Arguing With The Boss – And Living To Tell About It

Editor’s Note: As I wind up my stint as Editor of TLNT — I’m leaving the end of April — I wanted to share a few of my favorite TLNT posts. Here’s one from July 2014.

Take it from me: Arguing with the boss is generally not a career enhancing experience.

I know this because I have worked for a lot of different bosses over the course of my career, and I have done my share of fighting with many of them.

Yes, I’ve battled at some point with just about every person I have ever worked for, but these arguments really break down into two distinctive categories:

Arguing with bosses who see this as part of the normal give-and-take of the job, who aren’t threatened by it, and, who respect you for being passionate and caring enough to engage in a difficult conversation.
Arguing with someone you work for who views the argument as a threat or a challenge to their authority. This is usually the reaction you get from those who are either arrogant, self-centered and tone-deaf to those around them, or simply clueless and unskilled in managing people. Sometimes, you get all of the above combined with a mean and nasty demeanor, making for one unforgettable individual.

‘There are a lot of bad bosses out there …”

This week, the Harvard Business Review dug into this topic on their HBR blog with a post titled When Fighting With Your Boss, Protect Yourself First, and it reminded me of all the bad bosses I’ve ever worked for, saying: