My boss is bad: Are you a victim?

Posted by HR Zone in Managing people on Tue, 11/12/2007 - 15:43

Bosses and subordinates

Chetan Dhruve returns to his series on bad bosses, this time delving into the issue of 'victim-hood', pointing out that the 'powerlessness' of employees is not being given the legitimacy or seriousness it deserves.

In a previous article, I commented on systems thinking and bad bosses, and why we shouldn't blame individual bosses for bad behaviour.

Say someone comes to you in HR and pleads: "My boss is bad, please help me." Do you immediately respond: "Sure, we've got that covered", and whip out the policy document entitled 'victims of bad bosses'? No. Why not? Because there's no policy.

We all know that bad bosses exist. So why isn't there a policy? Simple: organisations do not officially recognise the existence of bad bosses, and by extension, their victims. If you have a bad boss, complaining is what you're absolutely NOT supposed to do.

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Editor's Welcome

 

Hello! And welcome back as we enter 2012, with a busy year ahead of us all. With talk of double-dip recessions, a possible partial or even full break-up of the Eurozone and unemployment rates set to hit nearly 9%, topics such as organisational streamlining, staff resilience and talent management are likely to be on many an HR professional's lips over the next 12 months.
 
But to lighten the gloom here in the UK, we also have the Queen's Diamond Jubilee and its attendant public holidays to look forward to at the start of June. Followed by two weeks of Olympic Games from 27 July to 12 August and the Paralympics from 29 August to 9 September, each generating their own excitement, but also issues to work through for hard-pressed HR departments trying to sort out the multifarious staffing issues in advance.
 
So with an interesting but challenging year to come, HRZone promises to be with you, supporting you all the way and providing our usual insightful blend of news, analysis, community blogs and expert comment to help you sort the wheat from the chaff. As ever, we love to hear from you too so feel free to either post your words of wisdom to our blog section yourself or, in the case of longer, more in-depth ‘expert voice’ articles, drop me a line with any ideas to cath.everett@siftmedia.co.uk.....
 
Cath Everett
HRZone Editor 
 
 
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