This was the boss I had to have and hope I never will again.

Leo Tolstoy once said that: “All happy families are alike; but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”.

The same applies for bosses. Good bosses are usually good in the same way – good standards, great work ethic, clear values. With good bosses you always know what to expect. With bad bosses however… life is more of gamble. They are all bad in their own uniquely bad way. That’s why I love them, because they show you what not to do. And this guy believed in the holy trinity of: complaining, blaming and shaming. He was hard work. He never delivered his work on time, he always accused others for everything that went wrong and he made people feel bad about every small mistake. So, he brought out the worst in people…

Day 1 of my new job – the bad boss asked me to come in early. So I did, I waited for a few hours but he didn’t show up.
Day 2 – Rinse and repeat. I showed up and he was again a no-show.
Day 3 – his majesty the bad boss summoned me to his chambers once again.
Dear Monsters, you might think that my boss only had a bad day. And you are right.
He had a bad day every day.

It was always something about the weather, the headquarters, the other departments, his wife and kids, or the CEO. And whatever trouble he ended up in, it was never his fault. The Bad Boss had the spectacular ability to put everybody else in charge of his life and his circumstances, but himself. To him, his own life was just a pile of coincidental events compiled by someone who didn’t like him so much.

The Bad Boss truly believed that Lady Luck had something against him, that karma was indeed a bitch, and that destiny was not in his favor, because he was the victim in every one of his stories. And it won’t be long until he starts blaming me for his failures.

As time passed by, and I was getting to know the Bad Boss, I was more and more convinced of his badness. It was hard to see past his excuses. It was a narrative that I hadn’t ever witnessed before.

He’d say stuff like:
Nobody responds to my emails . . . they are not taking me seriously.
The clients were so rude . . . they didn’t pay attention to my presentation.
This project is behind schedule . . . nobody is planning correctly.
This initiative is never going to work because there is no trust among colleagues.

These were the usual Bad Boss’s daily complaints. At first, I was nodding, but a few weeks later I couldn’t listen to this excruciating rhetoric. My mind was racing with the voice of Monsy, jumping up and down in rage, hissing at the Bad Boss:

How about you read the emails that you write first? They are five pages long. No wonder nobody replies.
How about you work on your presentation and make sure the clients don’t fall asleep in the middle of it? How is that for advice, huh?
How about you start by delivering your project work within the given deadline? Wouldn’t that be the most effective solution when a project is behind schedule?
How about you start acting in a trustworthy manner, so that the other colleagues might take your example and reciprocate with trust?

Of course, these conversations were going on inside my head. I didn’t want to let Monsy prevail and ruin my chances for career triumph. How could I start explaining to some man thirty years my senior that his biggest enemy was staring back at him in the mirror? I could clearly see that he was responsible for the chaos around him. The only one who didn’t seem to acknowledge that was the Bad Boss himself.

Trust? Forget about it. Constant improvement? Not really. Leadership by example? No. None of the lessons I learned from the Good Boss applied here. The Bad Boss was a different creature that abided only by his own rules, and those rules didn’t make sense to the rest of the world. All I heard were excuses. In the words of Benjamin Franklin: “He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else.” The Bad Boss was a living example that this was true.

Sometimes, I caught myself daydreaming of being in the Good Boss’s office, receiving my miserable paycheck, working my bottom off to climb the career chart he had shown me, just to get a 10% raise in three years.

In fact, Monsy was telling me to quit… to get the hell out of this job as well. And I had to say: “Monsy… it’s only been two months, calm the farm!”
But I couldn’t help it. The Bad Boss quickly an ogre in my eyes. And you want to know the worse bit…I started to become him… I became an ogre too! Because, I also started complaining and blaming him for everything that was going wrong in my life.

But again, I was lucky enough to have a colleague call me out on it. And that’s the kind of corporate culture you’re looking to create… an environment where everyone feels comfortable to hold themselves and each other to account. It was a work buddy who said: ‘Helena, stop looking for excuses… You’ve got the opportunity to change how you look at this situation. You’re not powerless”.

So, I made a decision. To stay and learn from the Bad Boss. But I knew I had to make some changes. I made a commitment to stop complaining. Well, I did it for a week… you’ve got to start small. The average person complains around 30 times a day. That’s almost 11 thousand times a year. And I had become Olympic level complainer. I knew I needed help to change my new habit.

So, I got a complaining jar and every time I complained or broke my promise I put one euro in the jar. In fact, I challenge you to do it for the next 7 days and let me know how you go. Reach out to me on LinkedIn or Instagram. You’ll be amazed how much it changes your life. When I first started the challenge, I still averaged 27 euros a day… and so do most of the participants in my Monster Leadership Masterclass.

It’s hard to break the habit of complaining. Especially because our brains are naturally wired to be negative. It is part of our survival instinct.

So, we have to work hard to look on the bright side of life. But … just that small shift in my mindset made me start to feel a little more empowered to get things done and make an impact and that’s how it works, one improvement in one area can have an impact right throughout your leadership journey.