There is a saying in the City and the world of finance, where I have built a career over three decades.
People don’t leave a job because they don’t like the job, but because they don’t like the boss.
We all know there is a lot of truth in that. A telltale sign of a toxic boss is a rapid turnover of staff who can’t wait to stampede out the door.
The only problem is that, in today’s post-Covid workplace, pampered employees seem to label any boss who doesn’t instantly satisfy all their demands as “toxic.”
And with an economy plagued by a shortage of good staff in all sectors, including finance, staff know they can get away almost with impunity and easily find another job. Then, if the boss doesn’t suit them either, they may very well repeat the process again.
I’m sure female bosses like Miranda Priestly, a ruthless The Devil Wears Prada editor played by Meryl Streep, are more likely to be considered toxic than their male counterparts.
No doubt the tide will turn at some point and the balance of power will shift back toward employers.
Until then, if you’re an executive, especially a woman like me, be careful.
I would freely confess that, by some of the definitions used by today’s young staff, I AM a toxic boss.
It’s not that I think I’m poisonous. My staff may not realize it, but I really care about them and go to great lengths for them. I have had sleepless nights more than once. Honestly, I want them to succeed: among other things, for selfish reasons, because when they do well, so do I. When any of them have difficulties, I help them.
I don’t particularly expect gratitude, although that would be nice. But what I will never do is turn a blind eye to poor performance. I have high expectations and that in itself, in the current climate, seems to offend some younger employees.
“Toxic boss” has become a catch-all term that young people use to refer to anyone higher up than them in the office who doesn’t let them do exactly what they want and doesn’t let them get away with half-hearted work. and of poor quality.
I can’t help but notice that the description is given much more easily to female bosses than to men.
Employees, many of whom have become lazy and selfish by “working” from home during and after the pandemic, clearly think of the office as a cross between a playground and a therapy center.
The idea of making a real effort is low on the list of priorities.
Reading the latest conflicting reports about Harry and Meghan’s treatment of their staff made me think about what it really means to be a good boss these days.
Meghan was said to be a demanding and capricious tyrant, treating some employees as if they were shopkeepers.
I don’t know about you, but when I deal with merchants, I lavish them with unlimited consideration because it’s so hard to find good ones.
Whatever. It was H&M’s defense that I found really concerning.
When she was ill, says the Sussexes’ current public relations chief, they treated her with “the kind of concern and care that a father would express if it were his own child.”
Of course, women are expected to be caring and put others before ourselves in any environment, including the boardroom, says this writer.
And here’s the problem in a nutshell. Any decent boss would show the right level of concern for a sick member of staff. But like ‘if it were his own son’ – really?
This suggests that a good boss, particularly a woman, has to be somewhere between an anxious mother and a full-blown saint.
I’m sorry, but I’m an executive, not Mother Teresa, and if that makes me a toxic boss, so be it. I couldn’t treat my entire team like my children even if I wanted to: I don’t have time and it wouldn’t do them any good.
It is dangerous to blur the line between professional and personal life. “Work family” is another term I hate almost as much as “toxic boss.”
I try my best to be decent to employees. Ultimately, though, they are there to do a job, not to be coddled like five-year-olds.
As a boss, I am aware that some staff, possibly subconsciously, think that I will be softer on them than a man and so they prove it to them.
Some of them (not all of them young) act as if I were their mother, mistakenly imagining that I will please them, as a mother would, and seem to think that it is my job to clean up their mistakes and messes.
Guess what: I don’t find these antics cute or adorable, just annoying.
They need to know the limits and realize that I am not their mother, or even their friend: I am the boss.
The first few times they make mistakes, for example if they make a mistake on a project or a client presentation, I will protect them.
But if they don’t listen and improve, I will step back and let them fail. The only way people learn is by facing the consequences: if you rescue them every time, they will never get better. I won’t do their job for them either, and if that means it ends up in what people in town call “a difficult conversation,” so be it.
I’m sure some would see this as a symptom of a toxic boss.
I would say that it does people a disservice to prop them up and allow them to continue with a false idea of their own capabilities.
Most of the people on my teams over the years have been great. They understand that my role is to deliver performance, to satisfy customers and investors, not to endlessly attend to the demands of a spoiled minority of disgruntled employees.
I don’t have a problem with anyone performing well and I doubt they have a problem with me.
As for others, I don’t want to be seen as a toxic boss either. Yelling, ranting and cursing isn’t my style, but even if it were, I wouldn’t give in to temptation: it would just be asking for trouble with HR.
Instead, I use more subtle methods. Eyebrow strategically raised. The long silence. The searching gaze. The forensic interrogation. An air of disappointment. An audible sigh.
I have always avoided open conflicts at work. It is much better not to fight with anyone, because usually both parties end up damaged to some extent.
I try to lead people to their own conclusions about whether they are going to prosper.
Genuinely toxic bosses cause great harm to their staff, their companies and, ultimately, themselves.
Maybe the woke brigade would call it gaslighting, I’d say it’s a sensible and mature approach.
In any case, it is the safest way in a climate where any form of criticism seems to be treated as a war crime.
I’m not even sure what a toxic boss is. It’s one of those terms like “narcissist” that gets thrown around without much thought.
I often think that untalented and lazy staff use it as a weapon to justify their own shortcomings.
Instead of facing your mistakes, it’s much easier to blame the boss. This attitude is aided and abetted by a compensation industry and a group of self-proclaimed workplace gurus who have never held a real job in their lives.
Of course, women are expected to be caring and put others before ourselves in any environment, including the boardroom. When we deviate from that model of perfect self-sacrifice, we are seen as toxic.
In some quarters there is still an outdated and sexist attitude that having a successful career is equivalent to a character defect for a woman.
I certainly believe that it is impossible for a woman to reach the top of her profession without being portrayed as a tyrant, rightly or not.
My first hint that I myself might be seen as a toxic boss came when my mother and I watched The Devil Wears Prada, which Sir Elton John has now turned into a West End musical premiere this fall.
Talking about the movie, Mom suddenly asked me, ‘Do you realize you’re not supposed to be on Miranda’s side?’
Well, I could see that she was too demanding, but I was still totally Team Miranda. I groaned on his behalf at the parade of incompetence he faced daily. I admired how he instilled fear with an icy stare and a menacing “that’s it.”
And Andie: what a silly, self-righteous drip. Who appears in Runway magazine in a hideous, ill-fitting sweater and a frumpy skirt?
I am absolutely certain that female bosses like Miranda are more likely to be considered toxic than their male counterparts. If it had been a man, there would have been no movie.
Men are still held to lower standards of boss behavior, just like any other guy. To be branded a toxic boss as a man, you have to reach the level of Mohamed Al Fayed. For a woman, all she needs to do is not send flowers if a young man’s pet dies.
When I entered the workplace, a naive young woman in the 1990s, nothing could have prepared me for the male ogres shamelessly infesting the upper echelons of banking and finance.
We called the executive suite of a company where Jurassic Park worked because his behavior was prehistoric even by the standards of the time.
I never worked with Fred Goodwin, the fierce boss who brought the Royal Bank of Scotland to its knees during the financial crisis.
He was a few years ahead of me at a company I worked for and I met him several times on the industrial circuit.
Goodwin, who at RBS was known for holding morning meetings to berate his colleagues until the last moment, was toxic. He destroyed the bank, his own career and almost the entire UK economy.
The vain and reckless bankers of that time got away with it for a while because they seemed like geniuses at making money. The financial crisis debunked that deception.
The culture has changed, and rightly so: the prejudice and harassment I took for granted at the beginning of my career are no longer tolerated.
Genuinely toxic bosses cause great harm to their staff, their companies and, ultimately, themselves. I don’t think they will be successful in the long term. But we have gone too far the other way.
Let’s not confuse a tough administrator with a tyrant.
I don’t think my approach makes me a toxic boss, just a boss.
However, I am concerned that, due to the ridiculous mentality that dominates the modern workplace, I may well be labeled that way.
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