry, backbiting, and so forth can contribute to dissatisfaction at work, and worse.

It will be useful to make a distinction between bosses who are merely difficult and those who are abusive. Difficult bosses may expect a lot of us, or we may disagree with their approach. The approach to difficult bosses will be different from abusive bosses. It will also be useful to distinguish between someone who is abusive in an isolated versus pervasive way. We’ll map out the territory of the problem in this column and follow-up with mindfulness-based solutions in subsequent entries.

In the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Business Week Bestseller, the provocatively titled, The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t by Robert Sutton reveals some harrowing statistics of bullying and abuse in the workplace.

• A 2000 study found 27% of Michigan workers had been mistreated at work with one in six reporting psychological abuse
• A 2002 Department of Veterans Affair study found 36% of workers reporting persistent mistreatment from co-workers and supervisors
• A 1997 study of nurses found that 90% reported verbal abuse by physicians in the previous year; a 2003 study found similarly that 91% of nurses had experienced verbal abuse in the past month

Similar results are found across professions, in different countries including Austria, Australia, Canada, Germany, Finland, France, Ireland, and South Africa. From 50-80% of this maltreatment happens from superiors to their subordinates. These sobering statistics suggest that you have probably been exposed to one of these workplace “assholes” or know someone who has.

What makes someone a workplace asshole? (Note: Sutton debated on whether to use the potentially offensive term asshole and considered other terms such as bully or jerk. He decided on the term asshole is being more authentic than the watered down version. The Harvard Business Review agreed with him when they published his article, “The No Asshole Rule.”)

This doesn’t just make work unpleasant. People quit their jobs at higher rates and, if they stay, are less satisfied and committed and more anxious, depressed, and burnt out. A negative encounter at work will have a five-fold greater impact on mood than a positive encounter. Sutton cautions, “It takes numerous encounters with positive people to offset the energy and happiness sapped by a single episode with one asshole.”

So, what makes a boss or co-worker an asshole? Sutton suggests two tests:

1. After talking to the alleged asshole, does the “target” feel oppressed, humiliated, de-energized, or belittled by the person? In particular, does the target feel worse about him- or herself?
2. Does the alleged asshole aim his or her venom at people who are less powerful rather than at those people who are more powerful?

He the presents a list of 12 “moves” used by assholes:

1. Personal insults
2. Invading one’s “personal territory”
3. Uninvited personal contact
4. Threats and intimidation, both verbal and non-verbal
5. Sarcastic jokes and teasing used as the insult delivery systems
6. Withering e-mail flames
7. Status slaps intended to humiliate their victims
8. Public shaming or “status degradation” rituals
9. Rude interruptions
10. Two-faced attacks
11. Dirty looks
12. Treating people as if they were invisible

These are not behaviors associated with a mindful approach to communication and relationship. We cannot count on our bosses to adopt mindfulness, so we’ll have to investigate how to best cope with one of these assholes if you have one or more of them in your life. Acceptance will be a key to this strategy.

Let’s touch on acceptance for a moment. Acceptance doesn’t suggest passive resignation. If you are cold and the window is open, get up and close the window. If you are cold and standing at a bus stop, you have a choice between acceptance or lack of acceptance. It doesn’t make sense to resist being cold when nothing can be done about it. Next week we’ll talk about the role of acceptance and mindful communication, as well other strategies for dealing with difficulty and potentially damaging people (and how to mitigate that damage).

For more information on mindfulness and audio samples, visit my website Exquisite Mind. The complete CD 1 is now available for listening and download, free. Visit here for a guided breathing and body scan meditation.

Arnie Kozak, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist, meditation instructor, and author of Wild Chickens and Petty Tyrants: 108 Metaphors for Mindfulness(Wisdom, 2009). He also the founder of the Exquisite Mind in Burlington,Vermont and writes a daily blog entitled Mindfulness Matters: Tools for Living Now! You can practice mindfulness meditation with Arnie every Friday morning from 8:00 to 8:45 (EST) in the eMindful.com online classroom. To login into this free meditation, click here.

As an expert in stress reduction, wellness, and mindfulness, Arnie will present weekly practical wisdom for transforming stress. His award-winning writing will help you to lead a richer and happier life.

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Tags: abuse, bullying, difficult bosses, mindfulness, social support, workplace satisfaction, workplace stress