In the latest episode of the Happier at Work Podcast, we explore the impact of destructive leadership with renowned expert Rob Kalwarowsky. With practical insights and actionable advice, Rob delves into identifying and managing various types of bad bosses while emphasising the importance of making conscious choices for a happier work life.

Rob discusses 6 types of destructive leaders, from active and passive to blended types, offering strategies for managing each. The impact of childhood experiences on managerial behavior and decision-making is also explored, shedding light on the subconscious influence in the workplace.

The main points throughout this podcast include:

• Practical advice is shared on addressing limiting beliefs, setting boundaries, and making conscious career choices aligned with personal values.
• The impact of destructive leadership. 
• The importance of making conscious choices for a happier work life.
• 6 types of destructive leaders, from active and passive to blended types.

Do you have any feedback or thoughts on this discussion? If so, please connect with Aoife via the links below and let her know. Aoife would love to hear from you!

Connect with Rob

Website: https://www.howtodealboss.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bosscoachrobk/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-kalwarowsky/?trk=article-ssr-frontend-pulse_publisher-author-card&originalSubdomain=cr

Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@bosscoachrobk

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@bosscoachrobk

Connect with Happier at Work host Aoife O’Brien:

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Website https://happieratwork.ie 

LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/aoifemobrien/ 

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Previous Episodes:

https://happieratwork.ie/85-why-delivering-effective-and-constructive-feedback-at-work-is-so-vital-with-aoife-obrien/

https://happieratwork.ie/209-cultivating-self-awareness-at-work-with-nia-thomas/

https://happieratwork.ie/178-fulfilling-your-potential-and-finding-joy-in-your-work-with-soma-ghosh/

https://happieratwork.ie/177-leveraging-transferable-skills-for-career-success-with-janine-esbrand/

https://happieratwork.ie/171-how-to-strategically-navigate-your-career-with-harsha-boralessa/ 

Mentioned in this episode:

Podcast Live Recording

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Podcast Live Recording

Rob, you're so welcome to the Happier at Work podcast. Do you want to introduce yourself to listeners, give them a bit of a flavor for what you do and how you got to doing what you do today?

Absolutely. Thanks for having me, Effie, and I hope folks can hear the birds in the background. I'm down in Costa Rica now, and it's a it's an absolute treat. So, yeah, I'm Rob Kalvarowski. I'm a world renowned leadership coach and TEDx speaker. Hopefully, by the time this podcast comes out, my TED Talk on how to deal with an asshole boss is out. It's been about 10 months now. But as you're listening to it, 11 months, since I recorded it.

And as far as I know right now, it's in final final editing stage. So hopefully, it'll be out there. If it is, go on over to YouTube and definitely check that one out.

Brilliant. We'll put a link to that in the show notes for sure. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Absolutely. And so how did I get on this path? So I'm I'm an MIT engineer. I started my career in in mining in coal mining, actually, in Western Canada, and I encountered my first bad boss. And he was passive aggressive, and he was pushing back on the work I was doing. And I was uncovering all these big things. Like, after a year working there, I was I basically saved them tens of 1,000,000 of dollars, and I was like, okay. Here we go.

And the more things I was uncovering, the more things I was recommending to change, the more pushback I was getting, and the more attacks I was getting. And that sort of led me to questioning myself and then questioning who I was, and then ultimately, I became depressed. I wasn't sure who I was. I felt very much this feeling of you hired me. And I when I was interviewing, I had this set of skills that I that you you are seeing, but you don't want that, and therefore, you don't want me. And that's a very slippery slope to go down.

Yeah.

And, yeah, it kept going. And then in 2013, I tried to take my life. And the big part I wanna recognize for folks is not that. Of course, bad bosses increase your risk of mental health. They also increase your risk of heart attack, stroke, and other major disease. Mhmm. The big part here is I got up the next morning, and I went to work. I could not choose because of the way my brain and everyone's brain works.

I didn't have the ability to choose to leave. I didn't have the ability to, like, move to the beach. It wasn't financial thing. It wasn't this element of, you know, I couldn't afford it or I couldn't it was impossible for me to do. It was impossible in my mind, but not in reality. That's the part. 1 is when I talk about folks and how to deal with these bad bosses, that's where I want you to feel empowered to make your own choices. That you're not waiting like, I was I felt like I was waiting for my parents or someone who's an authority figure to be like, yeah, Rob.

You just quit. And obviously, that never came, and then it was sort of it took me another, about another year to quit that job. So I want you to feel empowered to choose. The other side of this is not all bosses are the, you know, Gordon Ramsay, Hell's Kitchen type of guy who throws the dish on the ground and yells at people, and I know part of that's a role. Right? But there are types of bosses that you can actually coach them. And so there are folks that are called cowardly bosses or ghost managers. They don't really set a lot of expectation. They don't give you a lot of instructions.

They don't give you a lot of plans. Those are folks that you can lead them. The same thing there's another type of boss called a messy boss. They also they're not very good at management. And so it's when you can identify what type of boss you have, this allows you the opportunity to make choices based on get in a way that supports you. And so that's how I ended up ultimately battling back for mental health, which took me a long time to do that and finding how what actually leadership could be was part of how I basically quit engineering and moved into coaching, and then ultimately started working on choosing for myself, and that's what led to Costa Rica and the TED talk. And

so Yeah.

Yeah. It's been amazing journey, but we're here.

Amazing. And for anyone who is watching on YouTube, you might be thinking that the background is fake, and I did ask this to Rob before we hit the record button. That background is 100% real. And the birds that you hear, it's not a sound effect. That is real. And that is Rob's life right now. Can I just express my sorrow that that has happened to you? That it that it that impact of having a bad boss brought you to the stage where you thought I can't go on like this at the moment. But great to say that you've taken everything that you've learned from that experience and now you can say, okay.

Here's how I can help other people to not end up in that situation. I've had a few bad bosses myself. We've talked about bad bosses on the podcast before. I've shared about my own career journey. There's 3 standout bad bosses that I have that I always think about when I'm talking about bad bosses. Not that I'm always thinking about them, but if the topic of bad bosses comes up, I always they are the 3 standout people that that I think about immediately. But you were saying, you know, just to kind of reflect back to to what you were saying, Rob, this idea that the boss is being really passive aggressive. They hired you for a specific skill set.

When you show some sort of competence in that area, they're almost diminishing your abilities or they're they're diminishing what you're doing in a, you know, in a really, really passive aggressive way, which causes us then as employees to question ourselves, to question our value, to question our worth. And I know there is research that shows the impact that your direct boss has on your day to day experience of work. And I know that has been the case even for so 3 terrible bosses I had but I've had mediocre bosses as well who just weren't really that great and I've had some exceptional bosses as well. So I would love to know what do you think makes an exceptional boss?

It's funny, actually. So when I talk about destructive leadership, which is the technical term in the research, They have 6 types of destructive leaders and then they have 1 leader which is non destructive.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So the GoodRx is a nondestructive leader. Great.

It's only one time. So it's yeah. And so it's but but your Evie, just for you, right, is your experience is not alone. Like, the research says that 65.1 percent of the workforce right now experiences destructive leader. And so most people who are listening to this right now have a bad boss.

Yeah.

And even to take it a step further, if you're a manager, most likely, you're a bad boss.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

Right? But it's not your fault. And that's where I want folks to land before we get into good leadership is the stats bear this out. And so leaders and there's a Harvard Business Review reports that leaders often they become supervisors at around 29 years old, and then they get their 1st leadership training at 42 years old.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. A bit of a gap there.

Right? I I don't know about you, but I can't even think of another job in the world that they would let you do for 13 years without any training.

Yeah. Yeah.

Right? Like I like, my sister used to work at a fast food restaurant as, like, a summer job, and they trained they trained her, like, how to make burgers, how to Yeah. How to cook the fries, how to work the cash, like, these type of things. Right? And so for me, I, you know, obviously, I worked as an engineer. I needed a 4 year degree. I needed to write exams, and then I needed to work as a basic engineer in training. So I had to have be supervised by a professional engineer for 4 years before I could be a professional engineer on my own.

Yeah. Yeah. And yet we don't do the same thing for managers.

Yeah. It's like, oh, great. You're a good you know, you're a great salesperson. Like, you're the manager now.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. That's probably their worst job in the world If there's if you're a salesperson and you love the selling and the interacting with clients, you probably hate dealing with people's admin and people's personal stuff.

Yeah. And that that's the thing. Right? So folks out there, like, if we're talking about destructive leaders, I don't want you to be like, oh, no. I'm such a bad person. It's all my fault. Anything like that. You didn't get trained, and even the training that's out there, Harvard Business Review also reports that $356,000,000,000 a year is spent on leadership development and only 25 percent of that is actually moves the needle because it addresses mindset. 75 percent, most likely the training that you got was probably not even worth till the next Monday that you finished it.

Right? This stuff comes from your brain, and it comes from childhood. And so when I talk about mindset, I talk about, like, the operating system to your brain. And 95 to 97% of the decisions you make every day are are governed by your subconscious so you're not even aware you're making these decisions. So this is stuff like you know putting your pants on with your right leg first versus your left leg first. You know brushing your teeth, walking the dog, like, you're not consciously going, you know, do I put my left foot forward as I walk or

my

right foot?

Yeah. Yeah.

Right? Like and this goes into work too. Because you get an email from one of your people, and it's, hey. I'm late on this project, and you get frustrated.

It's default mode.

You know, you write them back something snarky or Yeah. Right? Or not even that. Maybe you just go, okay I can't trust this person so I'm not you know I'm not going to manage them anymore I'm not going to waste my time. And so these are things and and what again, coming back to mindset, right, is if it's our operating system and we learn most of it between when we're born and 7 years old.

Mhmm.

And so I was born in 1988, and so I'm running Windows 95. And as much as I love Windows 95 and I love the little paper clip guy for help.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Looks like you're writing a letter.

That's right. You know? And it's like, it's out of date. Yeah. Right? Like, now I'm 35. I live in Costa Rica. I have a wife. I have a dog. I have a dog.

Things are way different than when I was 7 years old. Yeah. And so naturally, just as Windows makes you run these updates, which I know everyone hates, but it's also what we need to do strategically with our own mind.

Yeah.

And that's where leaders start is how do we identify and we do this through emotions, but how do we identify these moments where our subconscious is making us act in a way or believe a thing that is not supporting who we wanna become as leaders.

Yeah. I think I think that's an interesting place to explore as well, Rob. Because if I cast my mind back to when I did my coaching qualifications, about 6 I think it's about 6 years ago now. And one of the issues, let's say, that I had while I was doing it was co so you're asking us to uncover these limiting beliefs that we have, but how do we know that we have these beliefs? Because these are things that you know, the the analogy I always think of is a fish doesn't know that it's swimming in water. So we don't know that we have these beliefs that are not serving us because it's something that we've lived with for so long. So do you wanna talk us through maybe the process of how to identify what these beliefs are through whether that's through the emotions or tapping into feelings, whatever it might be, to understand more about ourselves and how we're we're operating on this, for want of a better word, a default mode in how we react and how we behave and how we interact with other people?

Absolutely. So we teach 2 ways to do this. I'll give you both. So the first way is I mean, both of them start with the emotions. Yeah. When are you feeling we call them red flag feelings, but feelings that most people would term bad. I don't like the word bad because they're actually telling us something that's important.

Yeah.

And so we need to lean in with curiosity as what's trying to be learned from us in this moment. And so these red flag feelings include stuff like frustration, stress, sadness, anger, anxiety, depression, like, all those kind of feelings. Of course, it doesn't have to be when I say depression and anxiety, I don't necessarily mean, you know, diagnosable medical conditions. Mhmm. But when we start to have those feelings, it's leaning in and start to questioning what's going on that would make me feel this way. And so in the one approach, it's basically just what am I feeling and why. Then it's we need to get a step lower is what is true about this situation that makes me feel this way? That's the belief and so if it's something like your person sends you an email and the projects gonna be late, now we're talking about what's the belief? Is it I'm disappointing my client? Is it that I'm not good enough because I'm running the project and now it's behind? Is it that I've let everyone down? I've let the team down? I've let my company down. That so it can take you some time to excavate to that level.

Totally normal. Happens all the time.

Yeah.

And then then very easily you can well not easily but you can learn to pivot that. Let's say that belief is I've let everyone down and I'm not perfect. Well, is that something you wanna believe, or is there something you'd rather believe instead instead? And then you would basically go, hey. I'd rather believe that, you know, I'm doing my best and that the rest of my team or my client is gonna be okay if I if I can communicate correctly to them. They're not gonna be disappointed. They understand how business works. Yeah. And then put evidence underneath that new belief.

Yeah. So that's the way that's basically it's also CBT or emotional intelligence. So if folks are out there, you can totally Google those things. They have worksheets and books around that. I did tell you there was a second way.

You did.

And so the second way, and this is for me, it's where I go a lot with my clients because it's we're using the internal family systems framework to do this, and it I think it works more quickly. I've also seen results that back that up. What starts to happen with internal family systems is have you ever seen the movie, Inside Out, the Pixar movie?

I think I have. Yeah. Is that the one with the blood and the and they all try they're all trying to work together? Is that that one or am I thinking of something different?

I don't know which one you're thinking of, but it's something different. Okay. So yeah. So Inside Out Out is a it's a Pixar movie. Totally watch it. It's kid friendly.

Yeah.

So don't worry about yeah. But it's it's basically there's this little girl and she plays hockey, and they go inside her mind, and she has a control panel. And then she has, like, 4 or 5 feelings. They're different little little characters.

I have seen this. In a while, they

drive they drive her in these moments. And this is not that far off to what Internal Family Systems couches as its framework. And so there's self, which is you, who you truly are, and then there's these little parts. You can consider them those little characters, and they drive you in various moments throughout the day. Some of these parts are known as protector parts so they do things to prevent you from feeling bad. And then underneath those protector parts there are the hurt child parts. They're called exiles but they're the hurt child parts and that was from your childhood or if you've had very significant trauma afterwards. Those are created and then everything you do well, until you heal a lot, but everything you do is basically led by these protectors to keep you online.

And so this is what I'm talking about, like that example. You get an email, you're late. Why are your projects gonna be late? One of your protectors steps in and goes, this is unacceptable. I need to feel better about me or I need to protect the little version of Rob, so I'm gonna yell at this person. Or I'm gonna be passive aggressive to them or I'm going to go home tonight and I'm gonna eat a pizza in front of the TV and watch a comedy movie or I'm gonna have 2 extra drinks. Right? They do a lot of different things, but these protector parts are the ones that make us work too hard and burn out.

They

make us people pleased. They make us, be hyper vigilant on details or hyperlogical or a lot of the behaviors that we see at work are run by these protector parts. And, no, I'm not telling you to kill them off or they're bad or these type of things. That's not. But we want to learn how to basically lead our own internal team of little parts effectively so we can get the outcomes that we want as a as a system or as a person. I threw a lot there at you.

There is a lot to there's a lot to take in. But it I mean, to me, it all makes sense and it all ties in with everything that that I've learned, I suppose. Now let's come back to the bad boss and, again, conversations that I've had previously on the podcast that so chances are if you're listening to this and you are a manager, the chance the likelihood is that you're a bad manager. There's, like, a 2 thirds chance that you're not a great manager. And I I suppose it's me. It's reconciling that. No one wants to. I don't think anyone intentionally sets out to be a bad manager.

So how do we, first of all, reconcile those parts of I want to be a good manager and the likelihood is that maybe I'm not a great manager, and then what are the steps that we can do to we've identified these as our issues. What what are the next steps that we can take to to address some of the behaviors that are showing up for us, that are trying to protect us, that are in our best interest as we understand it as a little child, but actually now we're an adult, how do we start operating from the adult model?

Absolutely. It's such a great question. Right? Everyone listening to this, I don't know about you, but we've always had that question on interviews where it's, where do you see yourself in 5 years? And none of you would have answered that question with, I'm gonna be the greatest asshole boss ever.

No.

Right? And so it's totally like, this is totally normal. And again, it's not your fault. Right? Like, we talked about the reasons why, you know, you're not getting trained. The mindset that you developed and everyone's developed was when you were a child, your models of leadership through your life whether like statistically like you've had a bunch of bad bosses too maybe you've learned leadership tricks from them right these are things that we end up in management. We don't trained. And so we're we're modeling folks that we see are leaders or that we've seen in the past. And it could be the coaches that we had in in sports as kids. It could be our teachers.

It could be our parents. It could be whoever. Right? And so now that you're aware that all things may not be the way you wanna show up as a leader, It's about cultivating these moments and working on the default or the subconscious parts to figure out where are some of these moments where you wanna show up one way and your brain is telling you to show up another. And so, again, this is through these red flag feelings. And so as I as I mentioned, there's the emotional intelligence or the CBT way of going about this. As we were talking about internal family systems, the other way to go about this is to tune in. Like, let's say you have that feeling, you get that email, project's late. You can start to tune in and ask basically ask that frustration, what is it trying to tell us? And what is it trying to protect us from? Of course, I have a 3 minute track that I will I'll I'll get Effie to put in the notes that you can just go and download to help you with a little bit of this.

But it's starting to get in tune with what's going on in your mind and moving yourself away from the default. Because if you can just start to bring this stuff to your conscious awareness, you can start to choose now. That's the difference. And I know you're gonna make good choices because you would have listened to this show before. You would have, I mean, if you're listening to this show, you're probably listening to other management podcasts or leadership podcasts. You're probably reading books about it. And so now it's just becoming aware of those when these moments pop up. I'm frustrated.

I'm mad. I'm sad. I'm you know, I wanna read I wanna say something mean, or I wanna pull back from this project, or I feel burnt out. Like, what's going on in her minds? And then choosing, hey. Yeah. I mean, it sucks that our project's gonna be late, but what can I do about that to minimize the impact? Oh, I can reach out to the client. I can whatever. Next time, I can make sure that maybe they're delivering it a few days early so then I can review it.

Like, there's a lot of things that yeah.

I have a burning question in my mind, but I think before we get to that, I would love to know, do you have any stats or any even anecdotal evidence of the different types. So you mentioned that you had a passive aggressive boss. I have been known to default into passive aggressive mode, let's say. So it's it's something I'm familiar with, but I'm also familiar with being on the receiving end of passive aggression. What are the other different types or maybe ways that that this shows up and what would you say is I suppose I'm trying to get an understanding of the prevalent or very common default modes that people have that that we can relate to, that we can dig into in a little bit more detail.

Yeah. Absolutely. So I mentioned there's 6 types of destructive leaders. When we talk about destructive, we talk about active and passive. And so the active ones, if we start there, when I mentioned Gordon Ramsay on Hell's Kitchen throwing the plates, calling people donkeys, like that type of thing. Yeah. We would classify that as an arrogant and violent boss. And there are roughly 2% of the workforce experiences folks like those.

If you have a boss like that, quit your job or leave, get internal transfer, do something to get out from under them because they're not gonna change. They're also not listening to the show. They're not. Right?

Yeah. They're not listening to

the show. No. Right? Like

Not my kind of people.

Gonna wanna leave because, basically, they're a threat to your safety.

Yeah.

The second type of actively destructive boss, which they're close to 20% of folks have a boss like this. They're called the abusive narcissist. And so they break promises. They don't trust their people. They make threats to keep people in line. It's all about them getting credit, getting ahead, and they'll say anything and do anything to do that. Again, 20%, roughly, it's like 19.7% of people have a boss like that. Mhmm.

Again, these folks aren't likely to change. Now they may change if they say something and you report them to HR and it's becoming catastrophic to their career. They may either lean in harder or they may change. It just depends how their protector, IFS, works. Yeah. But often, those folks, they're not super I mean, they're not listening to the show, so they're probably not you. Yes. So those are the actively, like, actively destructive bosses.

Yeah. On the other end of the spectrum, we did talk about these ones, but there's your ghost manager or your cowardly boss. They avoid responsibility. They avoid taking accountability. They don't really show an interest, and they don't really wanna manage you. These are the folks that say stuff like, oh, that's upper management's decision or why don't you figure that out? Right? They're not accepting or trying to make decisions. They just wanna pass the buck. Then there's the messy boss, which they're just bad at structuring and planning.

They probably haven't learned how to manage correctly. They're not a bad person. They just don't know how to create a project plan or give people delegations that are, hey. I need it by Friday, and it needs to look like this. It's more just like, can you do this for me?

Yes. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

But the nice part is if you have a cowardly boss or you have a messy boss, you can manage them.

Yeah.

So the cowardly boss, because they don't wanna make decisions, you need to go to them and say, hey, Rob. I think we should do this. Is that good with you? So basically, you've made the decision your own and you're just trying to look for a yeah. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

For the messy boss, this can be something like, hey, Rob. You know, you said you wanted me to do this like can we sit down and work on a project plan together or like when does this need to happen by what's your expectation on what it looks like? Like asking some questions and sort of coaching your boss on what do you need to be effective at delivering the result. Right? Those 2 bosses, they're not out to get you. Right? That's a big thing.

That's a big plus compared to the other 2.

Yeah. Right? And those folks totally can be listening to the show. Right? Like, I have very much ghost manager tendencies Mhmm. Because I'm like, well, I gotta do this, and then I gotta do this, and then I gotta do this. And my brain's about what I need to do. Yeah. And then it's like, well, Rob, you didn't, like, you didn't tell the like, you didn't write it down what they need to do and when or, like, talk to them enough or right? And so it's once you start to be aware of, hey, this could be me, that's when you can start putting systems and procedures of risk

for your own behavior. Yeah. I'd say that's very common that I haven't set really clear expectations. I haven't given proper instructions. I haven't been really clear about the deadline or maybe I haven't had time to think about it myself whereas I'm just handing something over saying, like, this other person will work out all of the details. I don't need to spend time doing the details. I'll tell them what needs to be done, and they can figure it out.

Yeah. So that so there's 2 experiences that that can work. Or one works and one doesn't. Right? A lot of folks that I actually coach a lot of folks who are, like, senior in their career, maybe they're individual contributors or they're managers, but

they're experts.

Mhmm. And so it's like, oh, I don't need you to tell me stuff. I'll figure it out because I'm an expert.

Totally. Yeah.

The the other folks there are some folks maybe maybe they are experts, but they have some you know, maybe they don't believe necessarily they're experts or they're new people. And so they don't know how the company runs that well or they don't know you that well, you know, or they're trying to fit into their team and they're not sure what that looks like, that's when it can start to be unsettling or destabilizing for them. Yeah. But again, this is feedback. Like, when do you need this? Detail detail detail. Ask me because I know I missed this. And so now I get a lot of questions that is good because right? Otherwise, you know, I'd be sitting there going, I did a good job. She's working on it.

And then it's like, oh, no. You didn't. She doesn't know when it's due or whatever.

Yeah. Totally. Are there 2 others that we're missing then? So you were saying there's the active and then there's the the other side, which is the ghost. I don't know. Is that the passive or have we come to the passive yet?

Yeah. So those are the passive. Yeah. And then now there's the folks in the middle, which are basically a blend. So there's the passive aggressive boss and then the passive egocentric boss.

Okay. Yep.

And so passive aggressive, we all know what that is. But basically, it's like they don't say the stuff right to you or they say it kind of in a in a way that's non direct but it's bullying. Right? And then the passive egocentric, they're they're similar to the narcissist in a sense that they wanna take all the credit but they do it behind your back.

Okay.

And so, you know, they're in a meeting when they're not with you and they're like, oh, I did all that work. Yes. It's like, hey. Your team worked on this. They won't say that. They'll say I worked on this.

Yes.

It was my idea.

Yep. Wow.

Those managers again, they can be you. Again, it's a lot of it's a mindset piece.

Yeah. Right? Yeah. Yeah. I'm I'm thinking back now to, you know and again, not to blame, but it's thinking back what happened in that person's childhood between 07. That meant that they have maybe they were never recognized. They were never, you know, they were never given any praise. And now it's like, now I need all the praise for myself because I need praise in order to or they were overly praised, whatever it might be. That is the the kind of driver of what happened.

But now this is what they need. And these toxic behaviors, for want of a better word, because it is toxic behavior in a workplace, They're showing up in the workplace. They're not just showing up in our lives. They're actually showing up in our in our workplaces as well.

Yeah. This is the part. Right? A lot of people think that trauma is this big thing. Like, hey. I was beaten or I was went to war or I was a firefighter. It's not the case. Like, literally, you could have been in your kitchen as a kid. Maybe you're 5 years old and your older brother or sister, they came home from school and they're like, hey, I got an a on my math test.

And your mom said, wow, I'm so proud of you. I love you. And you're sitting there going, oh, achievement means my mom loves me. Yes. And that's a belief now in your mom. It didn't mean that she did anything bad. Your mom acted exactly how mom should act in that moment. You know, your older brother or sister, they did a great thing.

Right? Like, nothing was out of place in this moment. But it's like you're 5 years old. You have a child's perspective, and now it's like, into your brain, I must achieve to get love from my mom. And now you're 40 years old and you're managing a team, and that person sends you the email and says, hey. Project's gonna be delayed and you're gonna you're gone. I'm gonna yell at this person.

Yeah. Because I need to achieve. I need to make sure that we meet that deadline. I need to make sure that I look good and I get the recognition.

Yeah. And it's not like that's the part. And that's the part it's one, is it scary? Right? Because then you go like, well, what do I have to think about my mom? And you don't actually need to excavate all that.

Yeah. Yeah. You can because I think that would be scary for a lot of people going back, you know, thinking about, well, what happened in my childhood? But I think if you can just look at the present and what's going on for you right now and understand how is that showing up for me and how is it serving me or how is it not serving me.

That's that's right. And and, like, in IFS terms, right, is there's the protector now

Yeah.

That's trying to prevent you from feeling not loved. But but it's basically going we must achieve

Yes.

Because then we then we get love, basically. It doesn't necessarily know that. But so it's working with that to change the narrative is yeah. We wanna we wanna achieve, but it's not, like, catastrophic if things go a little bit not perfect. Mhmm. And that's where you don't have to work with the 5 year old you. It's you can work with what's happening in this moment Yeah. To get that to relax.

One is you'll feel better, and then you'll be able to make these choices about, okay. Now that the project's a little bit how what do I do now that makes this either better or minimizes the impact?

Yeah. And I think it it's one thing, Rob, to recognize yourself in that manager in how we are describing that destructive behavior. But what if we are dealing with a manager that is like that? Any advice that we talked about, like, the the totally, active, destructive, get out because you don't stand a fighting chance. You need to leave that tick situation straight away. The passive, you can manage upwards to some degree. How about those in the middle? Like, how do we how do we deal with that?

Yeah. The best tips, right, is boundaries.

Yeah.

Right? So and this also you can use with the arrogant and violent or the abusive narcissist. However, they're probably not gonna work that well. And then then you're basically stuck at reporting them to HR, which can or cannot be helpful depending on where you work. Yeah. And then it's then it becomes a question of how am I feeling? What's my situation in terms terms of financially, personally, all these things?

Yeah. And

do I wanna choose to leave? Does that mean now? Do I, you know, brush up my resume and start applying to other jobs? Can I get an internal transfer? Like, these are the more logistical questions. Right? But as we're mentioning, like, the boundaries, right, is how are you allowing people to treat you? Yeah. If they say something inappropriate, if they say, if they take credit for your work, being very clear about this is unacceptable and I will not work with somebody who takes credit for my work. Yeah. Especially the folks who are passive, sort of leaning into a little more direct confrontation, it helps because they're not going to otherwise, one is they're gonna void you. Right? But if you hear that, like, you know, your colleague is taking credit for your work or your manager is, you need to go to them and be like, hey. This this is not this is not acceptable this is not right. Now that's the part is what's gonna happen.

We can't predict how they're gonna react. Yeah. And so this is the part where these other strategies around if we're going to leave or how we can tolerate this or these other things are another way. Right? And so it's back to the internal emotional intelligence is how am I feeling working here? Is it safe for me to work here? But my dad said to me, he was like, no job is worth your life. Mhmm. And this is where if it's getting to a point where your mental health is really bad Mhmm. Or your physical health is really bad, these are moments where you need to quit because your health and your happiness are beyond anything.

So it's really checking in with yourself to see how how am I doing? How am I doing? And can I stay in this situation without impacting negatively impacting my own health and well-being? Yeah. Brilliant. Love that. So many insights, so many nuggets, I think, from our conversation today, Rob. Any parting thoughts, anything that we haven't necessarily covered?

It's about you. Right? So regardless of all the details we talked about today, it's about you understanding you and choosing what's best for you. Yeah. And so it's bringing the subconscious behaviors to conscious behaviors and making choices. Choices that align with the person you are and the person you want to be, whether that's you're the manager or you're dealing with a bad boss. Ultimately, you making the best choices from position of I am clear who I am, and I'm not afraid. I am just centered and grounded, and I'm trying to make a good decision. That's gonna help you succeed on both ends of the spectrum.

Brilliant. I love that. And the question I ask everyone who comes on the podcast, what does being happier at work mean to you?

For me, it's it's a combination of freedom and choice. And so when I say freedom, it's and I guess they're hand in hand, but it's it's freedom to choose what you wanna do at least to some extent. It's freedom to guide your career. It's freedom to live where you wanna live. Right? Yes. But it's it's giving yourself that ability to to and this is, like, I'm not saying, you know, it has to look for you like me. Right? I'm not saying that at all. Mhmm.

Like, if you choose to work in downtown New York City because you love that, a 100% go for it.

Yes. Right?

Yep. And then if you get a job, like and if you're looking at a job and they're like, hey. We want you to move to Northern Montana. It's like, no. That's not for me.

Right? Population 100.

But this is like this is what I want folks to get in tune with. Right? Yeah. And this is back to the emotions. Right? Is and your values as a person is as you have these big decisions, what? Should I stay at my job? Should I leave? Should I get a new job? You know, how do I manage folks? How do I show up in life? How do you want to?

Yeah.

What feels right to you? Yeah. Ultimately, that'll get you there.

And I think it's important to recognize as well that we don't always get it right. So you might think my aspiration is to live in New York City, which by the way, it is like, I've always wanted that. And peep so many people warn me off and say it's not really what you think. It's different if you're working there than if you live there, than if you're visiting and things like that. So I think we might have this aspiration and then we get everything that we wanted and we might realize it's actually different. It doesn't feel the same inside as I expected it would and then it's okay to make a new decision.

That's right. And and, so a few a little bit of the work I do with folks is sometimes I have them visualize what they would want their future to look like. And it's a feelings exercise because I get them to play with different things. Hey, New York City. Hey, Northern Montana. Hey, Paris. Hey, Sydney, Australia. Right? Play with it.

Yeah. And then feel how it feels when you're looking at that.

Yeah.

But then when you land on something, New York City, it's how can we make a micro experiment around what that would feel like? Hey, Effie. Take 2 weeks off. Go to New York City. Right? See how it feels.

Yeah.

And then if it feels great, good. We know something. Now we can start to figure out how do we make this possible. Yeah. And if it's you go there and you're like like how I felt when I walked in Manhattan, I was like, wow. This is a lot. It's like, well, it's not for me. Maybe maybe let's go back to the drawing board and see maybe one of the other cities would be better or maybe I'm more of a country person.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That you definitely don't know. So, Rob, if people want to connect with you, if they want to find out more about what you do, if they want to drill into this in a little bit more detail, what's the best place that they can do that?

Yeah. I mean, if you're interested, I have a free ebook on my website how to deal boss.com. It breaks down the 6 boss actually the 7 boss types and it gives you guidance on basically a lot of what we talked about today. It also if you're a manager, it'll give you more details about the behaviors that each boss type takes and then it can help you. I also have a program there as well, so if you have a bad boss and you want to start figuring out these things, I can totally help you with that too. But, I mean, ultimately, to find me best places on LinkedIn, Rob Calvaroski, you can drop in the podcast notes.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Of course.

And then, obviously, you should check out the Leadership Launchpad Project podcast. Effie's coming on. I believe we're recording with you next week or this Friday. I forget. But in podcast world, whenever it comes out.

Yes. Exactly. This is it. This is it.

That's right. But you have

to do recordings. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No. Definitely go and check that out. So we'll put a link to that show in the show notes as well. Thank you so much, Rob.

I took so much from this conversation. I can see a lot of myself in the poor manager behaviors, but also being on the receiving end of some of those behaviors over time. And I think it's really nice and it's really reassuring to have it explained in that way. So thank you. We really appreciate you sharing your insights today.

Thanks for having me, and, I'm excited to see how folks, resonate with this conversation. And and I would love also, if you wanna send me a bad boss story, totally love this. You can

DM me some bad boss stories I can share, and I'm I'll put that out to the general masses and say, if you have a bad boss story to share, fire fire it over to Rob and and let him know where you heard about it.