Boss, Please Don't Be A Paragon
I SUPPOSE, without too much ado, any university will deem it fit to honour me with an M.Blu. What's an M.Blu, you ask? Well, it's a Master's degree in Blunders. This course, established no doubt recently, offers extensive training on how to misplace important documents and commit unforgivable Freudian slips during important meetings. Now, I am not saying I am entitled to such a distinction on the basis of reputation alone. I have hard evidence to back my claim. One particular incident comes to mind. I had made a huge mistake that led to what political analysts call irreparable repercussions. I am not going to go into details. Let's just say it brought stock markets worldwide to its knees for a millisecond. Naturally, I expected the proverbial guillotine to fall on my neck. I envisaged my Boss, foaming at the mouth, raising cain and drawing the attention of everybody within a five mile radius to my latest faux pas. I was therefore, thoroughly flabbergasted when all that greeted me was deafening silence. Frankly, I had no idea how to deal with this eerie quiet that surrounded me after the catastrophic (and characteristic) bungle. And that is when I realised that bosses who don't conform to stereotypes are tougher to handle than those that do. And in case you find yourself racking your brains and wasting precious time thinking about what constitutes `conforming' norms for bosses, let me lift the veil of mystery once and for all...
1. The Banshee
They yell, growl, and snarl at the slightest opportunity. When their BP goes up, (the reason could be anything - sand in the stomach lining, traffic snarl or you) they utter a ghoulish howl that measures somewhere between six and eight on the Richter scale. But the BIG advantage of the Banshee Boss is that one can sit around and feel absolutely no guilt whatsoever at all the epithets and sobriquets that he heaps on his employees. He does it so often, it loses its novelty and thereby, its sting.
2. The Naggers
This is the sort of Boss that `delegates' the job to you with the wise words: `Now, please finish it and send it in'. He then follows you to your cubicle a few seconds later, wondering if you are `stepping on the gas'. So, you do your best Michael Schumacher impression, pressing the pedal and staring intelligently at the monitor all at once, until Boss N whooshes back, to check on your `progress' - again! Ha! Tell me, if this isn't `motivating' what is?
3. The Intelligentsia
Now, if you think you are clever, Boss I (who makes even more enemies than Don Corleone) thinks he is super clever. And the sad part is, more often than not, he is. You can sit around in little groups, discuss the works of Nietzsche, but when you have someone who actually knows what he is talking about, what can the little group do? Here, the usual reasons for the boss being boss, i.e:
a. Bribed the interview panel
b. Buttered the big boss
c. Polished his halo a month before every appraisal,
are all rendered redundant. Ergo, the underlings resort to every tact and ploy they can think of to besmirch his achievements. Especially if the high IQ boss also has a big B.H (bloated head).
4. The Bull (In the China store, not Wall Street.)
The Bull is so bull-headed that he can't see the other point of view. I mean, I hardly blame him. When he is so busy tearing around at 180 mph, disregarding the fragile egos of his employees, how can he focus on any `point of view'? Ultimately, the whole point is lost and the self-absorbed bull simply charges around, occasionally pausing to catch a breath or two. Naturally, he easily scales the top 5 `most hated managers' list with ιlan! In fact, every time the list is re-formulated, he will find himself right up there, sharing glory with the rest of his clan.
5. The Numbskull
The prototype is more pitied and ridiculed than really hated. His famous utterances like `err, how does one unzip the WinZip' go down in corporate history as one of the most celebrated lines ever to be spoken by a `self-proclaimed' geek! But unfortunately, he also wins the hatred of his team by being a near-total ignoramus when he shouldn't have been. Like when he pooh-poohed something he should've encouraged or vice-versa. And if this isn't boo-boo enough, he rebukes the team-brain for being too brainy, praises the team-numbskull (the thing about birds of a feather flocking together is that the other animals feel rather left out) and generally is so full of gaffes, that one starts wishing that the gaffer would soon graduate into a geezer and retire!
So, tell me, when the Boss ISN'T any thing like this, and is almost a new age Buddha, what does the poor employee do? For neither can one yell, rave and rant; nor dissolve into laughter talking about the last time he got drunk and sang karaoke in front of a hundred horrified barflies. And when one is so much in awe of the boss, one can scarcely hate him. Except in secret. Tch tch, these guys are the undoing of any organisation. Really. They do not provide the employees with the daily quota of fun, and have faces that make for poor dartboards. There are simply no opportunities to let out steam. So, remember, if you want employee morale to run high - without resorting to expensive team building exercises - simply choose to be one of the five. For, when there is a common enemy, the team will gang up and work as a cohesive unit! What more can you ask for?
APARNA KARTHIKEYAN
aparnak.hyd@cnkonline.com
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