All of us who have worked in any organisation would have had our fair share of bosses good and bad. The good bosses are those who take you under their wing, teach you the ropes and guide you through the organisational maze. They are those who inspire ordinary people to do extraordinary things. There are also bosses who bark and snarl their instructions or orders, point a critical finger at every opportunity and even tick you off at meetings and seminars. The human mind is geared to sift the good memories from the bad and retain them to dwell on in tranquil moments. The bad memories are best given a decent burial.
However, the published results of some recent research at the University of Manchester on workplace behaviour brought to my mind a few bosses I would rather not have encountered. The research states that “people working for bosses who display psychopathic and narcissistic tendencies” not only feel depressed because of constant bullying but are also likely to engage in counterproductive behaviour. All the aggressive, toxic rhetoric can whittle down your ego and reduce you to a robot.
I remember, whenever a particular boss called us we stepped into his chamber as though towards a guillotine. Full of himself, totally in love with his own voice, he would crush us with his demeaning comments. He was the oracle, he was the final word. No wonder, when he retired and visited the office he was given a wide berth and a cold shoulder.
Next was another who was equally famed for his rudeness and did not hesitate to fling files from his table. Though I did not myself have any files flung at me I got my share of tongue-lashing. One consolation was they were uniform in their behaviour with everyone, reminding me of Professor Higgins in My Fair Lady . “It’s not that I have treated you badly but whether I have treated anyone else better.”
Of course there were those who played favourites and humiliated those who were not. The third boss was a clear misogynist who faulted me over everything while all my male colleagues were cheerfully forgiven. He took immense delight in correcting and re-correcting my drafts and returned my papers with unsavoury comments.
So, it was a matter of particular pleasure when in the years to come I got past him on the career ladder.
What gives power to one individual over another? Is it rank , class or privilege that he thinks bestows on him the divine right to humiliate and terrorise “lesser” mortals around? Public life presents examples such as the honourable MP who takes pride in hitting an Air India official not once but twenty-five times. He was obviously talking from a position of privilege and pronouncing to the world his right to misuse of power. The example he is setting appears par for the course and there are others waiting in queue: MPs, politicians and lesser people, to exercise their right of misbehaviour from the pedestal. There are also many who had gone before him and thereby he is in exalted company. Unfortunately this finds legitimacy with many power-backed individuals who are in support of the honourable member and state he was provoked to act as he did on account of the Air India officials’ actions — quite forgetting there can be no excuse or reason for violence.
Meryl Streep , the screen legend, while receiving the Golden Globe Award, made a reference to a person in a powerful position who mocked a reporter with disability. She said she considered it inexcusable to attack “someone he outranked in privilege, power and the capacity to fight back”. She added: “That instinct to humiliate when it is modelled by someone on a public platform, it filters down into everyone’s life because it gives permission for others to do the same.”
However, in the end one realises the futility of all power and the ultimate impotence of all those who exercise such power.
sudhadevi_nayak@yahoo.com
