Latest / Unpause Your Life / EP079: What to do if you have a Bully Boss?
Transcript
- 0:03You are listening to unpause your life with doctor Kelly as Says and Master Coach
- 0:10Jenny Fontana, founders of the Life Coach method. Each one of our uplifting
- 0:17and deep dive episodes is geared to help you tackle the things that hold you
- 0:22back from having the most magnificent life you deserved. Sit back, relax,
- 0:28and prepare to be coached. Okay, so what does that look like in
- 0:34the workplace? Men versus women? Who's more of a bully? What do
- 0:38you think? I would say different types of bullying I've learned I've experienced male
- 0:48bullying is as a boss is very different than what I've experienced as having a
- 0:54female boss. I would agree to that. And I think this stigma around
- 1:00being a female boss comes with a lot more derogatory terms than a male.
- 1:06Meaning, if a male is screaming in his office at a worker, it's
- 1:08kind of like, oh, he's exerting his dominant elf estate. But if
- 1:14a woman is screaming at someone in her office, it's like, oh,
- 1:17my goodness, she's a Karen, She's a bitch. No one likes her.
- 1:19But just said that's accurate. Yeah, I would say so, And
- 1:23I think the the two different types of bitch that I would go with as
- 1:30far as female bosses, would be. One that's just straight up aggressive,
- 1:34you know, basically in your face, this is how things are going to
- 1:38go. And I don't really care about what your feelings are if you know
- 1:42you're sitting there crying while you're taking notes, As long as you're taking notes,
- 1:46I could give you know, you know. The other one is passive
- 1:49aggressive, which will be semi rude to you and maybe go. You know,
- 1:53maybe it's not such a good idea for you to leave at six You
- 1:59should probably stay at least six thirty, you know, kind of thing every
- 2:01day, which I find more toxic than the aggressive bully boss because at least
- 2:08you know where they stand. The other one, you get aggress. If
- 2:13you've seen the office, you've seen the passive aggressive. I'm gonna go ahead
- 2:17and ask you to come in on Saturday. I'm gonna need you, yes
- 2:22off the space, yes, yes, yes, yes, I need you
- 2:25on Saturday over here, like can I have my stapler? Just give me
- 2:30my stapler? Exactly exactly. So neither of those are good leadership styles.
- 2:38Aggressive, I need what I want, I want what I want, I
- 2:40need it now versus passive aggressive I'm gonna make you feel bad to get what
- 2:46I want. Both of those don't know how to lead. A good leader
- 2:50knows how to lead with putting the person first, putting the worker in front
- 2:57of the situation, with I really need your help, can you do this?
- 3:00Can you come in on Saturday? Can you stay late? How can
- 3:05you best? You know, benefit the team and also gives them something in
- 3:08return. So leadership is tough because we don't learn this in high school.
- 3:14We don't learn this in college unless you're specifically going, you know, to
- 3:20college for leadership or some sort of business. This is not something we teach.
- 3:24We should teach it, but we don't, which then bleeds into,
- 3:30you know, having somebody that starts off, for example, as a therapist
- 3:32in addiction, and they because this is how we do it. You're a
- 3:37therapist who went to school, and all of a sudden, you're a program
- 3:39director and then you're the clinical director. You have zero leadership skill at all
- 3:44because you've never taken a leadership class. You've probably never had a leadership role.
- 3:47And then they put a do in that was a clinician and it's a
- 3:51disaster because they don't know how to lead. They want to therapize everybody.
- 3:55You know, you come into office and say something, it's like, oh,
- 3:58my goodness, is that how you feel. Let's sit and talk about
- 4:00it. That's great, but that's not gonna finance our bottom line and business
- 4:05right. And I think that I mean in general, regardless if it's male
- 4:11female bully non bly. I think the definition you know of whether it's a
- 4:15boss or a leader, can make or break the team. So, uh,
- 4:19there's a good picture. I think Mike actually has it outside of his
- 4:23office. I think somewhere, you know, the boss is in the wagon
- 4:28with all the team pulling him. The team, you know, the leader
- 4:32is out there grabbing the wagon with the rest of his team, you know,
- 4:36and everybody's heading uphill together, pulling just the way to the wagon.
- 4:42So I agree. I think. I think sometimes bullying from a boss comes
- 4:46because they don't know how to work in a leadership role. They go from
- 4:53having peers to having employees, staff or a team underneath them have to provide.
- 5:03Yeah, I totally agree. And I think a big part of that
- 5:06too, especially in my industry, it starts off with recovering addict to take
- 5:12a recovering addict with the high school education, and next thing you know,
- 5:15they're running a team of people they don't have the skill set, and then
- 5:19you know, stuff goes wrong and they fire them and just hire a new
- 5:24one. It's like people are expendable. So you see that in restaurant,
- 5:27you see that in retail, you see that in my industry, especially mental
- 5:31health and addiction. They don't train anybody. They don't want to train.
- 5:34They expect you to show up, do a job, and then they promote
- 5:38from within and act like it's a big gift with no new training. So
- 5:42yeah, you end up having a bully as a boss. Case in point,
- 5:46when I worked for a treatment center down here in Fort Lauderdale. The
- 5:50owner was a complete asshole and he had a high school education. His wife
- 5:56was a finance person. So he pulled up in his Bugatti and she pulled
- 6:00up in her Mercedes, and the running joke was how many pairs of red
- 6:03bottomed shoes did she have? He was sleeping with one of the staffs.
- 6:08She was running around making money, and here I was, with a master's
- 6:11degree, working on a PhD, making forty two thousand dollars a year,
- 6:15barely paying my rent, and he would have meltdowns, he would have outbursts,
- 6:19and one outburst came at me and he called me in his office and
- 6:24I had sent somebody to a halfway house that apparently wasn't approved and he said,
- 6:28did you get the email? And I don't have an email. No,
- 6:30he said, you should know who we don't send to. Okay,
- 6:33I've referred a client that I thought was a clinically appropriate to a clinically appropriate
- 6:38facility, which is what I'm supposed to do legally. And he said,
- 6:42we don't do business with them. And he picked a notebook up and heaved
- 6:45it at my head and I looked at him and I said, I don't
- 6:47have your email, and you're screaming at me, screaming like space is beat
- 6:51red, screaming at me, and that's not appropriate. And I was very
- 6:56calm about it. And he said, the only reason you can live in
- 6:59Miami, which is expensive, is because I give you a job, I
- 7:03pay your rent, I allow you to work for me. The first thought
- 7:08in my head he was, we're going to fix that. So I looked
- 7:13at him and I said, I have two words for you, and he
- 7:15goes, what fuck me? I said no, no, I quit,
- 7:18and he goes, you can't quit. I said I can quit, and
- 7:20I just did. He goes, you can't. I need you. I
- 7:24said, oh who a minute ago, you didn't need me. And the
- 7:28only reason I was here is basically because you felt sorry for me because I
- 7:31had to pay my rent in Miami. So good luck with your company.
- 7:34And I packed my stuff and he sent his wife in. I said,
- 7:38I have nothing to say to you. Nothing. And then he said in
- 7:41the clinical director, I'm nothing to say to you either. And I packed
- 7:44my stuff and I left, and on my way out, I poked my
- 7:47head and I said to him, I can make more money than you.
- 7:50I have the ability to make more money than you and scale a company.
- 7:55I don't need you, you need me, remember that. And I left.
- 8:00And I had two friends that still had still worked there, and one
- 8:03called me and said, every therapist quit that he hired within a week because
- 8:07nobody would put up with the screaming, the yelling, and the meltdowns that
- 8:11this guy was having with staff. It's not appropriate. But he thought,
- 8:16I own the company, I'll do what I want. Mm hmm. But
- 8:18he couldn't get good help because of the bully box. But yet he needed
- 8:26the good help because he did not have all the skill set to do all
- 8:31the pieces of his own company. He needed done correct and he thought that
- 8:35he could just do what he wanted whenever he wanted, and people would accept
- 8:39that, because what else are you going to do? You know, you
- 8:43can't tell the owner of the company, I don't like the way you're treating
- 8:46me. Yeah, it's really that's really hard. He thinks that he has
- 8:54the ability to treat, talk, act anyway just because his name's on the
- 8:58company exactly. And he thinks that because he's in recovery and all these other
- 9:05people are in recovery, he's giving them a service by giving them a job
- 9:09when other people won't hire them. Yeah. And I had the opposite experience
- 9:18with male bullying of a different nature, where you would be bombed with compliments,
- 9:26thinking that you are more valued or more needed than maybe the next staff
- 9:33person, only to have it turn into then they think they have the right
- 9:37to sexually harass you. And that's that's where it was taken on my end,
- 9:45where it was emotional manipulation and kind of bullying of the sort. Well
- 9:52you know, we you know you do such a good job, you know,
- 9:56manipulating you into thinking that your need did more than someone else, only
- 10:03for that to become the narrative. And that's interesting, that's a narcissistic love
- 10:09bottom tree. So usually bosses that do that, they're usually men. They're
- 10:15usually there the highest level. That was the general manager of the restaurant,
- 10:20that thought he had the power and the look and all the things that go
- 10:26with it to manipulate staff. Let me guess he was married. Yes,
- 10:33yep, So that that's my target market, by the way, in addiction,
- 10:37So these guys have everything. They have a wife, they have kids.
- 10:41He probably had kids, a dog, a house, all those things.
- 10:45He's attained them. He doesn't look at that as a partner and his
- 10:50kids is his kids. He looks at that as objects. My wife is
- 10:54a thing, my kids are a thing, my job is a thing.
- 10:56And he looks at people as vendable objects. You are nothing but an object,
- 11:03and if you're not interested, he's going to hit on the next ten
- 11:05other women his odds are two out of ten will take him up on his
- 11:09offer, maybe three out of ten if he's really cute. So he looks
- 11:13at it like they owe they owe me, they want me. I'm king
- 11:20of the kingdom. And if you say no to him, your life at
- 11:22work becomes miserable. You'll get the crappy shipped, you'll get not on the
- 11:28schedule, you'll get all the things against you because you didn't do what was
- 11:31required by the narcissistic boss. So the best recourse of action when you have
- 11:37one of those is to get all the workers together to go to HR.
- 11:43That's exactly what we did, because if it's one, then it's he said,
- 11:50she said. But if he has offended multiple people in that office environmental
- 11:56work environment, then it's like, well, there's no way three women for
- 12:00women, five women have had the same experience with this guy independently of each
- 12:05other. That's not possible, right, So what can you do with a
- 12:11bully boss? Oh boy? One of the things. The first thing you
- 12:16can do is start your sentences with I feel because nobody can tell you your
- 12:22feelings are wrong. They can tell you did a shitty job, but they
- 12:26can't tell you your feeling is wrong. So you say I feel X when
- 12:31you y I feel uncomfortable when you talk about sex at work, Simple,
- 12:39I feel uncomfortable. That's not something he can tell you to feel or take
- 12:43away. Now that's the first step, so use I feel sentences. The
- 12:48second step is document the behavior. Every time it happens. You write it
- 12:54down where you are exactly what was said. You can even record it on
- 12:58your phone. Most dates have a one party record. Now legally some states
- 13:03have a two party record, so like in Florida, I have to ask
- 13:07somebody, can I record you? But I can record it and show it
- 13:11to HR because it's confidential. So those are things you can do. In
- 13:15New York it's one person. You only have to have one person consent,
- 13:18so it just depends by the state. But you want to jot it down,
- 13:22write it down, record it, and of course number three, go
- 13:24to HR with evidence. It's very difficult to go to HR and say,
- 13:28well he called me a this or did this, then it's a slap on
- 13:33the wrist. But if you have evidence that something happened, or that you
- 13:37were approached or what have you, HR has a duty to investigate it by
- 13:43law. Because they're impartial. They don't care if you're there, they don't
- 13:46care if he's there. Their job is independent of you and him. Their
- 13:50job is to vote yes that is your hope, Yes, that's your hope.
- 13:56Certain companies tend to have their big executives kind of be the ones that
- 14:01the HR is more willing to save over the tiny office clerk. You know
- 14:05that runs in and out of the office. Correct. But if you have
- 14:09enough people or have enough evidence for example, not you know, d're judging
- 14:18stuff up. But if you remember mister Wiener and his Wiener, yeah,
- 14:20sending pictures of his Wiener that ruined him, and it was evidence. If
- 14:26she would have said, well he sent me a dick pic. Okay,
- 14:28great, where's the evidence. Well, I don't have it, that's what
- 14:31he said, she said. But she was able to say, he's sending
- 14:35me inappropriate photos, requesting inappropriate action, and I'm uncomfortable, and I told
- 14:41him I was uncomfortable, and he did it. Anyway, Now you have
- 14:45evidence. So now with compelling evidence, if HR isn't going to do anything,
- 14:50you have another step. You can go to the police. You can
- 14:54go to the media. You know, if you have a big, big
- 14:58boss, they don't want that in the press, right. So if you're
- 15:01not getting to help you need, you can escalate it. Now I'm not
- 15:05saying try to trap your boss into, you know, pretending to bully you
- 15:11or sexually harass you so you could make money. I'm not saying that by
- 15:13any means, but I'm saying if you are offended and bothered by something and
- 15:20you have said, hey, I feel uncomfortable because sometimes people don't know that
- 15:24their off color comments are offensive. They don't realize it sometimes, so if
- 15:28you bring it to their attention, that may end it. That might be
- 15:33the end of it right there, as soon as they realize. Yeah.
- 15:35Correct, Because some of the older men I've noticed, you know, back
- 15:39in the sixties and seventies, it was a different work environment for women.
- 15:43You know, a woman would walk by the guy's desk because she was a
- 15:48secretary, she wasn't a CEO back then, and he would smack her on
- 15:52the ass and say nice outfit in between smoking a pall mall. That was
- 15:56acceptable. Now it's not so much. But some of those men have been
- 16:00acceptable back then, but it was. It would let it was allowed.
- 16:03I should say it shouldn't have been. It was culturally appropriate in that time
- 16:08period, but now it's not. So some of those men didn't get the
- 16:15memo of hey, we're not going to do this or their fathers did that
- 16:21and they grew up seeing that and that's who they became. And on the
- 16:26flip side, I think that, like you started at the beginning saying,
- 16:30I think that female bosses often automatically get a bad rap as tending to be
- 16:40too aggressive or a bitch just because they're being assertive and they may have a
- 16:45male team that is, you know, not performing at their level. So
- 16:49they're the lead, they're the boss, they're the supervisor, they're the owner
- 16:53of a company, and they are trying to rally the respect act that they
- 17:00deserve. And the only way to do that comes across as you know,
- 17:07aggressive, when it's just them asserting what needs to be done, or they
- 17:11won't have their team. They'll they'll lose the team. Well, that happens
- 17:15in general everyday stuff. I mean, if you see, for example,
- 17:19I mean, every woman complaining is now Karen. Every video is oh my
- 17:25god, she's such a Karen, even if it's warrant it. You know,
- 17:26I saw a video of a woman who went in to a fast food
- 17:30restaurant, ordered a burger and got a chicken sandwich, and she set the
- 17:33counter going I ordered a burger, I got a chicken sandwich. Can you
- 17:37you know, change this out? And the person videoing it wanted likes and
- 17:41views, and she's back there calling her a Karen and a bitch you know
- 17:45this and a that. That's kind of what our culture has gotten into is
- 17:48that every woman who says a word or stands up for herself, even if
- 17:52it's assertive and not aggressive, is now a Karen, right, And that's
- 17:57a problem because that's not act it. And then you look at men,
- 18:02you know, if it's a guy going in complaining about the burger, it's
- 18:03like, yeah, yeah, get them, get them, tell them,
- 18:06you know, you paid for that, you deserve what you what you ordered.
- 18:08It's like men get a hall pass. You get a hall pass for
- 18:11saying this is what I paid for and this is what I got. And
- 18:15the same in business men that you know throw their weight around and say what
- 18:18this done? I need it done. Now, here's what I need.
- 18:19It's like, okay, he's goal oriented. Yeah yeah, and then a
- 18:25handshake. Women it's like, oh, she's bitchy? Is she you know?
- 18:27Is it her time of the month. Instantly, So it's such a
- 18:32double standard when it comes to women in business and empowered women it's like,
- 18:37oh, you know, she's just she's bitchy because she expects us to do
- 18:41this. And it's not necessarily men who say it. It's women who say
- 18:45it to other women because they're not used to that level of authority. Well,
- 18:52and I think women in the in the employee environment may want to feel
- 18:59like they can connect to their boss and may want to feel a friendship or
- 19:03you know, like just to be liked, and that isn't necessarily That doesn't
- 19:08mean that your boss is being a bully. Just because you guys don't go
- 19:12for coffee every Friday. You know that it's you're there to do a job.
- 19:18You're not there to necessarily make friends. Yes, it is I think
- 19:22appropriate to always be respectful back and forth, but I don't think you necessarily
- 19:27have to end up with a best friend, you know, in your work
- 19:32environment. I was always the person at work that went to work and came
- 19:36home and no one really knew anything about me because I was like, work
- 19:41is for workplays for play. I don't want to be friends with the people
- 19:44from work because I really don't want them in my life. It's a job,
- 19:47you know. And my husband's the opposite. He'd be like, oh
- 19:49my god, we're going out with so and so, like who is so
- 19:52and so? Oh he's such and such on this, and he's such and
- 19:55such on that, and we're going out with the band. It's exhausting because
- 19:57I'm like, who are these people? And he works with all of them.
- 20:00And I was never like that. I was always like, I'm going
- 20:03to work. I don't want to talk to you outside of work. I
- 20:06don't care about your kids. I don't care about your family. I'm here
- 20:07to do a job. And we left alone. And I was always like
- 20:11the outsider. And then I got promoted to director and everyone was like,
- 20:15oh boy, you know now I have to know about their lives. I
- 20:18have to know about your kids and your issues and your whatnot, because here
- 20:22I am, I'm supposed to care. But the problem is in business,
- 20:26I don't care. I have a bottom line and I'm tasked with meeting a
- 20:30bottom line and meeting quota and getting all this stuff done. And you're having
- 20:33a meltdown because your kid is sick. I've got to, you know,
- 20:37be able to handle all of that, peruse all of that and still come
- 20:40across as gentle and caring while I'm meeting my BottomLine and my superior m hm.
- 20:45And I'm on the other end of the spectrum where i would be like,
- 20:49uh, let's you know, let let everybody stay home because they all
- 20:52have sick kids and nobody shows up to work because you want to take you
- 20:56know, you want to feel, you feel for their person, you know,
- 21:00as a mom, as a as a white, as a woman.
- 21:04You know that you feel like, I want to help meet your needs to
- 21:07make your life easier. And then it could be at the detriment of the
- 21:11company's day, you know, And that's a whole nother conversation. It was
- 21:17so interesting. So there was a post on one of the fourums I'm in
- 21:19on Facebook and the woman wrote, I hate my job because I have a
- 21:25sick kid. I need to stay home today and they expect me to work
- 21:27from home. They don't understand I'm a mom first, and I chimed in
- 21:32and I said, well, I'm a company owner. If you worked for
- 21:34me and you expect to be paid, I expect you to work. And
- 21:38I got slammed from all these moms. It work is not everything, and
- 21:41there's kids, And I said, okay, well, if mom is your
- 21:45primary duty, then that needs to be your focus. If work is your
- 21:51secondary duty, I will fire you because work is my primary duty. And
- 21:56it was kind of like this, Well, you're a bitch because you don't
- 22:00believe in family first as a company owner. No, my family is my
- 22:04company. That's my baby. And people don't see that. They don't see
- 22:10that. They say, well, I just work for you, it's just
- 22:11a job. Okay. Well if you think it's just a job, I
- 22:14don't want you working for me. Would you let me babysit your kids?
- 22:17If I said it's just a job and I'm playing on Facebook? No?
- 22:21Right, So I switched that question around. Would you hire a nanny that's
- 22:25just there to collect the money and doesn't care about your kids? Answers No,
- 22:30So why would I hire you when you don't care about my baby,
- 22:33my company, and you're more concerned about your sick child than my baby,
- 22:37which you're supposed to be here doing. And when I pitched it that way,
- 22:41people went, well, I never thought about that, And that's exactly
- 22:45what it is. You view other people's babies, which is their company,
- 22:48as a job like you have to do to support your family. So again,
- 22:53if your mentality is that I don't want you in my company. You're
- 22:57not putting my baby first. So everyone I have hired, and this will
- 23:02probably get my listeners in an uproar. I make them all watch Devilwar's product
- 23:07because that is her baby, you know. And it's twenty four to seven
- 23:12and there are people with issues, and she says, not my problem,
- 23:15because it's not my problem, it's you your problem. Because if your family
- 23:19is primary and your job is secondary, why are you working for me?
- 23:22That's my question? So that makes me a bitchy boss, doesn't it?
- 23:27That makes me a bully boss because I'm not giving you what you want.
- 23:33But the reality is that's not a bully question. That's not a bully boss.
- 23:37And people misinterpret that because they don't put their priority when they're at work
- 23:42with work. Their priority is still with their kids, right. You know,
- 23:51if you're working and we're working and we're doing stuff and you get a
- 23:53you know, you're teaching nutrition for the Addictions Academy and it's one o'clock and
- 23:57you get a call that one of your kids as an emergency, You're not
- 24:02going to finish that class. You're gonna stop take care of the kid.
- 24:07I would assume well, it depends. It depends on how the emergency you
- 24:11know, how uh, how big of an emergency that is. But yeah,
- 24:15I mean I think I think in anything, there's also a fine line
- 24:19of balance of that needs to be reached. Of course, you know,
- 24:23because you have you know, people with families and you have mothers and you
- 24:30have you know people, it's a different situation where where everybody's trying to do
- 24:36all the things. I think this is fact to burnout, you know,
- 24:40So you're trying to be all things to all people all the time, and
- 24:44then you have to figure out when you're in one one hat, when you're
- 24:47in a role wearing a hat, what's that priority, what's that focus and
- 24:52stick with that in that real time. But that you do have a boss
- 24:56that's caring enough that when those emerging which are few and far between, come
- 25:02up, and that's the key. It can't be oh my kid has a
- 25:04running nose, I got to go run and you know, get a tissue
- 25:07for them. It's when the few and far between true emergencies come that you
- 25:11feel you can depend on your boss to say, I've got you handle it,
- 25:15and I'll see you when you get back here. Exactly so you have
- 25:21to find the right job that you fit into right, and you always will
- 25:26think you have a bully boss if your priorities are different than their priorities.
- 25:30Because when you're at work and you're getting paid, you're supposed to be here.
- 25:33You know your mind is to be here. So if you're dealing with
- 25:36crap at home, your mind's not here. It's just not And that is
- 25:41key to being able to work together and not have a bully boss. And
- 25:45there still are bully bosses out there that even though your present year, they're
- 25:48still not happy. Right, They're never gonna be happy. Their issue not
- 25:52yours, of course, exactly. So there you go, another great episode
- 25:59it Unplause your life and how to deal with bully bosses. We gave you
- 26:03some tips and tricks on what to do on your drive home or sitting at
- 26:08the tub or riding the peloton, whatever it is you're doing while you're listening.
- 26:11Because we know you're listening, we can see it. Come back again
- 26:17for some more fun on our next topic. Sounds good. Thank you for
- 26:25listening to Unpause your life. Have a great day, Hie. Thank you
- 26:33for listening to Unpause your Life with doctor Kelli Estez and Master coach Jenny Fontana.
- 26:40Head over to www dot the Life coachmathic dot com to learn more about
- 26:45coaching yourself and how to become a master coach.