Is your boss a tyrant who would put Attila the Hun to great shame what with his marauding antics throughout the office? Or are you often on the receiving end of the silent treatment from your supervisor who has no notion of how to effectively communicate with you or your work-mates. Not that it is any great comfort, but we are not alone. There are many employees who, like you, have to deal with bosses who are not the best in the area of communication and this often impacts on the quality of relationships they have with their subordinates.

For several years Wayne Hochwarter, an associate professor of management in Florida State University’s (FSU) College of Business has studied the often volatile boss-employee relationship, focusing on factors causing hostility, stress and declining performance. His research shows the problem how bad the issue has become especially in the face shrinking job opportunities for the many, many miserable employees.”For workers in declining industries such as construction and manufacturing, catching on with a company able to offer comparable wages has been virtually impossible,” Hochwarter said. “Plan B just doesn’t exist for many employees at the level it did five or 10 years ago.”

Hochwarter has done much research on the magnitude of the problem of bad bosses and documented its effects on employee health and job performance. In one study, working with two doctoral students, Paul Harvey and Jason Stoner, Hochwarter surveyed more than 700 people who work in a variety of jobs about their opinions of their on-the-job supervisor treatment. These are some of the findings of the survey:

*Thirty-one per cent of respondents reported that their supervisor gave them the “silent treatment” in the past year.

*Thirty-seven per cent reported that their supervisor failed to give credit when due.

*Thirty-nine per cent noted that their supervisor failed to keep promises.

*Twenty-seven per cent noted that their supervisor made negative comments about them to other employees or managers.

*Twenty-three per cent indicated that their supervisor blames others to cover up mistakes or to minimise embarrassment.

According to the researchers, “Employees stuck in an abusive relationship experienced more exhaustion, job tension, nervousness, depressed mood and mistrust. They also were less likely to take on additional tasks, such as working longer or on weekends, and were generally less satisfied with their job. Also, employees were more likely to leave if involved in an abusive relationship than if dissatisfied with pay.”

Everybody I know has at least one bad boss story. If you were a silent listener at any lunch room conversations you would hear stories that would straighten your curly hair and send shivers up your spine for days on end. These tales from the crypt come from employees who get a hard time from their bosses. I will admit that some of the stories I have heard (and perhaps told in my heyday) are highly exaggerated, but the point of the experience should not be missed. These are two random bad boss stories that I found posted on a website. The experiences are neither local nor regional:

“I was the assistant to this woman at a manufacturing company. She never spoke in a normal voice — she yelled about everything! She threw a stapler at me once for stapling her papers in the top left corner, as she liked it at the top/center — and she missed my head by an inch! She called me a stupid idiot for clipping a stack of papers with the colored binder clips, as she only liked the black ones.”

“I was the assistant to the administrative officer of a sponsored research lab at a leading university. You would be having a conversation with her about something and suddenly she would ‘snap’ and her facial expression would change, she would lock eyes with you, and her voice would drop very low. All of us in the office figured she was simply ‘crazy’. Then, once in a meeting, she let it slip that she had learned this technique in obedience class with her dog. She first used it on a professor with whom she had trouble communicating. That she found it to be an effective ‘tool’ in managing people.”

Unfortunately, just as how we do not get to choose our relatives, we never ever get to have a say in who supervises us. Outside of walking off the job (it has been done), we often do not have a choice but to stay and work through the unfortunate situation. The most obvious solution would be for companies to properly equip supervisors with the necessary managerial and communication skills for their positions before letting them loose on unsuspecting and hapless staff members. However, in the absence of this, the employee has to find effective ways of managing the relationship with their boss and keep their sanity.

Hochwarter’s suggestions are to stay visible at work. He points out that, “Hiding can be detrimental to your career, especially when it keeps others in the company from noticing your talent and contributions. In most cases, others know who the bullies are at work-they likely have a history of mistreating others.” He also recommended keeping an optimistic outlook. “It is important to stay positive, even when you get irritated or discouraged, because few subordinate-supervisor relationships last forever,” he said. “You want the next boss to know what you can do for the company.” Here’s hoping that we will have less bad boss stories to tell this year.

Yvonne Grinam-Nicholson, (MBA, ABC) is a Business Communications Consultant with ROCommunications Jamaica, specialising in business communications and financial publications. She can be contacted at: yvonne@rocommunications.com. Visit her website at www.rocommunications.com and post your comments.