“A bad boss can take a good staff and destroy it, causing the best employees to flee and remainder to lose all motivation”!
Yes, this is true! Most bosses tend to manipulate their subordinates, for the reasons more than obvious, and the most prominent one is as simple as that they are THE BOSS!
Yet…
The most successful people master their emotions. Do not get manipulated and carried away. Doing great work and building relationships helps one to stay calm and in control of their roles in the organisation.
Without a doubt there are a lot of toxic bosses out there. Everyone in the big bad professional world must have faced a few of them. But some of them do exist who genuinely do everything that they can, to help employees and the business grow with no pain.
One of the things to remember here is that not all difficult bosses are toxic. The managers who challenge us in a positive way are the ones that we learn the most from. Tough situations bring out the best in all of us. Hence, the manipulation you face may not always be in a destructive direction. So it is for you to identify the course.
If you fall into any of these categories, you may tend to take all kinds of criticism and manipulation in a negative light, which you shouldn’t. The categories are:
The Crier
The Sleeper
The Unstable
But if you are out of these categories, chances are you may want to identify your bosses positive manipulation, by going through the following pointers.
Good Bosses Remove Barriers To Connect
To connect with juniors, a good manager would always want to know what makes them tick. He would want to understand employees’ motivations, or what makes them feel the most accomplished. Having regular one on one conversations with the team helps identify the barriers that hold them back from their greatest performance. If your boss is doing that, take it as a constructive step, rather than a manipulative game.
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Good Bosses Set Realistic Goals
If employees do not know where they are going, how will they get there? Encouraging employees to set weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly goals for themselves, is a characteristic of a good boss and positive manipulation. A performance oriented boss will review the goals regularly, and will track the progress towards success. If problems arise, he will see them coming beforehand and will invite the employees to work through them together, rather than dictating terms and bringing in the blame games.
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A Good Boss Will Always Push Hard
Sometimes, people get comfortable while under-performing and never reset their own expectations. As their manager, it is a good boss’s job to push them to achieve more. He would go an extra mile to assign them stretch projects that strengthen their skills and help them address areas of weakness. This is certainly not a bad manipulation. It will bring out the best in the employees, only if they see it as a challenge and work in the direction.
To sum it up, I would say that the best managers turn potential into performance. They do this by looking ahead and being a resource and an advocate for each member of the team. They would know the ways to manipulate, but that manipulation will be working constructively towards the growth of the individual and the organisation henceforth.
Toxic managers, of course, run wild and ruin the careers. But sometimes we forget to see the boss who has an edge and is using it to make us better. So, be slow to judge. It might very well be that your boss is smarter than you think. And that wisdom can be used to help make you shine.Learn to identify the good manipulation from bad, and let it become a tool for your personal growth on your career path.
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How is your boss manipulating you?
