Surrounded by Bad Bosses and Lazy Employees: or, How to Deal with Idiots at Work

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I do realize that you would never call your boss an idiot—at least not to their face—but you are aware of the fact that there are workplaces with problems directly related to incompetent bosses. We need to understand our different personal qualities while also finding a way to take into account the fact that, in work scenarios, one of us has power over the other. The DISC model builds upon thorough psychological studies, is used throughout the world, and has been translated into fifty different languages.

By identifying your boss’s behavior profile you’ll be better able to interact with them no matter what the situation. Erikson offers example stories and concrete steps to help you thrive in any work situation. Of course, much as we love to blame our bosses, sometimes management isn’t the problem at all. For every bad boss there is also a lazy employee, so Erikson also looks at the issue from a completely different perspective—employees themselves— and explores why some colleagues frequently underachieve, and what you can do to change this if you're the boss. It is frustrating to only be at the receiving end of a problem, without being able to make decisions and influence how the job should be done in the first place. And it’s even more frustrating when nobody listens to your proposals and ideas. Sometimes my boss has listened politely, nodded, and said I hear what you’re saying. This is often followed by a but … You know what that means, right? What they actually mean is: I hear that you are saying words but I couldn’t care less about your idea. Your boss has already decided. So why did they even ask you?But for those of you who really wonder why on earth your boss behaves like that—just keep on reading. You’ll learn the reasons why some bosses function well—and others don’t function at all. Possibly, entire books could be written about how to manage a ‘colourful’ team when one is Red or a Red-Yellow combination (such as myself), but because the book tries to cater to every possible combination it loses a lot of its practical use.

Internationally bestselling author Thomas Erikson has helped changed how the world thinks about behavior using a simple 4-color behavior analysis system. In Surrounded by Bad Bosses he applies that same system to revolutionize the workplace.Everyone has had a bad boss. You might have one right now. You might even be one. Bad bosses are a fact of the workplace, whether they’re short-tempered, unclear about expectations, or too disorganized to manage so much as a stapler. But how do you not only survive a difficult boss, but help your career thrive despite them?By identifying your boss’s behavior profile you’ll be better able to interact with them no matter what the situation. Erikson offers example stories and concrete steps to help you thrive in any work situation.Of course, much as we love to blame our bosses, sometimes management isn’t the problem at all. For every bad boss there is also a lazy employee, so Erikson also looks at the issue from a completely different perspective–employees themselves– and explores why some colleagues frequently underachieve, and what you can do to change this if you’re the boss.Written with Erikson’s signature humor and warmth, Surrounded by Bad Bosses (And Lazy Employees) will help you deal with the most hopeless managers and employees you can imagine–and keep you entertained along the way. Surrounded by Bad Bosses (And Lazy Employees): How to Stop Struggling, Start Succeeding, and Deal with Idiots at Work by Thomas Erikson – eBook Details There are other models that seek to explain behavior, but I use this one as a starting point because it is pedagogically simple to grasp. Written with Erikson's signature humor and warmth, Surrounded by Bad Bosses (And Lazy Employees) will help you deal with the most hopeless managers and employees you can imagine—and keep you entertained along the way. Entirely Green behavior, or Green in combination with another color, is the most common. The least common is entirely Red behavior, or Red in combination with one other color.Unfortunately I thought that the book fell short of this expectation, while Eriksen does a wonderful job in catering the narrative to a purely workplace context, I thought it was horrendously repetitive (and very unlike his self-assessment of being a Red, I thought). There were elements that I did like, such as the splitting up between the boss perspective and the staff perspective, and the relationship between colour and drive. The latter with concrete examples of how people of different colours, but the same drive, achieve their objectives in a different way. Or your boss does actually listen, and says: do what you want, but it’ll be your responsibility if it all goes wrong. The book attempts to give practical advice for as many of these combinations as possible, sometimes drawing on case studies, but overall drawing on the author’s 20+ years as a leader and as a coach for leaders. The reasons that many bosses are ineffective, do, of course, vary, but there are nevertheless certain patterns. And it’s a good idea to learn to recognize these patterns. And the bosses who function brilliantly in their roles—what do they understand that others don’t? Is there actually a secret?

Nor do I think that a boss should be able to blame ignorance of the parameters of their job or of what it means to be boss. Anybody can work out that it entails more than just sitting at your desk. PDF / EPUB File Name: Surrounded_by_Bad_Bosses_-_Thomas_Erikson.pdf, Surrounded_by_Bad_Bosses_-_Thomas_Erikson.epub But I have also met an endless number of bosses who have been practically useless. Some of them haven’t grasped what the job requires. Some of them would like to learn, while others aren’t even interested in that. Which—in my opinion—makes them even less suitable. Some of them are just superfluous. They’re in the way. The organization doesn’t really need them. Surrounded by Idiots remains one of the most useful NF books that I’ve ever read, I thought it was full of insight and tips that I’ve applied and have found incredibly useful. I wasn’t the biggest fan of Book 2 (Surrounded by Psychopaths), but I had that down to the fact that perhaps I’m just not very good at identifying these psychopaths in my life, and when I do I tend to just steer clear rather than try and deal with it head on (very green!), and therefore I found the tips less useful. I was hence incredibly excited when the title of the third book was revealed, as I thought it would be something very widely applicable and one I would find useful.Obviously, there are exceptions. I’ve also had bosses who have been good listeners and been open to the thoughts and ideas of members of their staff. Some of them have even had the decency to admit whose idea it was in the first place. Why is it so hard to define a boss’s role? Is it really that difficult? Perhaps it’s the simplest thing in the world? If you just sit down and give it a shot.

Overall, I look forward to thinking about my team’s composition more closely and treating everyone in a better direction, and I believe the book will be useful in this regard. I do think that it spent a bit too much time on hyper-specific, and also very brief, case studies, and there was quite a lot of repetition, specifically as the book is split into two parts (being managed vs. being a manager); so the latter half is mainly advice in reverse, which could have been just as easily inferred from the first half. There can be differences in behavior between the sexes, but I do not deal with the gender perspective in this book. Despite a provocative title, this book is actually a very heartfelt and empathetic guide to dealing with the different personalities that can arise in the workplace. It’s mission is to get readers to consider their colleague’s behaviour (decoded by the 4-colour DISC model), driving forces, and development stages; such that they can become better employees and/or managers and bring out the best in their teams.But overall, I don’t regret reading this, and as I haven’t read too widely in the realm of leadership & management books, I can only recommend it as a good introductory text, though my opinion might change later once I am more rounded in this space. Let’s get straight to the point: the world is full of bad bosses. Team leaders, group leaders, departmental managers, unit managers, deputy managing directors, managing directors, and the bosses of managing directors. Sometimes the boss is a chairman of the board in a Fortune 500 company, and sometimes the same chairman is at the head of a local sports team. At every level, in all types of organizations, there are bosses who have ended up in the wrong place and cause problems for themselves, who cause problems for their staff, who are incompetent, and who are naïve. There are bosses who are far too nice, and there are ones that are just plain mean. Some can’t manage to learn the names of their staff, and some just sneak away from their own responsibility. Some of them are so incompetent that the company would have been better off without them. It used to be that the boss’s responsibilities were simple: to lead and say who should do what. If you managed that, then you were doing your job. A good friend of mine often quotes his own father when it comes to leadership: Never become the boss, because you’ll end up doing everything yourself. Full Book Name: Surrounded by Bad Bosses (And Lazy Employees): How to Stop Struggling, Start Succeeding, and Deal with Idiots at Work