Bosses: Mean or Misunderstood?

Bob Weinstein is a journalist who covers technology, project management, the workplace and career development.

  Career Development  

A dangerous assumption is thinking that bosses actually know how to manage people. Mention the word "boss" and we immediately assume this person has some special abilities or training. When bosses make bad decisions or even fools of themselves, we're horrified, amused and pleased all at the same time.

Whether you're a project manager, software engineer, programmer, nuclear physicist or sanitation engineer (a.k.a. garbage collector), there is a curriculum, agenda, rules and protocols for doing the job. But there is no predetermined path that prepares you to be a boss.

Ninety-nine pound weaklings don't become football linebackers, and ungainly klutzes rarely become tennis aces. It takes exceptional athletic ability to become a superstar athlete. Similarly, it takes special abilities, whether they be conceptual, creative, analytical or computational, to be an engineer, mathematician or architect. But there is no concrete set of skills necessary to be a boss.

You're about to see your boss in a new light. If he's in the "not nice" category, at least you'll know why he acts the way he does. You don't have to be empathetic; understanding is good enough.

While many large and midsize companies provide training seminars and lectures for supervisors and middle managers, the majority of companies offer no training for bosses. And most of …

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