In the area of “bad bosses”, employees most often request advice for dealing with bosses who yell. For most of my life, I too suffered from brain freeze and emotional meltdown in the presence of yellers. I found “expert” advice in books useless.

(Keywords: engaging change, executive coaching, bad bosses, difficult people, change leadership, bosses who yell)

Typically employees and experts describe the yeller as dominating, controlling, intimidating, bullies. Here is a sample from one author describing the boss.

“ Coming in many guises‚including the business psychopath (who may be working down the hall from you), the arrogant and status-obsessed, the messianic, the perfectionist‚they are all driven by an irrational need to dominate and to enhance their status, regardless of the consequences to others. ”

On the back of the book’s jacket you see a bio like this

“a clinical psychologist/psychoanalyst and work-life consultant in full-time, private practice. She is on the adjunct faculty in the Organizational Development-Human Resource program at ….”

Most experts state that you have a right not be abused, and the best response is assertiveness. You can stop the boss’s yelling by saying, “I think we need a cooling down period, let’s discuss this in private when you are ready.” Then leave and go to the restroom (This presumes the parties are of the opposite sex, so the restroom is a safe haven).

In addition, experts almost always recommend talking about the problem with the boss. Here is an example, “Regardless of what type of boss you have, your first line of defense is to speak to him/her, as he/she may not be aware of this behavior.“

Here is an example of what to say. “I feel really incompetent in situations when you yell at me. Yesterday, It was difficult for me to truly hear what you were trying to say while you were yelling.” After getting your boss’s feedback, the author recommends that you “encourage an agreement on how each of you will handle the situation differently in the future.”

Other advice includes documenting every conversation or quitting.

Does this reflect your impressions of expert advice regarding yellers? If you have personal experience that supports the validity of this advice, please comment. I want to know how you pulled it off, because as general success strategy, I don’t buy it.

Here is my experience with what works.

Don’t Judge, Blame, or Label

Thinking of the other person as a sociopath or control freak may win sympathy points at the water cooler, but thinking the boss is sick, bad, incompetent, etc. makes the situation worse. If you judge the boss, the boss will reciprocate and dislike you too. This creates a cybernetic / behavior cycle that spirals to hell.  (To change this see How to Change Your Boss.)

Look Inside

Next, this is tough to accept, you too have issues. Yes, many bosses have a need for control. People with control issues are attracted to positions of authority and power, duh! So what’s your issue? Some people need to feel loved, others need excitement and fun, others need to feel right or righteous, others must be knowledgeable, others want to feel unique, others want admiration, others need to belong to a group, etc. If you fall apart when you are yelled at, that’s your issue!!!! If you have your act together, a person can spit on you, curse you, berate you, and it has no effect. His/Her actions are about his/her; your reaction is about you.

There’s a story. After a man verbally attacked Buddha for several minutes, Buddha asked the man this question, “If someone give you a gift, and you decline to accept it, to whom does the gift belong?” The man answers, “The gift belongs to the giver.” Buddha replies, “That is correct, and I decline your gift to me.”

Now, I imagine most of you are thinking I’m nuts or a jerk. Yelling is rude, wrong, degrading, and a sign of sickness….and I’m sick too if I don’t agree. Well, I said this would be tough to accept. We all have issues, and taking someone’s bad behavior personally is an issue.

Don’t we all know people who aren’t bothered by a yelling boss? Aren’t there people who somehow rise above it, keep their heads, and are even able to quickly defuse the situation? Sure we do. These people exist, and we admire them.

 

Long ago…(The Past is Now)

When, someone yells, many people feel inadequate, unloved, disrespected, or unworthy. They feel like a child being reprimanded by a parent. That’s usually the key. We were conditioned as children to be afraid of yelling, since it was usually followed by punishment or rejection. Even though we are now in our 20s, 30s, or 40s, we still turn to jelly when someone yells. It really is our stuff, we own it.

People confuse yelling with personal attacks. Personal attacks need to be addressed, whether they are yelled at you, whispered, or said behind your back. Volume is volume, the rest we make up.

Here is the beauty of yellers: they give us the opportunity to face a fear, and overcome it. We get to understand that our parents didn’t wake up every morning thinking of ways to screw us up. They were doing the best they could, with the knowledge and skills they had at the time. Their goal was to protect us from making serious mistakes and shelter us from harm. They yelled because they cared. If they didn’t care, they would have ignored us and we would have a different set of issues. Everybody has issues. Perhaps the boss has control issues; and those who tremble have fear of rejection issues.

The best part is once we fix our own stuff, miraculously, the boss yells less. Relationships are systems. Change one part of the system, and another part changes on its own.

Experts?

Now let’s return to the expert advice for a moment. The boss has control issues, so the strategy is to tell him/her that he/she needs to calm down before we continue the conversation, then we walk out of the room. We think we can control a person who is afraid of being controlled. The boss has the power and has no desire to give it up. Walking out is a public display of disrespect and a challenge of the queen’s authority. Be prepared to lose your head, Alice.

How about discussing the yelling behavior as adults; maybe the boss doesn’t realize he/she’s yelling. Is it possible that the yelling has always been a lifelong response and he/she never noticed? Are you going to be the first to point this out? Do you believe that the boss will be mortified by the revelation and be forever thankful for the gift of awareness? That will happen. NOT!

Who are these experts? Often they are well educated and well meaning psychologists or psychiatrists who have never worked in businesses. Their suggestions work for themselves in their practices, where they are in positions of authority and have expertese. A therapists office is not a business situation like Sales, Technology, Finance, Customer Service, or Operations. Many experts have never been in the trenches on their bellies.

While Googling this topic, I came across one coach’s site with realistic advice. http://www.careerknowhow.com/advancement/jerk-boss.htm, a refreshing discovery.

Yelling is Rational

BTW, bosses yell for another reason besides personality; yelling is immediately reinforced. A boss screams; people jump. Everyone within earshot focuses their attention and actions; stuff happens, pronto. From the boss’s point of view, good things transpire when she/he gets angry. Of course in the long term, yelling diminishes relationships, employees become passive-aggressive, good people leave. Unfortunately the effect is very distant from the cause, and the long-term consequences don’t influence a boss’s behavior. So there’s a practical, logical explanation for why boss’s yell, and once we know it, it’s hard to stick to the belief that there’s something mentally wrong with the boss.

Speaking of anger, there’s a politically correct idea these days that “anger is bad”. Anger is one of six or seven universal human emotions (see Paul Ekman ). Watch children playing together. A child becomes angry when they don’t get what they want, or when they get what they don’t want. Emotions are the gasoline in our engines, the drive to live and survive through hardships and bind us together in families and communities. Throughout history, anger is a fuel that fights for eradicating waste, corruption, disease, poverty, injustice, and inequality. Anger is not a primitive, emotional appendix from our brutal past. Anger can be a great resource. Unchecked or inappropriate anger is the problem, not anger itself. .

Here are my reasons for loving a boss who yells.

1. If I am affected personally, this is an opportunity to unchain myself from an automatic response and replace it with personal choice.
2. Once I’m free to choose, I’m free to ignore the intensity in the bosses feelings and hear the truth in the boss’s concern.
3. Bosses who yell are honest. I know exactly what’s wrong. That’s 100% better than indirect, no, or misleading feedback.
4. Bosses who yell are often people of action, who change the world, powerful people, with vision and courage.
5. They often have few real friends. When they let me inside, they are generous and loyal.

There’s something to love in every difficult person, because they show us what’s lacking in ourselves. When we complete ourselves, magically, the difficulty in others disappears.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Michael Cushman, The Engaging Guru, wants you to master enrolling others in your truth, get the goodies of life, and change the world.  www.engagingchange.com