What A Bad Boss Can Teach You

 

In this episode of the Winning Mindset Mastery Podcast, we talk about a topic that impacts each and every one of us. Before you begin listening, let me ask you this question: Have you ever had a really bad boss who was truly awful to work with, and your stomach tightened as you stressed out over the thought of seeing or talking to that person? Some bosses lead with fear, intimidation, and bullying. They threaten with the stick instead of offering the carrot. They try hard to give the impression that if you don’t do exactly what they expect, something bad will happen to you. But here’s the silver lining: If you have such a boss, you have the power to use your winning mindset to make your work experience far different and better.

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What A Bad Boss Can Teach You

I am excited about the topic for this episode because it’s very timely and relevant and it impacts every single one of us. If you think back, whether it’s a job that you had in high school, a job that you have now, or a role that you had some time in the past, you have had a bad boss. You have had someone terrible to work with, was very difficult, and made your stomach tighten up at the thought of interacting with that individual.

What made me think of this is what has happened with Elon Musk and all of the communications surrounding his idea of bringing folks back to work. Not so much the whole, “You can’t work remotely,” the way it was communicated, and then the follow-up comments that he had. Everybody has different leadership styles. However, what I see from him is leading with fear, leading with a stick instead of a carrot, and motivating people in a way that is based on, “If I don’t do this, something bad is going to happen to me.”

In my work, I help people learn how to motivate people in a way that works much better for them because that ultimately has much better results. There is also a benefit to working with people who are difficult to work with and working with people who are difficult to work with. Maybe you didn’t have a bad boss but you have a toxic team member on your team. Ideally, we wouldn’t have those but if we do, did you know that you can use your winning mindset to help make that a much different experience? We’re going to talk about that and how you do it because it can make a tremendous difference in your work life.

The first thing I’m going to tell you is working with folks like that. When I say folks like that, I mean folks that either talk in ways that are demotivating, downright rude, or borderline abusive. They are folks that make you feel like you can’t do anything right and you constantly feel like you’re trying to keep yourself from getting in trouble when you’re doing your job. Those kinds of folks can be super beneficial to learning how you best treat other people.

If you’re reading this show, you already go out of your way to treat people well. We can fine-tune our skills. I’ve had bad bosses. I will tell you that I learned as much about being a good leader from a bad boss as I did from a good one. Part of that is because, by nature, we remember negative events and negative things more easily than we do something super positive. It’s tied to a different level of emotion. It makes it easier for us to remember. You may have heard too that it takes 7 positive thoughts to cancel out 1 negative thought. The metrics are different depending on who you talk to but negative things can be easier to remember.

 

You can also find yourself learning from that how to better interact with others. When it happens that you have an encounter with one of these folks and it’s a negative experience for you, one of two things is happening. Either they are going against your personal values. If you value empowering people, talking to them in a respectful way, and doing everything you can to help people succeed, someone who doesn’t operate that way is going to ruffle your feathers. That can give you clarity on how you want to operate with other people.

The second thing it can do when somebody bothers you in the way that they interact is it can clue you into something that you have in the way that you communicate and do things that you don’t like about yourself. It’s interesting. I’ll tell myself here. I am someone who has no problem taking a leadership role, directing things, and telling people what to do. When somebody is bossy, it grates on my nerves. It’s funny because it is something that could be said about me. I will always pay more attention and say, “Was there a way that that could have been handled differently that would’ve felt better to me? Is that something that I should work on?”

Working for and working with these kinds of people can benefit you and help you fine-tune yourself, your mindset, and all of those things. By showing you that, we are reframing the situation. In some cases, you can’t leave that job or person right away. If you can find ways to see what good could come from this situation, it will be much easier for you to handle.

The second thing is what will make the experience of it much better. Anytime someone acts in an unreasonable way or disrespectful way, anything that doesn’t make sense for the situation, 9.5 times out of 10, that is not about you. That has nothing to do with you. They were triggered by something else. That can be hard to wrap your head around because it feels personal, especially if someone’s being rude to you one-on-one, in an email, or in front of a lot of people. If you can get to the place where you realize that doesn’t have anything to do with you, you can handle that so much better and it won’t take the emotional toll on you that things normally do.

 

I’ll give you an example. When you have a small child that’s around you, whether you’re a parent or you’ve been around toddlers, surely at some point, you have seen a child lose their ever-loving mind for what seems like no reason. Something triggered them and they have lost it. They’re throwing feet on the floor and all of these things. Usually, 9.5 times out of 10, a reaction like that has nothing to do with whoever’s interacting with the child. They’re tired, hungry, or hurt in some way. They’re experiencing pain and you don’t know that they’re experiencing some kind of physical pain. If you address those three things, that child usually is fine.

Imagine the people who are behaving this way in the workplace as small children. This sounds silly. Start to ask yourself, “What could be triggering this behavior?” Assume it isn’t you. There are two reasons for this. 1) As you understand it, it makes it that much easier not to take it personally. 2) As you understand it, you can often feel empathy for that person. Even if they’re being an absolute jerk, feeling empathy for them and understanding where they’re coming from, even if you don’t agree with it, will give you peace and make you feel better.

I’m going to take a stab at Mr. Elon Musk and what is causing him to act that way. It’s interesting because I’m piecing together different communications. I haven’t followed it super closely because as you guys know, I focus on things that I want. I don’t want to deal with a bunch of people who are communicating with people in a way that is disempowering. Piecing together the communication and the way he said, “You have to come back to work because you’re not getting anything done,” then all the things he said about the worries he has about the economy. Another message is, “I’m going to cut 10% of employees.”

Here’s what I’m hearing. I’m hearing fear. That could have been triggered by all sorts of things that we may not even know about, like the inflation in the economy certainly and the things that people think are going to be impacted by what’s going on with current events. It could be that they miss some powerful internal deadline that nobody knows anything about but Elon. It could be that their profit and revenue numbers are down. It could be that he had a huge fight with his family and he’s afraid he’s going to be a huge failure.

All sorts of things can set someone into a place of fear and then they can spiral. Fear is the number one cause of any kind of irrational way that someone behaves. Sometimes you have to dig deep to understand what that fear was about and what made it happen. I will tell you that most bad behavior from most people is driven by some sort of fear. If you can then remember that adult being in a place of fear and think about, “If they were a small toddler having a fit right now, what would I want to do?”

Fear is the number one cause of any kind of irrational way that someone behaves. Share on X

You probably can’t fix a problem for the boss that you’re reporting to or your team member but you can understand where they’re coming from and you can react in a calm and rational way that may calm them down. It may not but you will feel better. Your mindset will be better. Your experiences outside of this will all be improved because of it. The more you practice this, the less one person doing something that doesn’t make any sense or goes off on you yelling or sending a scathing email, any of these things will drag down your day because you’ll be able to see it more objectively and for what it is.

The last thing I’ll tell you is this. The way that our brains work, the part of our brain that controls our emotions and those reactions respond and processes much more quickly than the part of our mind that processes things logically. Let’s think about that. Something happens to you and your emotions rise first thing. You can start to logic your way around it. If you find yourself sometimes having these intense emotions about things, that’s biology and that’s understandable.

 

Having a winning mindset is allowing yourself from the time that you have that emotion, as soon as it makes sense and feels good to you, being able to reframe using logic and see how this situation could benefit you or could work out better than you think. Once you take that step, your emotional reactions are either a lot shorter. Sometimes you don’t even have them. Your brain shortcuts to that logic quickly because you’ve experienced something similar before. Sometimes after some time has passed, you’re able to see this and feel it in a different way.

The next piece of that is to understand since most people aren’t working on their mindset and having it work better for them as a tool, most people are just reacting. If they don’t take that time and that step to start to see it a different way, they are controlled by those emotions. It’s often not based on logic at all and has nothing to do with you. Hopefully, understanding this a little better will make those people who are difficult for you to deal with easier for you to deal with.

Here’s another example. Maybe you have a boss or a coworker and the situation is a little different. If you want to know my thoughts on it, go to my website WinningMindsetMasteryPodcast.com. At the very bottom of the website, there’s a place to ask me a question. You can record it in your voice. It’s private. I will get it and I will answer your question directly. If there’s something you want me to talk about on the show, I’d love to hear about that as well. While you’re there, you can also get a gift from me that will help you accelerate your mindset.

Last but not least, I’m drawing on July 4th, 2022 for a VIP Grand Prize Day with me so you can learn how to enter that too. I hope that this was helpful to you to deal with those folks that may be difficult in your life and that start to see some value in having those different individuals there. I am excited to hear from you on how this works for you. Here’s to your success.