On Sunday, I published an Observer Magazine interview with the American psychologist Tessa West, a professor at NYU. West has written a book, Jerks at Work, about misbehaviour in the workplace: how it is rife, how it is unavoidable, what you might do to manage it. One of the more shocking things we discussed was how a coworker’s malevolent behaviour can affect our health, how the stress and anxiety that comes with attending to people we find difficult or abusive — that constant feeling of uneasy alertness — can become dangerously pervasive, not just in our own bodies but also in the bodies of the people closest to us. Stress radiates, is what West said. And families suffer.
In the book, West writes a lot about bosses, whose influence on workplace culture is enormous, as you’d expect. Of the seven or eight bosses I’ve had, some have been good, others bad. One was abusive, I’m pretty sure, though mildly, as though they were on the brink of becoming a bad person but had not yet fully committed. Another enjoyed throwing computers onto the floor. Some have liked a drink; others have used a lot of coke. When I entered the workforce, I was surprised to see my bosses leave their desks at 6pm on a Friday night and disappear together into a meeting room, where lines began. (I was not invited, though I could see their bent-over profiles beyond a wall of frosted glass.) In a much later job, a boss would take terrible shits daily — the stench would escape the bathroom and fill the air. The shits were not good for team morale, or maybe they were, perhaps they brought the rest of us together. The toilets were tiled, so my colleagues and I would know, before the event, what was coming: a belt buckle would ding crisply against the ceramic floor, and then…
It’s funny what you take with you through life — I think of that horrible ding more than I should.
Perhaps the most confusing subject West and I spoke about was leadership. Even now, she told me, psychologists consider the ability to lead as innate. As a skill, it is difficult to teach and to learn. This seems remarkable to me — that humanity has yet to grasp how to develop this specific set of characteristics in an individual that requires them — but also understandable. I’ve had bosses who have been able to maintain immediate authority — cheerful in some instances, stern in others, both approaches seem good and bad — and I’ve had bosses who have found it close to impossible. What can we do in those instances? Not much. We don’t choose the skills we’re born with.
During our conversation, West presented leadership as some uncanny thing, a quality we’re not able to fully understand. (It is not charisma, she said — that is a different thing.) At one point I asked her, “Are we just lucky when we get a good boss?”
She nodded.
I sighed.
“I think it’s pure luck,” she said. “And I think it’s terrifying that a lot of our engagement and our outcomes at work are dependent on these bosses. Often it’s the case that we’re just lucky. And if they leave and your new boss is bad, that’s just unlucky.”
Debra, below, knows. And I’m assuming the 100,000 or so people who liked this Tweet know too:
You can read my interview here.
As ever, thanks so much for reading. If you got all the way to the end – if you’re reading this! – you are a legend, and even more so if you’re a subscriber. If you’d like to share this post, you can click the button below. Please do. Peace!
The thing about being in leadership is that you can never please everyone. So, to some people you can be a great leader and well respected but there are always those who think you are sh!! and wonder however you got the job and they could do it so much better.