Category Archives for TOT-proof Your Company

A Humanized, Trusted Workplace Equates To Success

Bosses and employees seem to have a legacy of dichotomy in the workplace. When I hear them discuss each other, I often feel this dynamic has burrowed too deep into workplace culture. It seems that each side sees the other as a problem to solve, rather than an opportunity to build on. Both sides spend […]

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Are You In Danger Of Becoming An Office Tyrant?

Your Own Employees Can Help   Bad bosses seem to be ubiquitous—employees’ surveys keep pointing that way. There are, though, few truly incorrigible office tyrants—most bad bosses behave badly episodically. When under stress or frustrated, many bosses—just like most humans—aren’t on their best behavior. Overwhelming stress can turn a suave charmer into an angry beast […]

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Have You Seen The Horrible Bosses Sequel?

(I Hope It Doesn’t Remind You Of Someone You Know)   Horrible Bosses Two is in theaters, and whether you’ve seen the movie or not, whether you are a boss or an employee, it’s a good reminder to check whether those two words also sum up your current work situation. Bosses with exalted, entitled views of their authority […]

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Bad Boss Readiness

Prevention Is The Best Cure In the realm of the omniscient Google, “good boss” returns way more results than “bad boss.” Yet, when I talk to people about their work, it’s usually the other way around. Even when giving their boss an overall OK, people still tend to bring up some feature they find annoying […]

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Listen Up!

(So People Don’t Have To Shout)   Problems of communication in the workplace are nothing out of the ordinary, accompanied by various degrees of frustration. Nothing is more frustrating, though, than a repeated failure to get through to the one person your advancement is dependent on. For most people, it’s their boss. Your employees may […]

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Mitigate Mid-Management Tyrant Behavior

Tyrannical bosses can do a lot of damage in organizations. In particular, there are two types of bad bosses I hear the most about in the workplace – bullying and overly demanding. Both types can make subordinates fearful. When people are in a protective mode, it interferes with the company’s ability to generate innovation. As […]

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Dealing with an Overly Demanding Boss

In a recent Forbes blog by Jacquelyn Smith, titled10 Tips For Dealing With An Overly Demanding Boss, I offered some thoughts and suggestions to help mitigate this type of bad boss behavior. I’d like to share them with you. Here are some observations I made in this very useful article: “An overly demanding boss doesn’t empathize […]

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Look Before You Leap

With the employment picture showing some signs of life, you may be weighing the pros and cons of looking for a new job – especially if your current bad boss is causing you to “sizzle” with anger. However, it’s a good idea to really look thoroughly before you leap or you may jump right from […]

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Boss Attention Deficit Disorder

Doctors Can’t Treat It So It’s All Up To You   While out-of-line behavior portrayed in the “Horrible Bosses” movie is thankfully more fiction than the norm, there’s no denying that some bosses can easily revert to babies in their terrible twos – fussy, unrestrained babies in corporate suits, otherwise known as a Terrible Office Tyrants – […]

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Is It Better to Be Liked or Feared?

If you’ve recently been promoted to a management position or just wavered at times in your career—you may be asking yourself, as a good manager and coach, should I be liked or feared to be effective? In my latest BloombergBusinessWeek article I posted the fact that instead of vacillating between being a feared power player […]

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