How to deal with a bad boss while working from home

Remember the good old days when you could clear up an ambiguously curt email from your boss with a stroll by their desk? Or when the anxiety of getting a dreaded, “We need to chat,” chat message could be alleviated with a quick pop-in in person?

If only we knew how good we had it!

By this point in the pandemic, those of us working from home have figured out the big stuff. Maybe the kitchen table doubles as a desk now and a pet has become a frequent surprise guest in Zoom meetings but, nearly a year in, most of us are making it work. 

Nevertheless, there are certain things about communicating digitally that don’t always translate. And of those things is how we communicate with our bosses, say experts. If your boss wasn’t great before the age of working from home, the odds are he or she hasn’t improved.

But that doesn’t mean there isn’t hope and as pandemic fatigue has fully set in, now may be the best time to salvage the relationship, according to Mollie West Duffy, co-author of No Hard Feelings, on how emotions affect our working lives.

Ms West Duffy says: “We know through research that we’re much more likely to read into a lack of emotion in digital communication as being negative, because we’re missing all the context cues.

“So if your boss says, ‘I want to chat tomorrow,’ without saying something like, ‘I think you did a great job and I just have some comments,’ you’re going to assume your boss has something negative to say.”

And because a return to normal is kinda-sorta on the horizon, “we’re in a transitional moment and we like to capitalise on transition moments because it makes having these conversations that can be awkward a little less awkward”. However, if your relationship with your boss has veered into territory that can’t be fixed with a few conversations, it may be time to escalate – more on that later.

Establishing how to interact

Mary Abbajay, author of Managing Up: How to Move Up, Win at Work and Succeed With Any Type of Boss, says outside the work, a poor relationship with the manager often boils down to bad communication.

This was true in normal times and is even more so now that we’re unable to read body language and other non-verbal cues that provide useful context and information when we communicate. Establishing how to interact is just as important as the actual communication itself.

Ms Abbajay says: “A lot of times we have conflict because we prefer different forms of communication. You want to make sure you’re having conversations with your colleagues around how you want to communicate and what kinds of things are going to be communicated in what way.”

For example, because home has become the office for so many of us, finding the time and space to have a conversation may not be as simple as starting up a Zoom meeting from the kitchen table. It could mean asking a partner to watch the children, scheduling around the cooking of meals or finding a quiet room. So being flexible with how we have those conversations can alleviate a lot of misunderstanding about the substance of a chat, Ms Abbajay says.

Maybe your boss would prefer a text rather than an email, or a chat message over a video meeting. But whatever the medium, knowing how to communicate can be just as important as what you’re saying.

“Make sure that you’re communicating and adapting to other people’s preferences in terms of getting their attention and time,” Ms Abbajay says.

She agrees with Ms West Duffy that now would be a good time to check in and have that talk, as annual reviews may be happening and the new year is a good excuse to do an evaluation about what’s working and what’s not.

She says: “Take the time to really assess how well the virtual engagement and communication is going. What’s working well? What are the ways we’re not communicating well?”

Managing your manager

There are many types of bad bosses, Ms Abbajay says. You might have a ghost boss (someone who seems never to be around), a seagull (bosses who, “swoop and poop”, or “swoop and scoop”, meaning they, “dive bomb into a project and leave a mess behind”, or they, “dive into it and take it away from you”), or are simply incompetent. 

Of course, most managers are a combination of styles but working remotely can add entirely new layers to those archetypes – and we might just be behaving in those ways ourselves.

“The pandemic has turned a lot of us into ghosts,” Ms Abbajay says. “It’s going to be up to you to help your manager learn how to manage remotely.”

Ms West Duffy says directness is often the best way to get what you need from your manager and naming an issue rather than hoping it will go away on its own can help give you agency in improving a bad situation.

“If you think the relationship isn’t great, chances are your boss thinks that, too,” she says. “Just naming that and saying, ‘I know it’s been difficult to communicate,’ and being on the same page during the pandemic,” can clear the air and help you train your manager on how best to manage you.

Having these conversations is never easy but going into them well prepared can help you get what you need, she says. Write down the main points and think through the language you want to use to discuss them. Use statements of fact such as: “When you do this, it affects me this way,” and avoid ambiguity by saying: “Help me understand,” the issue.

Ms West Duffy says: “It helps us mentally to go into these conversations not only knowing the topics but knowing the words you’ll say.”

Also, Ms Abbajay says keep in mind that your managers are dealing with their own stressors at home outside the job and have compassion and empathy about the ways that may be influencing their approach to work.

She says: “You always want to assume positive intent and give a little grace. People are stressed and this is a very weird time.”

Ms West Duffy says: “We don’t know what’s going on,” in personal lives, home lives, the calls they’ve just been on. “We just have this one little slice and emotions bleed into other meetings and we just don’t know. So there is a little bit of giving them the benefit of the doubt and depersonalising it a little bit.”

When a conversation can’t fix it

All that said, a stressful world is not an excuse for rude, abusive, inappropriate or otherwise beyond-the-pale behaviour from a manager or a co-worker. If your boss’s behaviour is beyond ghosting on an email thread or being unclear about expectations, it’s important to recognise that you have a right to a safe environment. No amount of air clearing will fix an abusive manager.

Raising these issues with higher-ups or human resources can be tricky in a work-from-home world, so research your company’s policies and protocols.

Ms Abbajay says: “Escalating during a pandemic is very hard. If you have a bully boss or a truly toxic boss, do a little research about how your HR department handles that.”

This is all the more difficult for women and members of minority groups, who are often already at a disadvantage in the workplace and who have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic. But having a clear, specific plan about how to escalate a situation and what outcome you want can help. And most importantly … document everything.

Ms Abbajay says: “If you need to escalate, do it and be really clear about what you need to get out of it.”

© The New York Times