Do You Learn More from Working for a Bad Boss than a Good Boss?

Bad bosses suck, as I often document here.  Of course, you knew that anyway -- many of you know it all too well from first hand experience.  But perhaps they do more good than I have given them credit for in the past. Carol Bartz, the feisty, tough, unusually plain-speaking CEO of Yahoo! (see this earlier post or this story), makes an intriguing point about bad bosses in today's New York Times that is weirdly related to my recent post On Noticing That You Don't Notice. Here is the link to the interview, and the argument I found especially intriguing:

I also think people should understand that they will learn more from a bad manager than a good manager. They tend to get into a cycle where they’re so frustrated that they aren’t paying attention actually to what’s happening to them. When you have a good manager things go so well that you don’t even know why it’s going well because it just feels fine.

When you have a bad manager you have to look at what’s irritating you and say: “Would I do that? Would I make those choices? Would I talk to me that way? How would I do this?”

There are several elements of this comment that made me stop and think. The first follows from my post on not noticing, as the implication is that when things are going great, you don't engage in very deep cognition about them, because little is happening to give you pause or upset you. In fact, this point is consistent with research on cognition and emotion suggesting that people in good moods do not engage in as much mindfulness,deep thought, or self-doubt as people in bad moods. 

The second thing that intrigues me is as I thought about some of the more interesting bosses I've been reading about and communicating with, I've ran into quite a few who make a related argument.  Perhaps most famous is the late Robert Townsend, author of the still amazing Up the Organization, who argued repeatedly that he learned how to be a good boss at American Express because his bosses were so bad and the company was so badly ran that he learned what not to do -- very close to Bartz's point.  Even closer is an amazing comment I posted here a couple years ago from a surgeon, who during his residency at a prestigious hospital, got together with  fellow residents every week to vote on the senior or "attending" surgeon who most deserved the "asshole of the week" award -- and wrote in a journal that had been passed down from generation to generation of residents. The great thing about this story is that he his fellow residents all vowed not to be assholes when they became more senior, and all -- who now hold prestigious appointments through the country -- have all worked to try to keep that vow.

Now, as much as I love Bartz's thought process, I do disagree with her that when people have a lousy boss and want to escape, she tells them " You have to deal with what you’re dealt. Otherwise you’re going to run from something and not to something. And you should never run from something."

That bugged me for two reasons.  The first is that, if these complaints are about a lousy boss who reports to Carol, it is her job to do something about it, not to just tell the victims to suck it up and just deal with it.  Indeed, there is so much research showing the damage that lousy bosses do to productivity, commitment, and well-being that Carol or any other boss who learns of a horrible boss below them in the pecking order owes it to their company to deal with it. The "victims" may be learning more, but those lessons come at a high price that hurts both organization's and people.

The second thing that bugs me is from the victim's perspective, which is that there is so much evidence that bad bosses do damage (recall this Swedish study on heart attacks), that if you care about your physical and mental health -- and those of the people you come in contact with, your friends, lovers, children, and so on -- that you should escape as soon as you possibly can.

Clearly, I don't agree with Bartz about everything, but I admire her enormously because she is so thoughtful and so straightforward, a refreshing voice in a world where too many people are afraid to express strong opinions.

This all raises a great question: What is the most important thing you ever learned NOT TO DO from working for a bad boss?

P.S. One another thing I agree with Bartz about -- in fact a headline of the article -- is that perhaps we ought to get rid of annual performance reviews, as there is good reason to believe that they do more harm than good, as I blogged about here and this Wall Street Journal article by Sam Culbert argues. 

UPDATE: I always appreciate the quality and range of comments that readers make, but in this case, they are even better than usual.  I suggest that you read them carefully.  This post has been up less then a day, so I expect even more good stuff and to change my opinion again over the coming days.  But my initial reaction to the comments is that I (and certainly Bartz) should have emphasized the dangers of bad bosses even more, the damage they do to people and as at least one comment implies, the danger that -- just as abusive parents tend to produce abusive children --  the odds are high that bad bosses will teach their followers to be bad bosses like them.  Also, by just talking to people who have survived and learned from bad bosses, and become bosses themselves, we blind ourselves to all the able people who have left companies and occupations because they had the sense to leave, were so damaged that they had to leave, or worse yet, became lousy bosses someplace else applying what they learned -- and after doing a lot of damage -- got fired and demoted. Yes, there are examples of the opposite effect, of people who have become great bosses by doing the opposite of past lousy bosses, but the psychological forces of imitation, learning, and identification with authority figures all push people in the opposite direction.  Perhaps the best way to learn for bad bosses is to watch and study other people's bad bosses -- that way you get the learning without the damage and risk of imitating their incompetent and nasty ways. 

Comments

[Lui Sieh]

Hi Bob and readers,

Check out the latest Adam Bryant's Corner column with Jeffrey Katzenberg, the chief executive of DreamWorks Animation SKG. This topic of learning from bad boss was right up there.

Cheers,

[Laura]

Bob, I agree that "sucking it up" is not the motto to follow when one of your subordinates is the bad boss. I don't care what your reason is; it's not good enough. When an entire company feels that strongly about the bad boss, chances are it's not sour grapes or a bad attitude on behalf of the employees. With that being said, a bad boss is just like anything else bad in life - if you have to find a silver lining from the experience, you definitely will when you work for a good boss, as I do. How I appreciate him when I look back at the track record of rude, arrogant, insensitive (in the extreme) and idiotic people I've worked for at times!

Laura

[Rodney Johnson]

Interesting question.

Bad Boss vs. Good Boss -
a. Which do you learn most from?
b. Which do you want to work for?
c. Which career path are you pursuing?

Its analagous to the question, do you learn most from a company on the way up, or on the way down.

I can say I did the dot com roll-up, and the dot com belly flop. I think I learnt most from the belly flop. That's not saying I want to repeat it. Many that went through that scenario were scared, a few were inspired. So my guess is - it depends on what kind of person you are.

[Lui Sieh]

Maybe we need to delve into some human psychology here? Stick vs carrot development? It's probably quite hard not to generalize as an individual is so unique by way of learning.

Personally, the experience(s) of a bad boss is instructive because it will show one what not to do, but also importantly act as a foil for the good boss and his/her impact on self.

A bad boss' impact should be readily apparent and start a thinking process on what's a better way (i.e. "active learning"). At the very minimum, bad bosses will create powerful emotional reactions. We ought to be conscious of that and to then understand "why?". In PM-speak, we call it "lessons learned". I think every person should do a playback in various time intervals (i.e. daily, weekly, monthly etc) as a continuous self-improvement process.

Every negative and positive experience presents a learning opportunity. Every person we encounter through life also is teaching us something. Some folks learn better with negative experiences and some with postivie ones. However, both definitely are needed - what not to-do and what to-do.

And for that, I'm grateful to all my bad bosses and good bosses.

[Loren Loiseau]

Great article and discussion. It is true that we all have much to learn in situations in which we find ourselves, however I have a strong reaction against Ms. Bartz's comments. It seems to me her comments are a justification for allowing bad managers to keep their jobs.

There are good, bad, easy and hard ways to learn any skill. The best way is to learn from someone who is competent and a good teacher. It behooves a company to have effective management training so that potential managers don't have to learn the hard way.

[Martin R-L]

On the top of my head, two things that have made me and my colleagues perform bad in two different workplaces are:

1. Micro-management (technical decisions) with lack of competence

2. Working long hours for six months

I've left both of those jobs.

[RG]

A couple of random flotsam:
1. to what extent is a bad boss a reflection of a bad corporation plus economy? it's when the going gets tough that you stop being able to give the same time, resources to your people?

2. In reading some of the "bad boss" descriptions, was anyone else struck with "that wouldn't bother me"? So some of that is fit. For ex, I actually agree with the comment about "you don't have to respect me, but you have to respect the position". I think that comes down to being a good team player - a boss will have other perspectives, priorities, and values to balance than what is visible to me. And sometimes he may even know that it's the "wrong" decision, but it's coming down from higher up. I'm actually more annoyed with bosses who think I need to respect them and their technical skills instead of their position.

3. I think what's powerful about the Rule, is that it contradicts my training which says that it's all about me, the subordinate, needing to figure out the right way to interact with the boss. If they're yelling at me, it must be my fault, right? Or I think there's a negative feedback loop happening, like we're just not communicating well. But some bosses are just jerks.

[Brian]

There are probably some important factors that determine whether a bad boss with make you better or worse.

I think it matters how closely prescribed the job is. If the job is clearly defined, the bad boss may "infect" other managers who only have one model of how to perform the job.

Likewise, if a job is more broadly defined, a bad boss may compel fellow employees to creatively improve their management skills.

[Judi]

Sorry - #5 of my previous post should have read that bosses should not be intimidated when people they supervise have knowledge, wisdom and skills that are greater than that of the boss - we all have strengths and weaknesses, we should expect that even people below us in the org chart will be better than us at things.

[Judi]

I have learned from bad bosses and by comparing bad and good bosses. What I have learned from bad bosses:
1. You cannot push everything into a policy.
2. When staff do not have autonomy they will become demoralized.
3. "Step on them" is not a management policy that will help the organization.
4. Don't give people whiplash (such as the time I was in a job where I was continuously told I was doing great and then suddenly called in for "serious issues")
5. A manager needs to recognize and not be intimidated when
6. Know your own values and how they impact your decisions - recognize that your values are not everyone's.
7. Don't think of yourself as the arbiter of truth - it's still opinion, even if you're the boss.

I could go on. I'm glad I can learn from the bad in order to be better. But as for staying in a job with a bad boss, I think one needs to recognize where on the spectrum it is. A boss who is annoying but basically harmless is a different matter from one that is a bully. Having worked for 10 months for a bully and living with near constant anxiety and panic attacks, I have to say that when it's that bad, no amount of learning is worth it.

[Apex]

Sorry for the second post but I just wanted to follow up on my differing conclusion from the MIT study.

As I said I felt it showed better performance as a result of reward motivation. I don't believe it says anything about learning but what it does say is as an organization if you can help your employees feel successful they are more likely to be invested and to not only try to succeed but to actually succeed on subsequent tasks. If you make them feel like failures by beating them down all the time you are more likely to actually get failure in the future.

As a paraphrase on Henry Ford's famous quote, "Whether you make your employees believe they can or they can't, you are right."

[Apex]

@Jan,

Here is the study:

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/successes-0729.html#

However I question the broad conclusion stated by this study that you learn more from your successes than your failures.

What the study found was after getting an answer correct and getting a reward the monkey was more likely to get the next answer correct than if they got the previous answer wrong. And the telling line from the article is this one: "This occurred whether the animal was just learning the association or was already good at it."

That line right there contradicts the statement about "learning." Namely even if the monkey had already learned how to get the correct answer he still did better if he got a reward by getting the previous answer correct.

This seems to be more related to the "feeling" of confidence and heightened participation you get after succeeding. It makes you more likely to do better next time because you have confidence, are more invested, feel good about yourself, and are likely trying harder. And yes I would expect all of those things to show up in the brain as neural impulses.

I get frustrated by good research badly interpreted and I don't see how this research has anything to do with learning. It has to do with reward motivation.

[Kevin J Porter]

Great post. I had a boss who consistently used negative affect around the workplace. There were several times that I would remind myself to remember how the negative affect lowered morale. As my career develops and I move into a leadership position it will be helpful to draw on the lessons learned from the "negative" boss.

[Jake]

I learned a lot from bad bosses. Often bad bosses have some very good traits which has driven their success. It can be easier to identify and observe specific things to do because the good practices are not comingled with other good practices and/or the bad boss is very good at it.

Bartz's sucking it up comment can work some situations. If you work at company that is constantly reorganizing and rotating managers; sucking it up is just a matter waiting for a change. However, if the bad boss is the company owner or head executive; sucking it up could be the worse thing for a person

[Courtney]

Currently I am experiencing an emotionally challenging workplace and I, as well as my husband and friends, have observed negative changes in my behavior. Once confident and lively, I am now filled with self doubt and shyness.

Although I have learned many lessons from a series of bad bosses (along with one amazing boss), if I had the opportunity to replay the past I would have left this organization long ago. Personally, the learning experience was not worth the emotional consequences.

[Jan]

According to a study by the MIT professor Earl Miller, we learn from personal success and not from personal failures. Through brain scans, they can see how changes take place in the brain when research subjects succeed with a task. I couldn't find a link to this study, or to his research, but it shouldn't be that hard to find on the net. The code word here is "personal success", not learning from others.

[Regina Wysocki]

I completely agree that there is knowledge to be gained from "bad bosses". But I do think that you reach a point where you realize you need to move on from a bad situation. Otherwise you will just continue to be stifled. I stayed at a company 2 years too long, and almost lost myself in the process. I went through a difficult situation with not one, but two departmental bosses, and now that I look back on it, the whole mess helped me define myself and my career goals. However, had I not left when I did, I never would have been able to apply the lessons I learned.

[Dan Markovitz]

I had a micro-managing boss who told me that I didn't have to respect him, but I had to respect his position.

Wrong.

Titles are nothing. They're corporate artifices that often change with the prevailing fashion of the times.

Respect for an individual is something honest, genuine, sincere -- and most importantly, it's something earned. If you can't earn the respect of your colleagues and subordinates, you're not worthy of having your position respected.

I vowed to myself that I would get respect from others the old-fashioned way -- earning it -- and would never rely on a cheap and transient accident of title.

[twitter.com/tlcolson]

I have spent the last few years of my career trying to be like a boss I had in 2005. And only because I emulate him, have I survived the bosses that have come after. (my industry had a rotation of senior managers with little change in the workforce reporting to it)

I've learned quite a bit from them, though - and apply that knowledge to what my future will become.

[CareerAnnie]

The question of whether or not you learn more from a bad boss is a terrible question. Yes, I have learned from my bosses, but the lessons have been entirely different.

One boss (the better boss) has taught me to do my job. He helps when I need help. He answers questions and tries to be supportive. We occasionally talk about my performance, and he tries to find a way to help me be more effective.

The other boss (not as organized or thoughtful) has taught me self-preservation skills. Actually, let me rephrase that: I have learned them during my time with him.

My work product varies widely for these two bosses because I have such different feelings for them. Although the second boss means well, I would not want a colleague to go through the same experience.

Bad bosses are terrible. Imagine how much more productive we could be if we didn't have to deal with the ego, pushiness, and lack of compassion that is so prevalent in the workplace. Perhaps my bosses are the products of different work environments that led them to different beliefs, but I tend to think that it's just their personalities. And very little would change then into better or worse people.

[Gavin Symanowitz (GetAGreatBoss.com)]

There are close parallels between the parent-child relationship and that between the boss and his or her subordinate. Like a good parent, the role of a good boss should be to care for and grow an employee.

So a parallel question might be: Do you learn more from a bad parent or a good parent?

There are certainly cases of people with bad parents vowing never to repeat their parents' mistakes. However, I would argue that people with good parents are far more likely to be good parents themselves than those with poor or abusive parents. Simply, when you are set an example of positive behaviors which you are exposed to every day of your life, then these behaviors are very likely to rub off on you and have a strong influence on your own behavior.

I think it is the same with good and bad bosses.

[jik]

In my career (two decades since my first full-time job), I have learned orders of magnitude more from good bosses than from bad.
A bad boss can help you learn what NOT to do, but the “thou shalt not’s” are only the first few steps on the road to being a good boss. For that, you need to learn all the things you NEED to do, and by far the best way to learn them is by example.
One of the hallmarks of a bad boss is not caring about the people who work for you. In contrast, one of the most important facilitators of effective learning is for the teacher to give a whoop whether you succeed or fail. You get that from a good boss, not from a bad one.
A fatal flaw in Bartz’s argument is that most of the “thou shalt not’s” one learns from a bad boss the things one would avoid when acting as a boss oneself. However, most people working for bad bosses are not and will never be in a supervisory role, so those lessons are not going to help them all that much to be more successful in their own careers. On the other hand, a good boss helps the people who work for him/her to improve their skills and develop their careers regardless of whether they are destined to move into management.

[Sophie Lagacé]

That's a fascinating comment coming at an interesting time for me. I just spent a lot of time these last few days thinking about my progress and learning curve. I plan on developing this reflection into a series of posts, but the gist is that I've identified successive periods of intense growth in my career, each about 3 years long, interspersed with periods of slowed progress varying from 2 to 5 years. Each period of curtailed growth coincided with bad management and a poor organisational fit for me. There are other factors I will discuss in time, but my experience is completely contrary to Ms. Bartz -- all I learned from bad bosses were bad methods and bad attitudes.

[Bret Simmons]

The most important thing I learned from a bad boss was that I could move on and not only survive, but thrive. Sounds odd to say, but I hope young people get a chance to quit job for the right reasons early in their careers so they learn the same. You can't be really committed unles you are also always prepared to be able to leave at any time.

[RG]

I think being a good boss is hard, like being a good person. Seeing a bad boss doesn't help me see when I'm being one. And knowing that I'm in conflict with someone doesn't tell me who's wrong or how to fix it. Bad bosses leave me out of touch with reality; I'm still recovering from a bullying boss who, even in a short 3 months, left me wondering which one of us was nuts because our coworkers seemed to think he was hip and fun and I thought "what?"