4 Ways to Deal with a Bullying Boss

In a 2019 Monster poll, 51 percent of respondents reported being bullied by their boss or manager (yelling, offensive language, isolating and intimidating employees, assigning meaningless tasks or impossible ones).

There is a reason that the workplace harbors so many bullying bosses—the psychological journey employees go through as they rise through the ranks to become managers: Imagine an elevator slowly ascending the corporate tower. With each floor ascended, people treat the person with a bit more respect, subtle changes that occur many times a day, and hundreds of small interactions a week. As these favorable interactions aggregate, the person rising gradually internalizes that they are indeed more powerful. The rising station affords more decision-making, and they grow slowly wiser in their mind's eye making them slightly less open to disagreements and critique. With each floor, they hear less candor and more deference while the ever-growing distance from the people they started with slowly erodes the capacity for empathy and perspective-taking. At some point, the growing hubris, arrogance, and insensitivity can gradually morph into bullying.

Yet many leaders still view themselves as empathic and sensitive, unaware of the gradual transformation in their perceptions, beliefs, and behaviors. And therein lies hope:

Dealing with a Bullying Boss

There are four different approaches you can use, each with their pros and cons:

1. Get support and empathy: To manage the stress of dealing with a bullying boss, you can confide in a trusted colleague or mentor, or talk to someone you trust who can provide emotional support and valuable guidance. They might also be able to offer insights or suggestions but the support alone will help mitigate some of the stress.

Pros: Support and empathy from others will help bolster your well-being and emotional health.

Cons: It won't stop the bullying.

2. Talk to Your Boss: Try to convince them that their "tough love" lowers your ability to perform at your best and that treating you differently will enable you to do better and bring out the best in you. If they refuse or the ‘chat’ does not go well, you might need to try the next two approaches.

Pros: A well-planned talk with your boss might change things for the better and by doing so, help your performance and boost your emotional health, self-confidence, and sense of efficacy and empowerment.

Cons: It can backfire and cause the bullying to intensify, which would make everything worse.

Tip: This is far more likely to succeed if your boss was not always a bully or if they seem to exhibit consideration and kindness in other contexts like when you see them on calls with their kids. Whether they are more pleasant with their own superiors is not relevant because they might be managing up.

3. Confront: File a Formal Complaint: To do so you will need to document instances of bullying whenever they occur, preferably in writing (emails, slack messages) and who was there to witness them. Once you have evidence, go to your human resource officer, and file a complaint. Your complaint will carry exponentially more weight if you can recruit another employee who is bullied by the same person who is willing to file an independent complaint of their own. One person complaining can be dismissed but two indicate a pattern that will be taken more seriously.

Pros: Standing up for yourself will make you feel empowered, and boost feelings of agency and self-efficacy. If HR takes the complaint seriously, your boss is likely to change their behavior, at least somewhat.

Cons: It could backfire and cause your boss to retaliate.

If the above fails to create change:

4. Retreat: Leave While Quiet Quitting: Start looking for a new job while doing the very minimum required of you.

Pros: Looking for a new job will force you to begin detaching emotionally from your current one so that it will be easier to move past difficult incidents because you know you won’t have to tolerate them for long. It will also allow you to feel more in control of the situation and less helpless.

Cons: Your boss could realize you’ve cut back on your efforts and increase their pressure and bullying, or refuse to give you a reference.

Spending most of your waking hours in an environment in which you are bullied is likely to cause significant stress and distress, which over time, can become chronic and impair both your physical and mental well-being. You deserve better.