Scott Berkun: 10 Reasons that Managers Become Assholes

I found Scott's post to be quite thoughtful. He actually lists 11 reasons.  My favorite is this one, although all are on target.  The mental health of managers is something that people don't think about enough (and it is especially tough to be a boss these days, and perhaps those of who encounter an asshole boss who is usually civilized should cut them slack):

Their life sucks. What percentage of people are miserable in the corporate world? I think 20-30% is a safe bet. If you’re miserable, you tend to inflict your misery on those who have less power than you do. If your life sucks badly enough you won’t even notice how rude you are to waiters, assistants, and sub-ordinates. It may be nothing personal, or even work related, these people simply have a volcano of negative emotions that must escape somewhere, often in eruptions that they can not control. Just be glad you’re not their spouse or offspring.

In addition, as I talk about in The No Asshole Rule  another reason that managers become assholes is that -- as a growing pile of studies shows, see here and here -- just giving people a little power can make them more focused on their own needs and wants, and less focused on the needs, wants, and actions of others. 

I would like to see some research on this, but I am hypothesizing that more employees have asshole managers than just a year ago or so.  If you think about the economy, people are stuck with an asshole boss have a much harder time leaving for another job.  Those who are stuck are more afraid to fight back against an asshole boss because they are afraid that they will move to the head of the layoff or "performance based" firing list (See this Dilbert cartoon -- people who complain or fight back are among those who make bosses 10 squirm), and finally, on the life sucks theme, if you as a boss are getting your budgets cuts, being ignored and abused by your own boss, facing the stress of laying-off people, and so on, these are all things that drive even the most upbeat manager into a nasty mood.  So I fear that the asshole are on the rise and the power to fight back is plummeting in too many workplaces. In fact, I would be very curious to hear from those of you out there in real jobs of examples that refute or support this hunch of mine.

Finally, I have a little reminder for both asshole bosses and their victims.  For victims, this too shall pass, it may be unwise to fight back now, but it is a good time to patiently gather the facts and weave together a coalition of fellow victims and supporters.  Bide your time and protect yourself as much as you can -- the day may come when things change, when you have more options, or your boss losses power, and you can fight back.  As for you asshole bosses out there: You may believe that your nasty style is helping you maintain control via intimidation,  and perhaps it is (for now), but your enemies may by laying in wait -- and you may reap what you are sowing right now.

Comments

[Ergoboy]

This blog post ties in quite nicely with your recent blog post about the book "Getting Even". After reading the book, I had an entirely different perspective of how to look at others in the workplace, especially managers. Perhaps managers become a-holes because they lose perspective on what effects the people around them. They become so focused on pleasing their bosses and surviving that they forget to think hard about how their actions effect others, and they cause damage and appear to be a-holes by accident. This isn't to excuse managers who become a-holes, but at least the book provided me with the alternative explanation of "don't attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity".

[Deb Owen]

You know, I just wrote about this today. Although, I'm not sure the asshole bosses/owners are worse than they were before, the people who work for them aren't so much turning into assholes themselves -- as just becoming more and more disheartened and depressed.

But they aren't 'gathering info' to be used at a later date to fight back, they're planning an exit strategy. They might not leave the company next week, but they will leave. (And they might leave next week, since they're 'A-players' and still have a possibility of finding another job sooner than people might think.)

The asshole bosses might be getting worse. But that's going to cost them in the long run when they lose the people who are 'sticking with them - for now' while the economy is poor.

All the best!
deb

[mh]

I think another reason is because of a correlation between the age that people become bosses with periods of their life. Simply put, i think people start becoming bosses exactly when many of them need to start focusing on things other than their jobs.. i.e. family life, work-life balance, mid-life-crises.. The traditional company has expected management to rest in the hands of the middle aged, assuming that age brings certain virtues (which im sure it does), but examples of companies where young leaders have taken the helm (Google/Apple/..) show that such leadership can fare just as well, despite the shortage in the "trips around the sun" department..

[Andrew Kramer]

I was recently given responsibility to manage a weekly call for my team. I should preface this by saying that I work for a huge asshole boss (we had two people with no job prospects who work directly for her leave just this week--that was 10% of our workforce!)So needless to say, almost everyone that works here has a little bit of asshole on display. When I sent the agenda for the call out I wanted to make some changes (and did) but I might have been a little more aggressive about it than I had anticipated--in other words, I was a little bit of an asshole myself. What I hadn't expected was how much that little bit of control made other people--people who I call friends--turn into raging, ignorant moron assholes themselves. I had one guy call me and apologize for letting his ego get in the way; I also had to say I was sorry for going overboard (just a little but it turns out, that's exactly what my bosses wanted me to do.) I wonder, you spend so much time talking about asshole bosses, but what about asshole subordinates who do everything they can to make everyone miserable and aggressive like them.

I was really shocked to find that I was in an escalating conflict with the guy who eventually apologized. Of course, I should cut him some major slack--he had to spend several hours with our horrible boss the previous two days!