My boss is bad: Are you a victim?

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.