How to Survive Under a Crappy Boss

I’ve written before on how to handle a difficult (okay, maybe crappy) employee, and while I’m tempted to write on how to handle a crappy president or president elect, I won’t. Ha! Today, I’ve been asked to write about how to survive under a crappy boss. Here are five tips:

Hone your focus

Try to focus on yourself and getting better at you. Set a goal each day on what you want to accomplish and who you want to impact. Your boss can’t stop you from being impactful to others. Honing your focus involves managing your thoughts. Negative thoughts make you a negative person, so think of things that put you in a good place: your kids, your friends, your weekend plans…

Control what you can

You can’t control your boss’s actions or his or her reputation. You can control your attitude, your smile, your communication, your interaction with the team, your dress, your hair (well, wait, sometimes that is out of our control…), your growth, and so on. See, there are a lot of things you can control! Dwelling on what you cannot control results in you having a victim mindset, so reset your thinking toward what you can control.

Think with a 10 mindset.

One of the things I do before I meet with an employee that I’m frustrated with is think about a time when I was so proud of them. When did they perform as a “10?” Do the same thing with your boss. Think of a time when he or she made you feel good. Try to keep those positive thoughts in mind before meeting.

Strive to know your boss

What do they like to read? What are they passionate about? Think about how you can relate to them in their area of comfort. Sometimes we only think of our boss as “a boss.” And they only think of us as “labor.” But both are real people. Bosses have every day personal issues and stresses just like you. Take away the position and title and there they are… just a regular person.

End your day with gratefulness

In the end, what you want to accomplish is to make sure you don’t waste time working with a crappy boss. So make use of it. Learn every day. Journal what you learn. You still have a job to do, so you are learning there, and you are also learning what kind of leader you don’t want to be. Before you go home at the end of the day, stop and record what happened that day that you are grateful for.