Shyamal Majumdar: When your boss is insecure...

... he doubts whether his team members respect him and hence thinks aggression is the best form of defence

At a counselling session last week, 'insecure boss' topped the hate list of participants. "They are the most toxic among all bad bosses and they kill you silently," said a bright young guy, who has quit his job and now runs his own consultancy firm. The institution that organised the session and the mentors as well as mentees want to remain anonymous because of the sensitivity of the work they do, but what one heard was an eye-opener.

Quite a few poured their hearts out to the professionally-trained mentors about how the insecurity of their bosses ruined their lives. While most of them have been able to make a fresh beginning, the common refrain was that the loss of confidence in their professional abilities had been the most difficult to handle. Also, everyone seemed in agreement that the hardest situation is when your boss dislikes you because you are successful, smart, and confident and he or she is insecure and feels threatened.

A young woman said her boss was quite nice to her in the beginning and did a lot of hand-holding. But the moment her work started getting appreciated by the bigger bosses, his attitude changed. One day, the immediate boss saw her talking to the departmental head. That must have hit a raw nerve as from that day, the boss just became hostile and started ignoring her to the point that she became irrelevant. That's not all. Her boss also started bad-mouthing her to others probably because he suspected she had the potential to undermine him vis-à-vis his own boss.

"I have been badly depressed, deeply self-conscious of others' perceptions of me. Leaving the house for office became a pain," the woman said. Didn't she approach the senior bosses? The common perception is that it's all good in theory but very few companies have the wherewithal to deal with such situations. In any case, no one wants to go public with such grievances in the fear of being labelled a problem child.

So how do you know that you have an insecure boss? The answer isn't simple but here are a few indicators. For example, your boss gives you a project and then micro-manages to death as if he trusts his people the way you would trust a five-year-old behind the wheel of your car. In short, he refuses to delegate any real authority. Second, he encourages team members to speak up but treats every question about a decision he has made as a challenge to his authority or as a hint that the job would not be done the way he wants it. That's because every insecure boss is constantly under a doubt whether his team members respect his professional knowledge and hence thinks aggression and the weight of his chair is the best form of defence. As a natural consequence of this attitude, most such bosses do not pick on weak and vulnerable employees; they only pick on those who can potentially become a threat.

Too many of these bosses use brainstorming meetings to conduct 'blame storms' where the goal is to point fingers, humiliate the 'guilty', and throw a few overboard. The stuff that insecure bosses generally believe in is that the average person dislikes work and will avoid it if he/she can and therefore most people must be forced with the threat of punishment to work towards organisational goals.

Insecure bosses also prefer the seeming safety of the status quo and hence treat anybody, who wants to change things around, with suspicion. Besides, they are incapable of giving clear directions. You do what he once said he wanted, but now it turns out he wanted you to do something else.

Human resource experts say the problem is becoming more acute in an environment where people in their early 30s or even late 20s with loads of talent but zero exposure to leadership are becoming bosses of large teams. The solution that people have in such cases is pretty straightforward - either pretend to be less smart than your boss, or quit. Both of these may be easier said than done. The first option may require you to be spineless, which could damage your reputation in the organisation. And the second option is applicable only when you have a viable option. Hence, the third option may be a better one - if your boss is insecure, give him a share of your success by staying one step behind him when the limelight shines. Also, unless he is the devil-incarnate, he would also have some redeeming features in his personality. So try to appreciate them as much as you can. Maybe things would improve.