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Show What Causes Those Resentments BetweenYou and Your Boss? ( Wi MY The unhappy suberdinate may daydream aboutgetting a new job and starming in to tell off the boss. Yet he'll probably neverdoit. This is not because the average manis afraid; it is because he is practical People sometimes forget that “I Hate MyBoss” can cut two ways. You can slam your hand on yourkitchen table and announce to your sympathetic family, “I Hate My Boss.” Butif you have even one helper at your factory job or one secretary or clerk at your office or sales position or one assistant at your craft work or a single volunteer committee member under your direction at yourcivic, religious or cultural club, then you're a “boss”—just as surely as the man who sits in a carpeted office overseeing hundreds. It’s a twinge of a different sort to contemplate how often the person you supervise may have said, “I Hate My Boss” aboutyou! Is hating your boss inevitable? Is it a normal, reflex reaction to authority? “No.It’s a sign of something wrong between twoparticular individuals, and there are many possible ways to prevent the conflict or ease it after it’s once 4 Family Weekly, October 17, 1971 begun,” says Dr. Joel Moses whois Supervisor-Personnel Research for the mammoth AT&T corporation. Doctor Moses’specialty is identifying managementpotential by analyzing a person's interests, abilities and motivations. In a special interview with Doctor Moses conducted for FAMILY WEEKLY,surprising facts emerged aboutbosses and workers and about the qualities that make a supervisor both likeable and successful. If he just doesn’t ruin it for himself, says Doctor Moses, the boss has all the cards stacked in his favor. The people heis going tu supervise will be anxious to be friends whenthey first meet him. They know their jobs depend on good relations with their supervisor. The very fact that a person has won the job and thetitle strengthens theinitial favorable impression he makes. “If he has the job, he must know what heis doing,”is the naturalfirst reaction of those working for him. Job Charisma, Doctor Moses callsit. But Job Charisma can fade. A boss who gives conflicting orders, who does not adequaicly explain what he wants or who does not recognize good work when hesees it, shakeshis subordinates’ confidence in his ability. The momenta subordinate comesto believehis bossis incompetent, an I Hate MyBosssitua~ tion is born. Dishonesty in work relationships is equally corrosive. For example, said one executive we interviewed, if a work crew sees that the foreman regularly favors a certain man, the crew can't possibly respect orlike that foreman. In white-collar positions, a boss is looking for grief when he schedules weekend or late-hour dinner meetings for routine business. And he's seeking out trouble when heinsists on parking space Number 1 while circulating a “Parking spaces will no longer be as- signed” memo for everyone else. In situations such as these, where he flaunts his “I Am the Boss, You Are My Subordinate” power, he’s exasper- ating those under him into an I Hate MyBoss attitude. Similarly, it may be office politics or a yen to commandthat causes somesupervisorsto everlastingly modify and one-up their subordinates’ decisions. Whatever the origin, such behavior guarantees frustration and antiboss rumblings. If you're a brand-new supervisor, psychologists have found that you can forestall I Hate My Boss sentiment when you take over. Saying little and simply following established routine until you know your people as individuals helps to encourage acceptance for yourself. If your predecessor was a success, then you are probably starting with workers who know what is required of them. If your predecessor was a crank ora failure, then you're bound |