HOW TO DEAL WITH A DIFFICULT BOSS

QUESTION: I have a difficult, or I should say impossible, boss who is driving me up the wall. She doesn’t care about me as a person; she only cares about the job. I am reaching out because I think she’s affecting my health. I have gained 20 pounds and fallen into deep depression. Thank you for your advice. – Karen

Let me say I am sorry to learn that you have gained weight and are feeling depressed.

Is your boss driving every other employee of your company or in your department up the wall? In the absence of all the information on the boss or anyone else at your workplace, I advise you to pursue the following course of action. Your company has a human resource department. Use them. Make an appointment and lay out your case before them. They will listen and if they think it is warranted they will talk with your boss. If necessary, they will speak with both of you. That should go a far way in understanding the source of your problem and providing some way to resolve it.

Of course, it is possible that your boss may take a position that she will not change, and you may feel the same. This will call for you to look at your options. Unless you get better at dealing with the situation, which we will discuss shortly, you will have to leave the job.

If your health is getting affected, you must address it. Sometimes individuals are in situations like yours and they sometimes forget that they have a choice. Seriously.

In fact, when someone suggests that they can leave that position or even that place of work, that suggestion is quickly met with the response: I don’t have a choice.

But you do have a choice. You can leave the job; that is always an option.

Now, another option that you have is to stay in the situation and learn to like it; to master it even. This will call for you to start with you. This requires that you begin to take radical accountability for all that is happening to you. You take the onus of directing and being the leader in the relationship.

This does not mean that you become subservient in the relationship. This means that you assume the power. If she speaks to you in a manner you don’t like, realise that is the perception of what she has said that you don’t like and are reacting to. You can quietly talk to her, even if not immediately. Whatever she says, you don’t have to take it personally. Keep at the forefront of your mind why you are in that job. Presumably, it is do an excellent job at some things that need to be done at the workplace. Give your boss compliments, ask how her family is doing, and she may warm to you. Don’t be a kiss-up, though.