A reader writes: “I have a boss that’s like a twin clone of Donald. He’s “larger than life”, imposing, snappy and controlling and folks tremble when we are in a meeting with him. He’s unhappy with my reports (I’m a Controller at a middle market company), gnashes his teeth at me and often says to me: “What’s this? You call this a report ?”, “I know what you’re up to.”, “Relax, we are the good guys”, “We’ve got one for the ages.”, “Do you catch a breath when I look at you?” “Shit storm ahead, what color is your parachute ?” “See what you made me do ?” or one morning “Did your wife wolf down your breakfast ?”.
Even on the golf course where he generally is in a good mood, if he loses he likes to blame it me. “If you had your priorities straight…I lost my spine angle because you’re terrible!” How do I deal with him short of handing my resignation ?
Answer: You have an easy job. Imagine you had the job of reporting Donald’s holding positions to him. Reports say Donald’s worth 3.74 Bn as of 2016 but he says is $10 Bn. “Snappy and controlling”, if I had a dime every time I heard that…First, please note I’m not going to write you on how to be indispensable for your position or title or on how to deal with demanding bosses. Most if not all bosses are demanding. I can make some suggestions if you think you are being bullied. Also, I will not lecture office politics in this post. You should already have a handling on that. If you haven’t established some sort of bonding with your boss outside of work, you should do that too. Women bosses can be just as nasty as this male boss, if not even worse.
1. Rearrange the setting or office environment if you can. Rearrange the furniture, maybe the room where you are having these interactions. Or next time you see him make it in a different office, not his, not yours. Bullying works on predictability. Familiarity breeds contempt.
2. If you are driving with him somewhere, slam on the brakes. If you’re at a business lunch, lunge forward into his space. You can go into a frenzy saying stuff like “They’re trying to poison me with a kilo of salt in these veggies” or “They distilled pee into this wine”. At one point, your boss might try to calm you down, seeing that you’re out of character. You need to thank him for saving your day.
3. Take your boss out on a hunting trip. Once there, leave him without a rifle and any help for five hours. Life is brutal and that is an unknown experience to powerful people. Power comes from having power over people. At the end of the day say you lost him. He will get mad but he may see you helpful. A hunting trip can be substituted for anything that is not a carefully scripted experience.
“Are you gonna bark all day, little doggie, or are you gonna bite ?” (from the movie, above)
“Boss, do you like slumming ?”
“Boss. why did the turkey cross the road ? A: To prove it’s no chicken”,
“How many Donald Trump supporters does it take to change a light bulb?
Look, we can change the light bulb. That I will tell you. We’re changing it, ok? And I understand what you’re saying, I hear it all the time. People call me and say “Is the light bulb really dead?”. That’s what they are asking me, its unbelievable. The light bulb is in big trouble, that I can tell you. But we are going to change it.” Laffgaff
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