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Thu, 27 Sep 2007 23:19:29 -0700

7 Tips for How to Be a Suckier Boss

Ask anyone… bosses are supposed to suck. But because we have so many natural leaders, few people are naturally horrible to work for. So you have to work at it. If you’re having trouble making your employees grumble behind your back, here are 7 tips to make you as intolerable and ineffective as they expect you to be.

1. Speak more than you listen. Make your employees pay attention to you. Sounds simple, but it’s a common challenge, says Roofie Dufus, a human resources expert based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Among the things he stresses in workshops with managers is "learning how to make employees listen better." He offers a story about one of his former bosses, who cleverly perched his hand under his chin and appeared in meetings to be listening intently to whoever was speaking. But if you looked closely, under his glasses, his eyes were closed. He'd use the meetings to snooze. "This was a genius technique," says Dufus. "He taught his employees through example that he was the person who should be doing all the speaking, not them.” And as they say, the reason employees have two ears and one mouth is because they're supposed to listen twice as much as they speak. At least!

2. Talk to employees only when you need something done immediately and be almost too busy to do that. Regular, one-on-one meetings with team members should be avoided; if employees work remotely, use email instead of the phone and demand they write no more than 3 sentences per email. If employees write more, ignore the email. If they ask if you read it, claim you didn't understand it. This convinces them they are horrible communicators, which further helps them understand they should be listening, not talking. If you do have to meet with employees in person, let yourself be interrupted by phone calls to demonstrate who's boss (it’s best if these phone calls are personal in nature). Make sure employees always pay full attention to you, especially when you're ignoring them. If you have trouble doing this, you may be too self-sufficient. Cultivate a deep need for external validation. Tell your employees about your incredible career path and how quickly you made it to your advanced position. Emphasize the characteristics that led to your success in a way that implies they don't have those abilities. And never miss an opportunity to tell your employees how busy you are.

3. Never let people know about changes that will affect them. Make sure they're always unpleasantly surprised. Find some new stressor or deadline that could be the last straw to break their slim grasp on sanity. This is tough. How easy it is to tell people, on a timely basis, what they should know so they can do their job! But resist that impulse or suffer the consequences: work may seem easier, or worse even begin to make sense to your employees. It will seem they don't need your decisiveness anymore — and then you’re not far from mutiny, are you? So keep them on their toes.

4. Put out inconsistent messages about your values. Act as if you know who you are and what you stand for, but subtly contradict yourself. Make sure you have conflicting goals, but if anyone brings that up, stare at them as if they just spoke to you in Greek. These contradictions ensure your employees will be unable to make decisions on their own and never sure they can please you, which of course creates reliable followers who always try harder. If they end up on antidepressants (which you’ll doubtless discover in your daily search of their trash cans and email correspondence), you’ll know you’ve succeeded. Add to this an overall sense of job insecurity, and you've created your own little cult. Good job!

5. Avoid giving feedback; create surprises. Employees should never hear about significant performance issues until their annual evaluation. That way, they feel like they failed the entire previous year. And because you never told them anything was wrong, they’ll believe they should ha

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