Good Boss, Bad Boss: How to Be the Best... and Learn from the Worst

The case for reforming or, failing that, expelling the worst offenders is bolstered by Will Felps’s research on “bad

The case for reforming or, failing that, expelling the worst offenders is bolstered by Will Felps’s research on “bad apples.” Felps and his colleagues studied what I call deadbeats (“withholders of effort”), downers (who “express pessimism, anxiety, insecurity, and irritation,” a toxic breed of de-energizer), and assholes (who violate “interpersonal norms of respect”). Felps estimates that teams with just one deadbeat, downer, or asshole suffer a performance disadvantage of 30 to 40 percent compared to teams that have no bad apples.

These rotten apples are so destructive because “bad is stronger than good.” For most people, negative thoughts, feelings, and events produce larger and longer-lasting effects than positive ones. Research on romantic relationships shows that unless positive interactions outnumber negative interactions by five to one, chances the relationship will succeed are slim. When the proportion of negative interactions exceeds this “five-to-one rule,” marital satisfaction goes way down and the divorce rate goes way up. Similarly, a study that tracked employees’ moods found that the impact of negative interactions with bosses and coworkers on employees’ feelings were five times stronger than positive interactions. Negative interactions (and the bad apples who provoke them) pack such a wallop in close relationships because they are so distracting, emotionally draining, and deflating. When a group does interdependent work, rotten apples drag down and infect everyone else. Unfortunately, grumpiness, nastiness, laziness, and stupidity are
remarkably contagious.

On the ”Good Boss…” side he mostly avoids a central problem with most management books of this type which tend to ratchet up managerial requirements such that any person unable to fly and bring love ones back from the dead is found wanting. Although he advocates a little more flower power than would actually be prudent in global economy cutthroat business environments, he also lack naivety and explicitly discusses some of the douchey deeds someone desirous of power must perform.

On the ”…”Bad Boss” side, many behaviors he warns against ring true including: bosses who never shut up, see subordinates as pawns to be tossed under the bus when things go bad or just for sport, see themselves as royalty despite holding a first-line manager roll in global conglomerate among other boss behaving badly acts. Sutton provides enough juicy anecdotes to satisfy without devolving into the managerial behavior equivalent of a horror story anthology. Although he does rightly spend significant time on the boss who waterboarded an employee as a teambuilding exercise.

In short, the book represents a good primer on solidly effective boss behaviors in an economical package although it contains no ideas not found elsewhere in the management literature.