A horrible boss can come with a silver lining: Those who have had to work with an abusive boss are more likely to treat their own direct reports ethically and with respect, according to research published in the Journal of Applied Psychology.The key to breaking the cycle? Disassociating yourself from your terrible manager; remembering that you are not like them and that you don’t need to behave like them, says study co-author Shannon Taylor of the University of Central Florida.
Here is an abstract of that study, published at Applied Psychology, a journal I follow and hope that you will too!
A new University of Central Florida study suggests abuse and mistreatment by those at the top of an organization do not necessarily lead to abusive behavior by lower-level leaders. When offered leadership opportunities, prior victims of workplace abuse are more likely to treat their own subordinates better by learning from the bad behavior of their bosses.
“Some employees who are abused by their bosses resolve not to repeat that pattern with their own subordinates and become exceptional leaders of their teams,” Taylor said. “Our study sheds light on a silver lining of sorts for people who are subjected to abuse at work.Some managers who experience this abuse can re-frame their experience, so it doesn’t reflect their behavior and actually makes them better leaders.”
The study found those who relied on their morals and integrity to defy their manager’s abusive approach felt encouraged to prevent it from moving beyond their bosses.
Through multiple experiments over several years, the researchers examined the differences in attitude and behavior of supervisors who had been abused by superiors and those who had not and, in turn, how each group treated their employees. They found that abused supervisors who purposefully distanced themselves from their manager expressed respect and kindness toward their own employees, despite the poor treatment they received from their own boss.
“The lesson here isn’t to hire more abusive managers,of course, but to try to encourage people who have been abused, among other things, to say, ‘Look, I’m not like my boss,'” Taylor said. “You can take a stand—not just by reporting the bad behavior, but by actively rejecting this abusive leadership style.”
Taylor said he doesn’t expect workplace abuse to disappear,but he notes that companies are learning and trying to solve the problem through training and maintaining positive workplace climates.
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-12-bad-bosses-great-boss.html#jCp
