According to employee data resource Perceptyx, 24% of employees were working for their "worst boss" in 2023, with workers describing their leaders as "incompetent," "unsupportive," "disrespectful" and "unfair." And while it may be easy to write workers off as whiny, bad bosses do have an
So, who is a bad boss? They can come in different forms, but ultimately, they're leaders whose behavior unknowingly — or knowingly — impedes their team from performing without putting their well-being at risk, explains Jamie Woolf, the first director of culture and learning at Pixar Animation Studios and the current CEO and co-founder of Creativity Partners, a company focused on helping employers foster healthy workplace cultures.
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"There's different versions of a bad boss," says Woolf. "There's the type of boss who isn't a clear communicator, who shies away from making the tough calls or doesn't give feedback or have a clear vision. Then there's a more toxic bad boss that uses power to make people feel less than, that makes people feel like they don't have a voice."
Woolf notes that the latter type of bad bosses likely does not even see themselves as bad — and if high-ups are seeing decent results from that leader's team, they likely won't question the bosses management style to begin with.
Still, Woolf believes that companies can not only identify bad bosses but even turn a bad boss into a good one. EBN spoke further with the culture expert to learn how bad bosses fly under the radar and if they can be cured of their bad behavior.
How do so many bad bosses seemingly go unnoticed, to the point that their higher-ups don't even know they're bad?
The higher up you go, the more distorted the truth. When you get to a certain level, you have a lot of enablers around you who try to stay in your good graces. They're only telling you that your jokes are funny, and they're nodding their heads. [Leaders] get an echo chamber around that facilitates their view of things, which becomes very distorted.
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The other thing that can happen is that sometimes these toxic bosses deliver in some sense. They're getting results in terms of profits, but people aren't doing their best work because they're either intimidated or silenced. In that case, there's a dynamic where there's no accountability — [higher-ups] just gonna turn a blind eye. But what's overlooked is that people are leaving, and that's a big ticket item that costs companies a lot of money. And when there's no dissent in the room, you're not making sound decisions, and pretty soon, that does come back to bite you.
How do bad bosses shape workplace culture?
There are ripple effects. For example, an executive team where maybe the CEO leads by fear may spend an inordinate amount of time preparing for meetings. They're looking at all the different angles, and they're wondering what this leader's emotional mood is going to be. Then they go into the meeting, and all of a sudden, they're shut down.
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On a mental health level, when you feel like you're spending all this time preparing, and then you're demoralized, you start to lose your motivation. It's not rocket science to see the effects of someone feeling silenced in the room, or feeling like you have to nod your head when you, in fact, disagree, or when you're feeling underutilized. There's a chain reaction: I'm having mental health issues, I'm feeling stressed, and that's spilling out onto my team and so on and so forth.
To some degree, can bad leaders become better?
Everybody wants to be a good leader. People want to have a good reputation. I truly believe that. For the most part, these leaders start derailing when they get overwhelmed. They're filled with fear that they're not going to succeed, and they're feeling stressed.
[Employers] need to ask their leaders questions like, "Do you know what your direct reports are struggling with? When was the last time someone disagreed with you? What people are you mentoring, and who are you going to for advice?" If [those leaders] need to make changes, then I would go for executive coaching — leadership training doesn't quite get at the problem.
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What we did at Pixar is that you're actually in the room with people, and that has a high impact. For example, if I'm in a meeting watching a leader shut people's ideas down, I can tell them what I'm seeing and ask if that's the effect they want to have. It's not theoretical anymore. Now, there's somebody invited into the room to see how somebody's behavior might be derailing.
To boil that down, there's this fundamental curiosity and listening that we need to really get serious about. We need to build our muscle for truly listening to people, whether we're talking about what's happening with the polarity in our country or some of the polarities that happen within our workforces. We need to work up, down and sideways to understand where people are coming from. In order to build a strong culture, we need to develop human connection because we can't have a sense of belonging, inclusivity and psychological safety if we don't know who each other are as humans.
